m.scott peck derails laziness as the lowest of sins. he reasons that one must continue to strive, to fight against atrophy and decay and to do otherwise is death and sin.
others, i think, c.s. lewis, inclined that pride is one of the worst for its impediment. specifically, if one feels themselves better than their fellow man and even God, well it makes communing kind of difficult.
c. stanley discusses blaspheming the Holy Spirit as essentially ignoring God's call to come to Him. a certain pinnacle of sin.
i sometimes think my dad holds smoking as one of the worst sins. whenever he mentions that someone is smoking, he gets an extremely disdained look. He'll be saying, "i saw her out back smoking a cigarette", but his face is saying, "i saw her out back rolling in her own feces." he'll witness to these heathens that they ought not engage in such sin, for their health.
i know a foreign lady and her american lover who think that eating meat is the deadliest of sins. they consider it so for what it does to the human body, the environment, and i suspect most importantly what it does to those poor lil animals. they are fabulous proselytisers and miss no opportunity to preach the figurative fire and brimstone about thier favorite sin.
on a more global scale, the voodoo culture of haiti note that disloyalty and ill-will towards ones family is of the most abominable (at least according to "the serpent and the rainbow"). so horrible is the sin that you may be justly turned into a zombie for the crime.
for some people, sexual sins seem always to be the worst, most heinous of sins. you know, gay sex, pre-marital sex, masturbation, what-not. i wont prolong myself here (pun intended).
i dont know if God weighs sin the way we do. one being worse than another. i may despise one more than another, but maybe thats more about how i was raised or the pain that particular sin caused me or the sin witin me seething beneath the surface.
Jesus seemed to even the playing field of sin when he noted that lusting after another man's wife is as bad as having adultery. Also he tended to focus less on carnal sins and more on those who elevated themselves above other sinners.
i think any and all sin is in essence spiritual disease. some may have differerent symptomotology than others, and a different short term prognosis, but all have the same long-term fatal prognosis.
6 comments:
Everybody's perspective is DIFFERENT. You should not judge someone, until you've walked a mile in their shoes...
i dont understand how this statement relates to the blog post?
I don't see how you don't. In the case of the lady who thought eating meat was "the deadliest of sins", well, normal people (with a quite different perspective) feel completely opposite of that point of view.
what i didnt get was why you say, "You should not judge..." it seemd you were accusing me of judging. but it seems you meant "you" to be the people detailed in the post, yes?
great post! i see your point about jesus leveling the playing field, but i think there's more to it. jesus' point was that sin starts in the heart. jews were coming up with elaborate outward laws to interpret laws so as to prevent themselves from breaking them. but these were outward and did little to affect the heart. jesus is saying that you've sinned already when you sin in your mind. this establishes the fact that even those who simply lust after another woman have sinned. where one might be tempted to flout his or her credentials as a law keeper, jesus is leveling the playing ground.
however, i don't think that elimates the notion that there are some sins that are bad and others are worse. in other words, jesus is establishing that we all sin, but he's not necessarily saying that all sin is qualitatively equal.
for instance at one point he says, "How terrible it will be for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You devour widows' houses and say long prayers to cover it up. Therefore, you will receive greater condemnation!"
at another point he says, "but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea..Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!"
we see here in both of these passages that jesus is talking about different levels of sin.
so on one hand, sin, any sin, is that which breaks relationship with God. in that regard, all sin is on the same level. but on the other hand there are degrees of sin that come with different degrees of conequences/punishment.
i'm thinking of a metaphor here. let's say you have a dance club that allows minors in. but only those over 21 get a wrist band to drink. as they pass the bouncer the all enter the domain of the club. so on that level they are all equally in the club. however, those who have the band can also participate in alcholic festivities. on this level, of course, the banded inviduals are set apart differently.
does that metaphor make sense?
thank you for your input pro33.
Post a Comment