DOCTRINE THAT "SIN IS THE WORST EVIL" MAKES
CHRISTIANS CALLOUS AND IS EXTREMISM
Sin is against the law of God and incompatible with God. It implies that if God were to be destroyed you would destroy him in order to do your own thing.
When you sin you mean it to be infinitely bad for it insults the unlimited goodness of God. Even if it harms nobody, it still is indicatory of a malicious attitude towards God. It is a travesty of justice to have compassion for the suffering of anybody who deserves it and who is unrepentant. You can feel sorry that they committed the sin but that is different for that is not about the pain. Also, to feel sorry for somebody like that is inflicting pain on yourself and degrading yourself over them. The other option is just wishing they could get rewarded for the sin. To forgive them would not be love (not forgiving would be an act of love if we had no choice but to retain forgiveness) for sin is the greatest evil according to God-believers. When we commit what we might say is a small sin we are telling God, “I refuse to give you gratitude for the infinite love you have for me and for all the sins you have forgiven so I do this little evil now though I could easily refrain.” To be ungrateful for being forgiven ten big sins is as malicious as reversing your sorrow for those sins so when there is no such thing as small sins we must deserve all we get.
When God kills a good person in an “accident” he may have
done it because it is a stepping-stone to making evil people convert. It might
not do this directly but it might cause a chain of events that will maximise
virtue. This would imply that it is wrong to be very sorry for the person who
died. We should be sorrier for the people God meant to help. Their spiritual
state must have been more important than the person’s life. It is the same when
somebody is sick. You have to feel sorry for the person whose spiritual welfare
or improvement depends on it. When sin is the worst evil our only thought has to
be the sins that need to be stopped for to be sorry somebody was sick or died is
to give some of your capacity for sympathy to something that is not the supreme
evil and the evil that should be hated with all your being. And if there were a
choice between compassion for the sinners for their sins and those who suffer as
part of God's plan to heal sin religion would tell you to feel compassion for
the sinners. None of us wants to live like that. When you take on faith in God
you take on this hypothetical problem. Your attitude still favours compassion
for sins rather than suffering
When somebody bad is sick you have to be gladder that it was them and not a good
or nicer person. That seems fair even if you don’t believe in free will because
the prettiest flowers should have the most honour though they cannot help it and
it is only the bad who need to suffer and it is preferable for them to get the
suffering when somebody has to get it. But belief in God infers that you have to
prefer it to be the good person for it is more important to inflict suffering to
preserve goodness than to get somebody to repent for prevention is better than
the cure. Some object that you don’t have to believe in God to have that
attitude. Yes you do because we can’t inflict suffering for we never know
anybody else well enough to have the right but a God can for he sees all that a
person thinks. If the Church did not keep these things from the people there
would be less people believing in God for he would lose his appeal.
We know that in right and wrong there are things which are right and things
which are wrong but also things which are neither. If God was really interested
in disciplining us he would have made sure we all know that some actions are
neither depending on the circumstances. We don't and no alleged divine
revelation mentions the principles and implications of the notion that some acts
are both good and bad in equal measure. Changing people has to start with
teaching them. That is why the discipline defence is so absurd. It undermines
the fact that actions can be neutral so it is evil.
If we sin as much as the Bible and the God concept imply then we deserve any
suffering we get. If you deserve suffering and even it is not intended to be
punishment, sympathy is still out of order.
The atheist may hate the evil a person does.
The believer in Christ goes too far in the hate. He sees the sin as intolerable
not just because it harms a person but because it is against the civil law of
God - sin by definition is intolerable. He sees it as the contradiction of God.
If God is perfect goodness it follows that evil by implication implies he should
be destroyed. He sees sin as the root cause of death - in Romans Paul wrote that
we die because of sin. He sees sin as deserving everlasting punishment in Hell.
Going too far indicates that the believer is not just hating the sin but the
sinner. It would indicate it even if hating the sin did not prevent you from
loving the sinner.
If you belong to the Church you will despise and hate sinners for God is
supposed to be the same as goodness and to be loved above all things meaning you
must hate sin for the more you love God the more you will loathe what is opposed
to his will. If you agree with the Church that you should hate sin then that
means the Church is inciting you to hate sinners. One thing is for sure, when an
organisation or religion is based on hypocrisy such as loving sinners and hating
sins there should be no need for that religion. Anything that has no right to
exist has no right to be the cause of fighting, division and bigotry even if it
says it forbids those things. Anything there is no need for should disband if
people fight and hate over it. Systems of bad example are to blame for all the
evil their members do over them.
Islam and Christianity teach that the person who sins by scandal and bad example
draws others closer to the Hell of everlasting punishment - so they accuse the
person of being very very bad indeed, indeed totally bad and evil, even if that
person is likeable and decent enough. If that is not hatred and/or incitement to
hatred then what is? Why bother condemning hate at all when you have doctrines
like that?
Religion says we must forgive to be free. But if we have to hate the sin, and
even if not the sinner, we will never be free. So why bother? The forgiveness it
wants is really just about condoning the sin. Jesus evilly commanded that we
must forgive seventy times seven a day while teaching fear of the evil
generation under the power of the Devil, teaching intense hatred of sin and
teaching that death and endless Hell are retribution for sin so his intention
was not to make us free. Forgiving to be free must be a sin. You must forgive
because God commands it - this follows from the teaching of Jesus that we must
love God more than ourselves or our neighbour. Your freedom is not your motive.
Love the sinner and hate the sin is bad enough. But if you believe that sin
deserves or puts people at risk of everlasting torment then the hatred will be
overpowering. It makes the hatred due to sin worse. Religion says human nature
is weak so it implies it is hard to love the sinner and hate the sin. Thus by
urging people to hate the sin, religion is causing them to hate.
Jesus spoke of the awesome power of Satan. He spoke of his generation being
influenced by Satan and St Paul called Satan the god of the world. Both implied
that unbelievers were being guided by Satan. Since Satan wants man to destroy
man and all to go to Hell for all eternity failing to hate those who collaborate
with him would be impossible. If they don't know they are pawns of Satan, they
should try to find out so they are still to blame. Those who work with Satan are
worse than he is for he has to depend on man to destroy man and depend on man to
encourage man to reject God and salvation.
The love the sinner and hate the sin pseudo-principle tells us that we must
never be soft on sin because we must hate sin and we are to be strictly opposed
to all wrong because we love the person. The trouble is nobody likes people who
love them like that. It is really saying, “I love you for I want you to be like
me or to have the morals I believe in.” What you are really saying is that you
love your principles more than the person. It’s very exploitative. Assuming you
can love sinners and hate their sin, the only sense in which believers can love
sinners is by trying to persuade them to repent and practice the believers’
standards. This teaching can be done even if it is known by them that they will
never succeed.
Yet it is an official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and Islam and almost
every God cult there is that the more you make war on a person’s sins the more
you love them (page 45, Ecumenical Jihad). This advocates a strict way of life.
If so then nobody loves us for few are willing to be our strict unbending
mentors. And mental hospitals should be as common as supermarkets for we are not
really going to feel loved. And it will be said that those who go there have
only their own attitude to blame. Only tough love would be real love.
Some put the rule this way, “Love the sinner but do not love the sin.” This
version is against the Bible which sees sin as something totally horrendous so
it is to be hated and reviled. God took sin so seriously according to the Bible
and saw it as something so hateful that he ordered that certain sinners be put
to death for their sins, he put Adam and Eve out of paradise for sin, he made
promises to hurt sinners and curse them, he sent his Son to die for sin and last
but not least he will consign all sinners who die unrepentant to everlasting
perdition in Hell. So you are to do more than just not love sin. You have to
abhor it. Yet if you simply do not love the sin but feel no hatred for it the
sin is something a person is and to not love it is to not love the person to
some extent at least. Let me explain. If I steal I am the sin of stealing – that
is why I, not my sin, is called a thief. So to not love the sin or to hate the
sin means you deny the sinner should be loved or cared for. Sin reflects the
kind of person I am so sin cannot be separated from me. I sin because I am bad
not just because my sin is bad.
Love the evildoer but hate the evil may lead to hating the person. Defining evil
as a crime demanding punishment from God will lead to hating the person.
Understanding sin as a gross evil worse than we tend to think will compound that
hate of the person. It may be a passive-aggressive hate but it is there.