I was once on a golf course that a US president had played on a few days earlier. He made headlines by shooting under 70. The trouble is that he took 3 shots off of the first tee and didn’t count them. I have the use of a house in AZ. It is on a cliff overlooking a golf course. Below me there is a green, protected by a sand trap. I have watched golfers deal with that sand trap for several years. I have never yet seen a golfer take a legal shot to get out of the sand trap.
These are not bad people. And yet, they each turned in a score card that was many strokes less than what they actually shot. I doubt that any of us would call their behavior sin. We tend to view sin as an act…….an act that breaks a rule. Christianity is a faith that is based primarily on two rules…..love God…..love everybody else. The ten commandments expand on these two rules. Beyond that there are hundreds of rules on the old testament that deal primarily with diet and the system of sacrifice.
But……..the core of Christianity is love.
Back to sin.
We think of sin as the breaking of a rule. We then go a step further. We rank our sins by their severity. There are big horrible sins and there are little tiny sins. We ask for forgiveness for the big sins and we generally deal with the tiny sins by justifying them. We are masters at the art of justification. We tell ourselves that people who commit little justifiable sins are basically “good people” and people who commit big sins are “bad people”. The problem is that we manage to justify our sin. The problem is that we convince ourselves that we are “good people”.
This is wrong……..it is wrong from the ground up.
Sin is not the act of breaking a rule.
Sin is the process of separating ourselves from our creator. Our very lives flow from our creator. Separation from God leads to death…….both spiritual and physical. The metaphor that the Bible uses is a plant. Cut a plant off from its roots and it will die.
The logic here tells us that there is no such thing as a tiny justifiable sin. There is no such thing as a good person. We have all separated ourselves from God. Even worse…….we continue to do so……every day.
Sin is the process of making choices that increase the distance between us and God. This is a cumulative process. Each act of separation builds on other acts……..until we are lost.
The irony here is that the guy who commits the big evil is usually fully aware of his situation. The guy who commits the tiny justifiable wrong is usually oblivious. The guy who only commits little tiny wrongs tells himself, ” I’m a good person …….at least I’m not like the really evil guy”. The problem is that the guy who commits the tiny justifiable wrong can be just as desperately separated from God as the guy who commits the great evil. The problem here is that they can both wind up just as dead.
We need to rethink our understanding of sin.
Sin is not breaking a rule. That is merely a symptom.
Sin is allowing the separation from God to develop.
And we are all guilty………some of us just don’t know it…….yet.
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy (God). It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick.
Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
C.S. Lewis