| Note – Because Paul has been so unwell, we are writing these articles from the hundreds of thousands of pages of transcripts of our Lighthouse research, in order to share with you—the reader—what Paul has learned and taught over the last twenty one years. In 2021-2022, the BBC unlawfully obtained highly sensitive and personal data through criminally stolen transcripts of personal and group counselling sessions and misrepresented them to the public in their docu-myth. An act of diabolical pride in and of itself! They will never live it down. They tried to decimate the public’s perception of Paul and all of us at Lighthouse Global, and have only succeeded in making us stronger, Glory to God! They know they wilfully deceived the British and global citizens. Repent! |
C.S. Lewis, in his masterwork Mere Christianity, makes a distinction that has profound implications for how we understand human behaviour, moral responsibility, and the path to healing. He writes:
“The bad psychological material is not a sin but a disease. It does not need to be repented of, but to be cured. And by the way, that is very important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.”
This observation cuts to the heart of a conversation I’ve been having about the nature of sin itself—particularly the difference between wilful sin and sin as a condition, an illness that manifests in behaviours we cannot seem to control.
The Two Faces of Sin
When scripture tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), it’s describing something more nuanced than most realise. The Greek word hamartia, translated as “sin,” literally means to miss the mark. But there are two very different ways to miss a mark.
One person aims at the target and deliberately shoots wide—that’s wilful sin, a conscious choice to rebel against what is good and right. Another person’s hand trembles uncontrollably due to an injury they sustained years ago, and though they desperately want to hit the target, they cannot—that’s sin as a condition, a psychological or spiritual illness.
Both miss the mark. Both are hamartia. But they are not the same thing at all.
When Sin Becomes Medicine
Lewis understood this brilliantly. In his chapter on morality and psychoanalysis, he illustrates the point with three soldiers going to war. One has ordinary fear and conquers it through moral effort. Two others have pathological, irrational fears rooted in their subconscious—fears “which no amount of moral effort can do anything about.” These two need psychological healing before moral choice even becomes possible.
This is what I’ve been exploring: the difference between comfort eating and survival eating. When someone cannot stop eating, when they cannot stop seeking sexual gratification, when they cannot break free from substances or behaviours—it’s often not about comfort at all. It’s about survival.
These behaviours become self-medication. The person isn’t being wicked or indulgent. They’re trying desperately to manage unbearable psychological pain, depression, or emptiness that originated in childhood trauma, neglect, or wounding. If they don’t engage in the behaviour, they become chronically depressed, even suicidal. That’s not comfort—that’s medicine.
We don’t say someone is taking “comfort chemotherapy.” We don’t ask for “comfort medicine” when we have a migraine. These are treatments for real conditions. In the same way, what looks like gluttony or lust on the surface may actually be a neurotic attempt to treat a deep psychological wound.
The Subconscious Prison
Lewis wrote: “Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.” This is crucial.
When a behaviour is driven by subconscious compulsion—by trauma buried so deep the person doesn’t even know it’s there—it’s not truly a moral choice in the way we typically understand it. The person is trapped in what scripture calls being “sold under sin” (Romans 7:14).
Paul the apostle describes this exact experience:
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Romans 7:15, 18).
This is psychological bondage. The difference between suppression and repression is key here. Suppression is conscious—you know you’re hiding something. Repression is unconscious—the painful truth has been buried so deep, covered over with neuroses and false narratives, that you genuinely don’t know it’s there anymore. You’ve created a story to legitimise your behaviour, to garner sympathy, to survive. The real wound remains hidden, sometimes even from yourself.
The Path to Freedom
So what does healing look like? Lewis helps us here too. After his illustration of the three soldiers, he makes clear that once psychoanalysis does its work—once the irrational fears are healed—then the moral question begins. The psychological problem and the moral problem are distinct, though related.
First comes healing. The hidden things must be brought into the light:
“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17).
The repressed memories, the buried pain, the childhood wounds—these must be acknowledged and treated. This is not about repentance; it’s about restoration.
As Lewis wrote, the bad psychological material “does not need to be repented of, but to be cured.”
But then, after the cure, after the healing, after the person is freed from the subconscious compulsion—then comes the moment of moral choice. Will they now choose to pursue righteousness, or will they continue in the old patterns out of habit or preference?
This is where grace meets responsibility. Jesus demonstrated this perfectly with the woman caught in adultery. He didn’t condemn her—“Neither do I condemn you” (John 8:11). But he also called her forward—“Go, and from now on sin no more.”
First compassion, then challenge. First healing, then holiness.
The Divine Physician
Jesus said,
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).
He understood the distinction we’re making here. Some people need healing before they can even begin to make free moral choices. They’re not wicked—they’re wounded. They’re not rebellious—they’re sick.
God sees what humans cannot see. He sees the childhood trauma beneath the addiction. He sees the abandonment beneath the promiscuity. He sees the shame beneath the rage. He sees the subconscious driver that the person themselves cannot perceive.
“The Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
The Call to Compassion
If we understand this distinction between wilful sin and psychological illness, between conscious rebellion and subconscious survival mechanisms, it changes everything about how we treat people. We stop judging external behaviours and start asking:
What’s the wound beneath this behaviour? What pain is this person trying to medicate? What mark are they missing, and why?
This doesn’t mean we excuse destructive behaviour or pretend there are no consequences. Sin—whether wilful or compulsive—still causes damage. As Lewis would say, moral rules are “directions for running the human machine,” and when we break them, the machine breaks down.
But it does mean we approach people with compassion rather than condemnation. It means we offer treatment rather than judgement. It means we recognise that sometimes what looks like wickedness is actually sickness, and what we call sin might actually be suffering.
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).
Conclusion: The Wisdom of Seeing Rightly
Lewis’s genius was in helping us see that psychology and theology are not enemies but partners in understanding the human condition. Both are needed. We need the psychological insight to identify the disease. We need the theological framework to understand sin, grace, and redemption.
And ultimately, we need the Great Physician himself—Jesus Christ—who alone has the power to heal both the psychological wounds that drive us and the moral guilt that condemns us.
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
The question is not whether we’ve missed the mark—we all have. The question is why we’ve missed it, and what kind of healing we need. For some, the path begins with repentance. For others, it begins with therapy, with uncovering buried trauma, with understanding that their behaviour is not wickedness but a wounded attempt at survival.
Both paths lead to the same destination: wholeness in Christ, where neither disease nor sin has the final word.
By Paul S. Waugh
This article was inspired by discussions on the intersection of psychology, theology, and human behaviour, drawing on C.S. Lewis’s insights from Mere Christianity and the work of Paul S. Waugh on ‘The Sum of All Problems’ see link here: Home – The Sum Of All Problems
As we’ve all reflected today, Paulie’s article on sin has landed with a weight and a mercy that feels perfectly timed for where we each are in our journeys. We’re seeing—together and individually—how deeply the distinction between wilful sin and conditioned sin speaks into our lives. It’s helping us understand not only our failures, but the reasons behind them; not only where we’ve rebelled, but where we’ve been wounded, shaped, conditioned, and blinded by survival, trauma, and years of unconscious patterns.
We are realising, as a collective, that much of what we’ve carried has been hidden even from ourselves. We have been resisting our brokenness for years—through denial, ignorance, pride, striving, or coping mechanisms. Others of us are seeing how our attempts at self-reliance or perfectionism have prevented and damaged our relationship with God, or how unhealed wounds and addictions have kept us from knowing ourselves at all. For many of us, the weight of sin has been unbearable at times because we saw the sin but not the cause, the action but not the illness beneath it. Today has shifted something in that.
We feel overwhelmingly grateful that this article didn’t just expose sin—it illuminated it in a way that was compassionate, grounded, scriptural, psychologically insightful, and deeply human. It has given us frameworks, language, and distinctions that help us look at ourselves with truth and with mercy. For some of us, it’s the first time we’ve been able to start discerning when we are choosing sin wilfully and when we are acting out of old trauma, compulsion, or conditioned responses we haven’t yet healed. For others, it’s helping us see how much inner work remains—how much repression, avoidance, survival strategy, and self-blindness is still shaping our behaviour.
We’re also seeing how essential stillness, presence with God, and humility are—not running away from the pain but sitting with it, asking God what He is teaching us, allowing Him to reveal what we’ve been too frightened, too conditioned, or too proud to see. Some of us took time in nature today, others seeing through scriptures, and even the “coincidences” around C.S. Lewis and his writings felt like God’s reminders that He is near, guiding us, and preparing us for what is ahead.
We’re realising as a group how incredibly important it is—spiritually, psychologically, and practically—to write down our problems, to ask empowered questions, to build a Problem and Question Compendium, and to approach our lives with clarity, discernment, and truth. This process is strengthening us, giving us courage, bringing us closer to God, and helping us see our condition—and the systems around us—with increasing clarity and accuracy.
We’re also seeing just how damaged, conditioned, and broken we are… and paradoxically, that acceptance is creating more compassion, more humility, more humanity, and more closeness to God. The more we accept the truth of our condition, the more the warmth of Christ begins to reach places in us that have been numb, hardened, or hidden for years.
We are increasingly in the forge, undergoing healing, rebuilding, facing our addictions, recognising long-standing trauma, and learning to depend fully on Christ. It’s painful, confusing, and exposing—but it’s also deeply hopeful. Some of us have had breakthroughs even tonight. Others are finding comfort in scripture, or seeing how God is weaving signs, warnings, encouragements, and confirmations into our daily experiences. We are collectively sensing that God is moving—through the teachings, through our trials, through our unity, through this season of Advent, and through every moment of stillness where He meets us in truth.
We all feel immense gratitude—for Paulie, for the wisdom and mastery of communication that God has given him, for the patience and guidance he continues to show while still recovering, and for the way his teachings hold together theology, psychology, scripture, and lived experience in a way that changes us at the root. We are also grateful for one another: for the collective reflections, the honesty, the shared suffering, the insights, the walks, the prayers, and the journey we’re on together.
We pray for strength, for regeneration, for clearer eyes, for deeper humility, and for Christ’s healing to reach into the most hidden parts of us. We pray for everyone preparing for court, and for all of us who are going through private, internal battles of our own. We trust that God is using all of this—our pain, our conditioning, our efforts, our failures, our breakthroughs—to draw us closer to Him.
God bless us all. x x x
Wow… Paul, thank you so much. Mr Lewis, thank you, and literally above all, Jesus Christ thank you for your saving grace. I welled up so much reading this – the timing of having this is incredible. I was not expecting to receive this and I’m so grateful I have. This week has brought to light a lot of my sin and challenge and I have been yearning to understand and as M Scott Peck says, to truly ‘enter’ into self examination in ways I never have before – only possible with God’s Holy Spirit. So there’s a lot here to hear and accept for me personally, and also to have much, much more compassion toward others too. What I see on the surface is only a glimpse and doesn’t show me the underlying trauma and hurt. As I read earlier this week; “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye”.
Matthew 7:5 LSB
Thanks to our Lord for His mercy and grace. God bless you Paul, heal well, in every way.
Thank you so much for writing this article, sin and imperfection are so misunderstood in today’s society and I for one have benefited hugely from Paul’s teachings, as well as C.S Lewis’ here, teachings, on all of these crucial and vital areas of living and life. Truly a profound piece and one I intend to come back to again and again. Thank you. God bless.
Absolutely Jess, this is a huge shift for all of us to face sin with compassion and empathy, not cold psychopathy.
Exceptional insights for a time where sin is increasingly becoming distorted and normalised 🙏
I loved what Paul shares here:
“We need the theological framework to understand sin, grace, and redemption.
And ultimately, we need the Great Physician himself—Jesus Christ—who alone has the power to heal both the psychological wounds that drive us and the moral guilt that condemns us.”
So incredibly moving to be a hopeless wretch that I am and to be loved and forgiven by our Lord and Saviour.
Nothing and no one can do what He has done and does. Not the personal development industry, not any therapist, any teacher, it’s only our Source, our Creator, our Redeemer Jesus Christ.
Fascinating to see how I have judged others – and myself – by actions while being completely oblivious to the wounds, trauma or subconscious longing for wholeness that is behind those actions. Just knowing this will help me to be more compassionate and with God’s love and healing I pray we all find peace.
Thank you!
Bless you Tom, I say the same for myself. God bless you brother.
Reading this article helped me understand more clearly how deeply psychological and theological the reality of sin truly is. In 2023, I began trying to see other human beings as wounded people. Yet I have to admit that this perspective did not fully work in me until now. It was only when I read the line, “Human beings judge one another by their external actions; God judges them by their moral choice,” that my heart and mind grasped the inner dimension of every human behaviour. It redirected my attention from the behaviour I experience from other people toward the wounds beneath the behaviour, the pain, grief, sadness, sorrow, fear, and anger a person is trying to medicate, and they are desperately trying to meet.
What I value most in this article is the clear interconnection between the psychological aspect and theology. Psychology helps me identify the wound, the disease, beneath my behaviour, while theology helps me see not only the sin, but also the grace, redemption, and possibility of transformation. In particular, the theological aspect reminds me that “Faith without action is dead” (James 2:14-26), and for me, that action means scrutinising my patterns, behaviours, and choices with honesty, so I can recognise what is missing in me, the type of healing I truly need, and taking responsibility for the work God is calling me to do.
To grow in this way, I see that compassion must begin with self-compassion. Only when I face the wounds, the disease, in myself can I extend myself toward others and become able to build godly-based human relationships. Otherwise, I remain stuck in unhealthy relational patterns. As Scott Peck wrote, “The overall purpose of human communication is, or should be, reconciliation.” Onward in Christ!
P.S. Thanks to our Father for this article, and thank you, Paul, for the willingness to write this profound truth about sin and human relationships. Paul, may God continue to heal you with His Abundant Grace!
Well expressed Letizia. You’re spot on, it begins with self compassion and that is only possible because of the love from Jesus Christ. Thank you for sharing and may God bless and guide you in your healing and strengthening.
Thank you Paul for these incredibly eye-opening, compassionate and wise insights. What you shared about how self-medication is the way that we try to manage unbearable psychological pain, depression, or emptiness hit me square between the eyes!
I say that because it’s helped me to look at myself and others with more compassion. There are various things that I do that I resist and judge myself for because I know they’re both sinful and not healthy. Yet I continue to do them, even though I don’t want to do them as the Apostle Paul describes in the book of Romans.
So this article reveals the damage and brokenness in myself and others together with the need for healing and the ultimate need for Christ.
I think about those who have been trying to destroy you and us all at Lighthouse over the last 4-5 years. Whilst their destructive actions are heinous and require accountability, this article shows the immense pain these people are in for them to be acting in the way they are. May God help them and us all to heal and to repent.
I found reading this incredibly powerful and I’m grateful to Paul for explaining these two causes and aspects to our unwanted and destructive behaviour in such a clear, rich and impactful way. I suddenly feel more understood than I ever expected to be because this has helped me understand myself so much more and given much cause for thought and self reflection as to how this applies to me and others. This level of clarification and distinction is so needed in helping us all to understand and navigate the psychological and the spiritual. I love how Paul brings in the scriptures that perfectly explain and back up what he’s explaining and how straight forward and easy to understand too. Now we can all look at our sin and ask that question, do we need therapy or repentance? Do we need healing or humility and responsibility? I can see how this could be abused, where the temptation to the ego will be to call what is wilful a compulsion, which is why the Bible calls us to self examine and to be committed to what is true. Thank you Paul for taking the brilliant insights of CS Lewis and building on those so powerfully here to a whole new level.. I pray this helps as many as possible to heal where they need to and stop sinning where they can and must.
God bless you Kris.
Thank you Paul, thank you CS Lewis and thank you Father, because all that both have written is in your book.
This article needs to be read over and over, because what is being highlighted, sin, needs to be understood by all, and through my study of God’s word, each day I am learning about sin a little more.
It was hard at first to understand that I am sin, I was born a sinner, but through help and guidance, what God is teaching me, I am accepting it. So, as I said, this article needs to be read over because what it is helping me understand a little more is why I miss the mark so often, especially where my addictions come in. This is something that I will be looking at more in myself, to go deeper into my soul and start the process of healing.
God bless you for writing this and for sharing it with us Paul, thank you x x
phew yes! This is the type of discussion that needs to happen more and more – love this article bringing together the theology and psychology of man and seeing how it comes together as a tapestry to help human beings understand themselves and their obstacles to God, not as a competition between theology and science. I often think Christians fail to see how the two merge and therefore they miss out on how they can create more value in all areas of their life particularly in their relationship with God and Christ.
What an amazing article. Thank you. I needed to read this article. I had no idea about the subject of sin was so deep. I’ll be sure to pick up Mere Christianity.
Thank you for this article. It feels so necessary to open up a deeper conversation about what sin truly is and why we are all sinners, simply meaning that none of us is perfect. I had never thought of sin as a kind of medicine we take out of sheer survival instinct rather than genuine free choice. That makes it all the more important to understand the root cause of our sin, rather than simply punishing someone for being sinful without looking at the reasons behind it.
It is also a powerful insight to see how closely sin is tied to freedom, and how often we are unable to choose freely because we are being driven or controlled by our inner dependencies.
I hadn’t realised that C. S. Lewis had explored human behaviour, responsibility, and healing in such depth. Bringing psychology and theology together feels incredibly powerful in helping us understand human behaviour, sin, choice, forgiveness, and repentance.
God bless
This really hit home! I struggle with negativity towards myself and others/judging myself and others. It’s so easy to lose sight of Who I am really serving, whether it be trauma in my life or lacking empathy at times for myself or others. Thankful to God that He is not limited to our human frailties or our thoughts, as it says in Isaiah with His ways being higher than ours and His thoughts higher than ours. Please keep speaking for truth and the Way, the Truth, and the Life!
God bless you Beth. I think that struggle is something so ingrained in each and all of us, in different ways. Thank God for God, or else we would be doomed in every way. God bless you in your healing and care for others.
This really spoke to me. It’s so easy to treat sin like a small mistake instead of something that slowly harms my heart and relationship with God. I appreciate the reminder that I can’t fix myself on my own and that I truly need Jesus to heal me. It encourages me to be more honest with God, to confess quickly, and to rely on His grace instead of trying to pretend I’m fine. Thank you for sharing this.