To sin or not to sin, that is the question

While i will do a separate post on the subject in the near future, it occurs to me that if not obvious to the reader that this blog is not really about answering questions or understanding the complexities of theology, because there are several blogs that do that much better than i can hope to, but hopefully my thoughts and ideas can provoke thought and propel people to search for resources to answer there questions. And the blog is new, so there's  much i would like to add to it in the future.



I was thinking the other day about the sin, in particular the "degrees" of sin. What i mean is whether one considers each individual sin as equal weight and the goal is to simply limit the number of sins accumulated, or whether sins come in degrees, that being some sins worse than others, and that within a type of sin, like stealing, some forms or reasons for stealing are less "evil" than other forms. Another thought i had was is it the action or the intent that makes a sin, or are both involved and if so how does the split work? If you get drunk and kill someone but don't remember and were out of control, is that different in a moral sense than soberly planning the murder of someone for insurance money? While i understand the law makes distinctions, I wonder if God does.

I think to some extent how you answer this question depends on your denomination, but I wonder this because I feel society seems to consider some sins as worse than others not seemingly based on scripture as much as cultural and social reasons. For example, many Christians disagree with gay marriage and homosexuality in general and feel the state should oppose or at least discourage such acts. While one could argue over allowing people to decide on there own whether they turn to God or not and follow scriptural teachings, the other issue is how bad o homosexuality? For example, is a homosexual act equal to one lie or 10 lies or 1000 lies? While I think in a practical sense its a bad way to life a Christian life to try to put a "value" on sin and instead such just try to live as spiritual and Christ-like as possible, hear out my argument.

My point is that sin is far more complicated than gets presented as sometimes. For one, we ALL sin, usually far more than we would like to admit, but they are usually seen as "small" or "ordinary" sins like lying or being selfish or verbally harassing someone. So we give all these sins little to no weight, but when it comes to sex in general, each sin is magnified in weight and evil associated with it, when the evidence suggests that the sin in isolation is not much worse than any other sin. It's not permission to sleep around or cheat on a partner, but I feel some more perspective and forgiveness in in order and less judging and condemnation.

Also, back to my original point about homosexuality, supposing it is a sin, i think that it is no worse than the multitude of other sins people commit every day, the issue is more than it makes people uncomfortable. Indeed, the people i know that are the most against homosexuality are not even religious usually and see it as "unnatural" and find it unsettling and not something they grew up with, but have no particularly convincing evidence to defend such beliefs. Therefore at worse, i think sexual sins and especially homosexuality are way overblown in terms of their seriousness as individual acts, and in terms of homosexuality, I think the act itself is not really the sin as much as the behaviour and lifestyles that have been traditionally associated with the act. What i mean is that homosexual sex between two inebriated young men or woman out partying looking for a one night stand cannot really be compared to two men or woman in a loving, committed relationship. I think this is especially the case if being LGBT person is driven by genetics more than choice, because in this case the sin is how and and why one has sex rather than the act itself, unless we consider the mentally ill egregious sinners as well for their increased likelihood for improper behaviour.

I realize that what i'm saying would not be considered orthodox, but if you compare how scripture interpretation towards woman or wealth especially is far more liberal than towards LGBT persons, I think a revaluation of why scripture considers such acts a sin should be undertaken and the social, cultural and political underpinnings behind homosexuality in ancient times versus now. I'm not saying anything goes by any stretch, only that in my opinion more love, respect and understanding towards non-heterosexuals is in order, especially those that otherwise would be considered good, mortal people by Christians. I think on this particular issue and other issues, how we view sin needs to be reconsidered.