My friend and I had a very
interesting conversation this morning regarding sin. It started off with the
controversial story of late UK disc jockey Jimmy Savile. Jimmy was knighted by
UK monarchy and received a special mention by the Catholic church for his many philanthropic
deeds. Then came a damning documentary alluding that Jimmy was an alleged paedophile
who committed many vile acts. Now the question we posed was whether Jimmy was
naturally inclined to commit such an act, whether soberness of mind or lack
thereof had anything to do with it and what the consequences of such an act are.
In order to understand these
questions we must provide a framework for these actions. This framework can be neatly summarised as
sin. And here sin is meant in both a religious sense when man turns his back on
God and in a secular sense where man harms himself and those around him (you
could make the case that both have the same practical implications).
I think that it is fair to say
that every human has sinned in his life. We often judge the severity of sin in
the sense that it exhibits harm on fellow man and this leads to judgement of
the sinner. Should the sinner and the sin be judged equally? What about the
mental state of any two men - Let us assume that we have two murderers. The one
commits murder because he thinks that he does society a service by eliminating
a type of person while the other murders a person out of hatred. The first
person, one could argue, is mentally ill while the other had perfect ability to
know that there was nothing wrong with the person he murdered but yet still did
it. My logic dictates that the heart of the second murderer was more ill than
the heart of the first murdered. How then are we to judge the sinner? The sin
makes them equally guilty for the outcome was the same, but the sinners were
completely different in that their motives differed with varying degrees of
"wrongness". C.S. Lewis gives us a perfect example of the difference
between the heart of man and the psychology of man. Assume that two soldiers
are inhibited from entering the battle field due to a crippling effect of fear.
Assume that psychology is able to remove fear from both men. The one man freed
from the burden of fear exclaims his joy and now wishes to defend his country
at any given cost while the other man makes the choice to run out of a sense of
self-preservation rather than fear. The heart of the first man was sincere and
good, while the heart of the second man was ill and evil. How are we then able
to judge the sinner? That is why God tells us to leave any kind of judgement to
Him. We are all imperfect judges!
We are now able
to discern that sin and the sinner cannot be judged the same. Now, can we truly
distinguish between different kinds of sin being worse than others? We usually
assign some hierarchy to sin. We might assume that a lie is not so bad as stealing,
that stealing is not bad as murder or that murder is not so bad as rape. But it
can it not be argued that we should view sin as all the same? There is a saying
in Christianity that tells us that every man would carry a cross and that God
will not tempt a person more than what that person is capable of handling. A
certain individual finds it easy not to lie but struggles not to commit murder.
Another person continuously lies but the thought of murder does not cross her
mind. Both these people have an affliction to a type of sin. In each their
desire to commit the sin is equivalent. If they both give in to their desires
they both sinned and the sin has the consequence of making them both guilty for
not resisting. You see, we only look at what happens after the sin or the
outcome of sin, which is either a lie or a death, but we don't see that their
affliction (the desire to lie or to murder) was the same. Is this not perhaps
what Christ meant when He defended the prostitute from stoning by saying the
man with a clear conscience should be the first to cast a stone. Christ also
said that you commit adultery by just looking at another women in a sensual
manner. Once again, this makes us imperfect judges of sin.
I am in no way defending Jimmy.
And of course I agree that we should have a secular court ruling on the
consequences of sin. Mad men who inflict harm upon society should be locked
away. Sane men who inflict harm upon society should be locked away. But let us
not be mistaken. We have all sinned in some way or another. We have all given
into the desires of our hearts. We are all equally as guilty and we are all
sinners. Thus, before we judge another we should remember that I have done
exactly the same thing, that is sin. What only separates us the consequence of
sin. Other than that we are equally guilty of sinning.
Is there redemption? Some believe
that you can do many good deeds that would outweigh bad deeds. But this does
not cancel out sin. The sin has already left a stain. Others believe that
living out ones sentence is fair pay for sin. But now we are punishing the
consequence of sin and not the sin itself. The Bible tells us that any sin is
punishable by eternal death. God gives us a way out: Christ. Christ had to
endure the same temptations as man and yet did not yield to sin. Yet He took up
the cross and bore the burden of man and was nailed to the cross so that man
would stand guilt free before God. Our inheritance should have been death, yet
what we got was eternal salvation. This is love at its maximum.
