This post was written for THRED, a online conversation effort of Lutheran Hour Ministries. Their goal was to post blogs that initiate conversation around spiritual topics. My goal in this piece was not to repudiate the idea of sin as breaking God’s laws, but to offer people who don’t even believe in the idea of sin another way to look at it.
Sin
John Rallison • 653 words
I am tired of people thinking they know what’s right and wrong for me. No, it’s beyond that. I’m bored with people telling me about right and wrong. So many people think they know what everyone needs to be doing. As soon as I hear right and wrong talk, my eyes start to glaze over.
Right and wrong talk is boring because people are often unaware of how culturally conditioned our ideas of right and wrong are. Is it wrong for women to go topless? What about in villages in central Africa?
It seems pretty clear to everyone that there’s nothing wrong with women not wearing shirts in African villages. I heard an enlightening and humorous story from a missionary about this. He said that when the village he was working in became Christian, the women started wearing shirts because it seemed like the “Christian” thing to do… modesty and all that. After a couple of weeks, the village elders approached the missionary with a problem. The women wearing shirts were driving them crazy! Sexual thoughts were entering their minds unbidden all day long because the women were wearing shirts! The solution was obvious. They went back to their cultural ways of nobody wearing shirts and everything was fine. The way values are expressed often doesn’t cross cultures like we assume it will. Modest in one place is provocative in another!
So, ok in Africa, not ok in the USA? Probably so, but that’s not an issue of right and wrong. It’s an issue of cultural norms.
Talking about where the idea of right and wrong comes from can be interesting. But if someone wants to argue (or worse, judge people) about their list of right and wrong… boring.
As a Christian, I think about this whenever the topic of “sin” comes up (which is often!) Sin as a list of forbidden behaviors seems small and boring — petty, even — for something as large as a faith or worldview.
I’ve come to see sin in a different way that works for me. Instead of sin being someone’s arbitrary line I cross, “sin” is a word that describes where goodness is not.
That may seem confusing but stay with me. We often use words to describe a thing that is actually the lack of something.
We talk about dark as if it is a thing, but it is not. You can’t grab some darkness and put it in a jar. Darkness is a lack of light. Darkness is where there are no photons.
We talk about cold as if it is a thing, but it is not. Cold is a lack of heat. Hotter means there is more energy and colder means there is less. You can’t actually have more cold, only less heat.
That’s the perspective that I’ve found useful when talking about sin. We were created to be good. Wherever goodness is not, that is sin.
Sin is not a thing. Sin is lack of goodness. I sin when I don’t bring good into the world. I sin when I don’t contribute toward peace, wholeness, healing, love, truth, beauty, and harmony in the world.
In church services, we often “confess our sins.” For me, that used to be a review of what rules I had broken. Now I think of times when I’ve not brought peace, wholeness, healing, love, truth, beauty, and harmony in the world.
The Apostle Paul told the Christians in Philippi to think about things that will draw them toward living better lives:
“…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” – Philippians 4:8 (NIV)
I don’t think I will ever be perfectly good. Sin seems to be a condition of the soul. But this seems like a positive way to think about sin. It orients me toward living to make a positive difference in the world.