This is a nice light-hearted topic! Yes, today we are going to talk about Sin.
The church, and surprisingly the world too, talk a lot about sin but we rarely dig into what sin actually is. We see adverts on the telly that call cake or ice cream “so good its sinful” and while it might be really yummy and terrible for your body, ice cream or cake on its own isn’t actually sin!
On the other side of the coin when you go round London there is often a doomsday type character screaming that the end is nigh and repent of your sin with a sandwich board that just has SIN in big letters or something. Now this isn’t especially helpful either. Even if we do need to repent of our sin and Jesus is coming back, I don’t think screaming about it in the streets isn’t the most helpful way of convincing someone.
So, what is sin? Well admittedly it is quite complicated, and it is too simple just to say it’s the bad stuff we do but a really helpful way I have understood it is like this:
Sin is a relational dysfunction.
One of my very Scottish lecturers called Graham would constantly remind us that humans are profoundly relational. Our lives revolve around the relationship we have with people and things. So, very simply, when we sin, we break or damage the relationships between ourselves and God, ourselves and others, ourselves and creation and even within ourselves.
When we look back through the history of bible characters this is plain to see. Right back at the beginning, Adam and Eve walked closely with God in the garden but after they had eaten the fruit, they hid and were ashamed and so the relationship between them and God and them and creation, had been severely damaged. The Israelites when wandering in the wilderness created idols to worship, hurting their relationship with God. King David committed adultery, and then lied and murdered for Bathsheba, ultimately destroying his relationship with Uriah, the man he killed, God, and the rest of his family. Judas ruins his relationship with Jesus and the other disciples when he betrays Jesus, and Peter does the same when he denies Jesus three times.
Some of these are much more dramatic examples but this is true even with seemingly ‘smaller’ sins. What effects are there when we get a bit hot headed, when we lie, litter and so on… I’m sure we can all think of examples of families or friends that have had big problems because of things that have damaged their relationships, and I can certainly recall times in my own life where this has been true.
This is also helpful when we think about things that are not always sinful. For example, you might have a lot of friendly banter with a sibling or spouse that is perfectly fine but would be very hurtful or inappropriate you said those same things someone else. Or watching football for most people wouldn’t be a sin, but if when you watch football it causes you to be angry or violent and damage relationships with those around you, then it may well be a sin.
We all do, think, and say, things from time to time that hurt aspects of our relationship with God, others, creation, and ourselves, and viewing sin in this way is a really helpful way to understand, and ultimately avoid, doing the bad things we call sin.