Sin. I hardly doubt that word gets thrown around enough. It seems we have removed it from our vocabulary. Somehow we’ve managed to meander our way into deflecting the idea of sin and have accepted only two options: wrong and criminal.
Have you ever heard someone say, “Well, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone”? In a world where morality is subjective, there isn’t a precise right or wrong, unless it’s criminal, and even then it’s suspect.
We have taken the moral question out of the questionnaire and have decided that it’s best if the members of society decide on their own what is right and wrong, especially since sin is no longer a usable term. And why is it no longer usable? Because along with removing the question, we have removed the answer: God.
I’ve used this quote before by Hobart Mowrer, the famed psychologist, and I’ll use it again here:
“For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch-making.”
In our attempt to free ourselves from moral accountability, we have labeled everything as either “wrong” or “criminal”. We leave “wrong” for everyone to decide on their own, and then we as a society decide on what is “criminal”. And when someone conducts themselves criminally, we are left to wonder how they got that far.
Figuring that last part out is pretty easy. They had no moral accountability in the early going. How do you think serial killers get started? Ants and puppies.
No one simply jumps into criminality. They start by wrongdoing. But if we are encouraging people to follow their own path and go with how they “feel”, then how can they know what is wrong in the first place? And how can you go back and say that what they were doing wrong was actually wrong? You can’t. Because we have placed everything on the simple phrase: “Well, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone.”
Lacking Foresight
Society has really embraced the idea of zero foresight. The last thing we want to do is look into the future because when we do that, it paints a very ugly picture. It is a picture of criminality that started with small strokes of wrong.
Like anything that is fed, it grows. When there is no moral accountability, when there is nothing to tell us we are wrong, then that mentality and behavior grows. For some, it grows exponentially. Remember the serial killer reference?
This is why the idea of sin is so important. Not merely the idea of it, but the fact of it.
Romans 6:23
“The wages of sin is death…”
When you are working, you get paid wages. Wages overtime can make you wealthy, or at least allow you to afford things. That’s called financial growth. When you are taking in your wages of sin, your financial growth is death. And this isn’t just physical death; it’s mental, spiritual, and emotional. But that’s an article for another time.
This is why God hates sin. The wrong done, i.e. the sin committed, isn’t simply a moment in time that remains stationary for eternity. No. Sin attaches. It attaches itself to the mind, the body, the soul. And then it grows as the wrong is conducted more, i.e. the sin is committed more.
People may equate that statement with, “You see, I knew God hated me.” Or “See, even Dustin thinks God hates you.” But it isn’t the sinner that God hates; it’s the sin. It’s the sin I commit and the sin you commit. There is no sin committed by any holy man that God thinks, “Eh. That’s alright.” Hence the reason Romans 2:11 states that “There is no respect of persons with God.” We are all on the same playing field when it comes to sin.
But the reason God hates sin is because He knows the future of it, and if you’ve been alive for any extended period of time, then chances are you at least have an idea of its future. I’ll give you a hint to its future: it was in a scripture I just referenced.
When It’s Wrong, It’s a Crime
We need to start thinking of wrongdoing as criminal instead of waiting for the crime to be committed. I’m not talking about Minority-Report-Thought-Crime stuff. We need to start noting our wrongful acts as sin and understand that it may not be a crime in the American law books, but it is a crime against our bodies, our minds, and our souls. And those types of crimes, kept in perpetuation, lead only to death.