What is sin?

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back the soonest is the most progressive man”.

C. S. Lewis – Mere Christianity

Now to get where we are going we need to turn around and look over some basic things.

They may seem quite archaic to you, even disturbing or weird. You may feel anxious when you think about these things.

It is normal. That is what the Christians call, the old man, the human nature, in us. The one that is under sin and in rebellion against God.

And it does not want to end its rebellion. It does not want admit it’s wrong and needs to be changed.

But that is exactly what it needs and what we all need. We need to be changed by God. We need to face ourselves, see ourselves for who we really are and admit that we are wrong, that we are sinners, that we need God.

So, what is this sin?

Oxford online dictionary defines sin (noun): “an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law: a sin in the eyes of God [mass noun]: the human capacity for sin” or “an act regarded as a serious or regrettable fault, offence, or omission: he committed the unforgivable sin of refusing to give interviews”.

According to S. Michael Houdmann’s article “Sin is described in the Bible as transgression of the law of God (1 John 3:4) and rebellion against God (Deuteronomy 9:7; Joshua 1:18). Sin had its beginning with Lucifer, probably the most beautiful and powerful of the angels. Not content with his position, he desired to be higher than God, and that was his downfall, the beginning of sin (Isaiah 14:12-15). Renamed Satan, he brought sin to the human race in the Garden of Eden, where he tempted Adam and Eve with the same enticement, “you shall be like God.” Genesis 3 describes Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God and against His command. Since that time, sin has been passed down through all the generations of mankind and we, Adam’s descendants, have inherited sin from him. Romans 5:12 tells us that through Adam sin entered the world, and so death was passed on to all men because “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)”.

Richard Wagner describes sin as “any deliberate action, attitude, or thought that goes against God. You may think of sin as an obvious act, such as murder, adultery, or theft. Although that's true, sin is also wrongdoing that's far subtler and even unnoticeable at times, such as pride, envy, or even worry. Sin includes both things you shouldn't have done, but did (sins of commission) and things you should've done, but didn't (sins of omission)”.

Scott Ashley’s definition of sin is as follows: “The Hebrew and Greek words translated "sin" throughout the Bible revolve largely around two major concepts. The first is that of transgression. To transgress means "to step across" or "to go beyond a set boundary or limit." … Most of the other words translated "sin" in the Bible involve a second concept, "to miss the mark." … Both of these concepts, transgressing and missing the mark, involve a basic requirement. If we transgress, which means to cross over a set boundary or limit, then we must have a boundary or limit to cross over. If we miss the mark, we must have a mark, target or standard to miss. Sin, then, is to transgress those boundaries God has set for us or to miss the target He set for us”.

Catholic author Mary Fairchild defines sin in her article this way: “For such a small word, a lot is packed into the meaning of sin. The Bible describes sin as the breaking, or transgression, of God's law (1 John 3:4). It is also defined as disobedience or rebellion against God (Deuteronomy 9:7), as well as independence from God. The original translation means "to miss the mark" of God's holy standard of righteousness”.

To begin, read Natural law. A post about the law we all have in our hearts.

If you would like to know what comes after read the post about Moral law.

Having read that, you'll need to know Which moral law to choose. 

If you agree we need to choose a moral law, maybe you'll agree that We need God. 

We need God

“For the trouble is that one part of you is on His (God’s) side and really agrees with his disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation. You may want Him to make an exception in your own case, to let you off this one time; but you know at bottom that unless the power behind the world really and unalterably detests that sort of behavior, then He cannot be good. On the other hand, we know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again”.

C. S. Lewis – Mere Christianity

Now if you have come to honestly believe that there must be a moral law Giver for a moral law to exist, what is the next thing to do?

How can you proceed?

As I said before, if you believe in relativism, there is a huge amount of religions to choose. You can make any of them your own and decide that that particular faith is your moral giver.

Or you can believe that Christianity is the real thing.

You can choose Christian God.

You can accept that Christians offer you an answer to why there is evil in the world and also how we can overcome the evil.

As C. S. Lewis says “When you have realized your position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. They offer an explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it. They offer an explanation how God can be this impersonal mind at the back of the Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands of this law, which you and I cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how God Himself becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God”.

This means doing some radical thinking. Changing your worldview and accepting that you may not always be right.

It also means accepting that there is someone far greater and more magnificent you could ever imagine.

The problem is that, even though this is a very comforting idea of a great loving person behind everything. It is also a very dangerous and terrifying idea of a great perfect being behind everything.

Just like C. S. Lewis says “God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from”.

But what are you looking for?

The truth?

Or something to take away your fears and comfort you during the lonely nights?

Again a quote from C. S. Lewis: “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort of truth – only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair”.

Or a thought from a great Russian literary masterpiece:

“It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right -that it's an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn't exist, man is the king of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That's the question. I always come back to that. Who is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity instead of God. Well, only an idiot can maintain that. I can't understand it. Life's easy for Rakitin. 'You'd better think about the extension of civic rights, or of keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.' I answered him: 'Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat if it suits you, and make a rouble on every penny.' He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer that, Alyosha. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it's relative. Or isn't it? Is it not relative? A treacherous question! You won't laugh if I tell you it's kept me awake for two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov


To begin, read Natural law. A post about the law we all have in our hearts.

If you would like to know what comes after read the post about Moral law.

Having read that, you'll need to know Which moral law to choose. 

If you agree that you need God, read to find out What is sin.

Which moral law to choose?

“The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it isn't. If you leave out justice you'll find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity,' and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

How can you tell if one moral law is better than another?

According to Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary Moral law is “a general rule of right living; esp:  such a rule or group of rules conceived as universal and unchanging and as having the sanction of God's will, of conscience, of man's moral nature, or of natural justice as revealed to human reason”.

In totalitarian system one person or party dictates the moral law. The moral law may be based on what is useful and what is not. In this kind of system, the moral law may accept the slavery or euthanasia, because they are useful to the society in general.

C. S. Lewis asks “When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is even better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better”.

So, how can we tell our, or my, moral law is better than someone else’s?

I can say, my moral law is better because it respects the human rights. But the human rights are just a set of moral laws, done by people.

The other person may as well say, my moral laws are better because larger portion of people are happier and wealthier. There is a small portion of people that must suffer or even die, but it is for common good, not for anyone’s personal gain.

Is moral law just democracy? The idea that has most of the people voting it wins. It is the new moral law.

 

According to C. S. Lewis “The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others”.

Now, if you believe in relativity. Everything is relative, there is no absolute truth. There can neither be an absolute moral law. Many people claim that this will lead to less injustice. Because people no longer need to fight about who is right and who is wrong.

People don’t need to fight about it. That is true.

But it is also true that they keep fighting.

To quote C. S. Lewis (again) “It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior, and yet quite definitely real – a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us”.

If you find this post interesting and want to know more you should read the other posts of this on-going series.

To begin, read Natural law. A post about the law we all have in our hearts.

If you want to know more about Moral law, the post before this one talks about it.

If you agree we need to choose a moral law, maybe you'll agree that We need God.

Moral law

"When you say there's too much evil in this world you assume there's good. When you assume there's good, you assume there's such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral Law Giver, but that's Who you're trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there's no moral Law Giver, there's no moral law. If there's no moral law, there's no good. If there's no good, there's no evil. What is your question?"

—Ravi Zacharias

According to The Free Dictionary by Farlex “The rules of behavior an individual or a group may follow out of personal conscience and that are not necessarily part of legislated law in the United States. Moral law is a system of guidelines for behavior. These guidelines may or may not be part of a religion, codified in written form, or legally enforceable. For some people moral law is synonymous with the commands of a divine being. For others, moral law is a set of universal rules that should apply to everyone”.

Moral law is something stated in the personal conscience, not in the law. In today’s speak it is something a person decides to follow, as in I’ll be a Christian and I’ll follow their Moral law, or I’m a Buddhist so I follow their Moral law. There is no one Moral law above another, just personal opinions.

In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis claims that “The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys”. But what if there is no “real” moral law, with capital letters? What if each one of us is following their own moral laws?

For instance, according to Kant , “the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanity – understood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as others – as an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons”.

In other words, there is no higher Moral law. The humans themselves make the moral law from their good will. Sadly we know that not many of us have enough good will to create an universal set of moral laws. And if someone does create them, there is no reason or obligation to follow them, but your duty.

And how many of us are willing to do that duty? Just out of kindness of our hearts.

C. S. Lewis states in Mere Christianity that “Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the “right” notes and the “wrong” ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts”.

According to this, if we trust our instincts to lead the way, to tell us to “do our duty”, “choose the right thing” it will not work. The instincts are not wrong. We need to eat, to sleep, to seek security and we need to procreate. But there is a place and time for all this. And if we trust ourselves to choose what is right and wrong it will not work.

Like Ravi Zacharias says, without a moral Law Giver, there is no moral law. Or in Albert Einstein’s words “God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God.” 

 

Did you find this post interesting and would like to know more?

 

To know the basis of Moral law, read first Natural law. 

To continue with the series, read Which moral law to choose.