SIN IS IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE GREATEST OF EVILS
The Bible treatment of sin says it is three things in one. It is a bad
thing that has three elements. It's the path we go down which implies a
slippery slope of some kind. It's a moral standing before God who judges
you. It's a condition - a state of being.
The last one is the big one the main one for it says you are not just somebody who sins, in a sense you are your sin and your sin is you and that is why you are on the wrong path and why God judges you.
The Bible warns that the sin condition is not curable unless God does something special about it. Jeremiah asks “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?” (8:22). So if there is no God then we are stuck in our evil condition. Cancer is incurable unless God takes action. Nature cannot help.
Already we see why some say sin is the ultimate and greatest of evils.
Sin is a crime. Sinner is criminal. Sin is freely offending God by not doing his will. As Christian belief is that God is utterly happy and creates all so that sin cannot hurt him at all offending God does not mean God gets offended by sin. It means an offence is offered to God. An action that is an offense or wrong against a person does not mean they get offended by it. Sin really is the sinner willing evil to God. As evil contradicts God it is an implied desire or will to kill God.
Religion says that evil is a warped form of good - in other words it is not a
power in its own right but parasitic on goodness which is the real power.
The nearest you can get to making evil real is to become evil. Religion is
clear that we cannot just worry about evil itself - we have evil people, perhaps
evil spirits, to worry about as well.
To offend a God of infinite love is infinite ingratitude for what everlasting
good he would do for you if circumstances would permit (sin is still as bad if
there are gods or aliens who are to be treated as good gods) and for the love he
has for you now. “Therefore,” it is argued, “sin is the worst evil for it is
deliberate and needless evil while natural evils happen for a good purpose.
Natural evils like earthquakes and famines wouldn’t be done or arranged to
happen by God if they were the worst evils. Sin is the greatest evil of all. It
is better to be struck dead or be paralysed by torment by God than to sin.
Blanche, the mother of St Louis, King of France, told him how she would rather
see him dead than committing a mortal sin. God must hate natural evil for
necessary or not it is still evil but if there is a choice between having it and
sin it is better to have it for sin will do the most damage while the other is
under his control.”
By no means can suffering or pain then be said to be the worst evil if there is
a God. If they are then there should be no pain at all.
God supposedly uses natural evil to correct sinners and make sinners consider if
they should repent. It would be better for God to leave bad people alone than to
hurt them terribly for life when the pain outweighs any harm they would do in
the future. And God only sees what will happen and he doesn’t see exactly what
will take place in a non-existent future. So he can’t see if what he did was
sensible or for the best in reality therefore he is just using sin as an excuse
for being cruel. He can only hope for the best.
The Christian is expected to prefer to see her son dying of some horrible
disease than for him to be using a condom which is forbidden by the Church of
Rome or committing any sin. Often, a sin will not do him any harm. And it will
not harm God whose happiness cannot be taken away. Rules are more important than
people in the religion of Jesus Christ.
The Church says that earthquakes are bad for people but good for the world (page
20, Christianity). But God could have made a world that does not need them.
Their attempts to prove that sin is unnecessary evil while natural evil is
necessary is futile. They just assume the latter is necessary and that makes
their answer worthless. It makes it insulting too!
If sin is the worst evil then it is right to do whatever will make it less
likely for people to be led into sin. It is right to resort to violence and even
murder to stop the production of pornography for instance. According to the New
Testament, forbidden sex is a sin meriting the everlasting torments of Hades (1
Corinthians 6:9,10) and it is morally as bad to fantasise about it for that is
doing it in your head (Matthew 5:28, 29). Hence it is wrong to savour
pornography or to tolerate it for it lures many into Hell-deserving sin. The
Church would say that porn often takes away the freedom of many who want to be
pure by playing on their weaknesses so it is not opposition to freedom to work
against it. It is better to slaughter a few than to risk many more being sent to
Hell over them. The believer in sin and God has a duty to murder anyone who
leads others into mortal sin. Those who draw people into venial sin are
different for it is the greatest evil under mortal sin murdering them would be
the biggest evil unless one is insane.
If venial sin is a worse evil than death or being killed and murder does no harm
but just puts you somewhere else then it must be better to murder a person
rather than to let them fall into venial sin. You could wish that you would
crack up and kill them for it wouldn’t be a sin if you were out of your mind.
If people are bent on sin and cannot be persuaded not to go ahead then the
Christian has to convince them to commit a lesser sin. This is the doctrine of
St Alphonsus Liguori. Advising a person to sin is not sinful when there is no
other way. For Catholics, this is true in the hypothetical way and in practice.
Sexual sin cuts the souls of those who are involved away from God. Murder kills
only the murderer’s soul by killing its friendship with God. It does not affect
the victim's. Physical murder is the least evil. It follows that the Christian
should get people to commit murder rather than illicit sex. It must be wise to
kill a person you know you will sleep with. If hypothetically you know then you
know what you have to do. Some might think you have to be sure they are ready
for God. But it can’t be a sin to take a life and thrust the soul of a person
into Hell when God has the power to prevent anyone from choosing eternal torment
and won’t make use of it. To criticise men and women who dispatch souls to Hell
would be to criticise God.
However, the Church is clear that you can't blame anybody else if you go to
Hell. The status before God of the killed is really their own concern.
We see that the church will command the killing or the use of violent measures
against anybody who leads others into sin. This might not be practicable but
that is not the point. It still shows us what kind of Church this is.
Religion permits its victims to mourn the dead. If sin is worse than death then
we should be more devastated by sin than by anybody dying. If it is infinitely
bad then we should be so horrified and saddened by it that our hearts literally
break. The less repelled by it we are the more we like to sin so it is a sin to
deliberately refuse to work on being able to have utter abhorrence for it. The
doctrine that sin is so terrible tells us that we should be all insane or dead
by the time we are ten years old.
Some might say that it is a sin to have bad feelings about sin for that makes it
a pleasure, a relief, when it does not happen. It is possible to hate
everything. The more you hate goodness the better as long as you practice
goodness. Sacrificial love is what God wants. There would be no suffering if he
didn’t. Unless you make your good actions as painful as you can you are sinning
for you are refusing to sacrifice all. You only will goodness but you are not
supposed to like it.
All who teach assertiveness today, and assertiveness is the moral orthodoxy of
modern times, state that the only time it is right to be aggressive is in
extreme circumstances say when a building is about to explode and your secretary
will not leave with you. Jesus was certainly aggressive and cutting in the Bible
so he is being condemned by the philosophy. If sin is the worst evil then
aggressiveness is a duty more than assertiveness would ever be. You would have
to be aggressive to stop your son having a boyfriend to prevent the awesome sin
of homosexuality or scandal and a lot more than you would be to get him to leave
a building in which a bomb was about to go off. Sin is worse than the bomb.
If God exists then wrongdoing is worse than it would be if he did not. If the
Church is the true faith, we are in trouble for it increases the amount of sins
to choose from. For example, contraception wouldn’t be wrong to an atheist mind
but would be wrong to a Catholic mind. So religion gives you plenty extra to
trouble yourself over. That makes tons of extra sins or compounds the guilt.
Both belief in God and belief in sin in accordance with the Church is degrading.
You should only believe in whatever evil you need to believe in to treat others
well. I should come first (helping others is helping me for I am a social
creature) when my own existence is the only thing I am most sure of. I should
not degrade myself by belief in God or religion. And original sin, the sin I
allegedly carried from my conception because of Adam is a far bigger insult to
me. For though I am most sure of my existence, I am told that I have to carry
that sin though it is not my fault and it implies that I should not put myself
first when God allowed that sin to stain me and God is always right. God didn’t
make me to love or respect myself when he dishonoured me by original sin.
If it is true that sin puts you in Hell, then a religion that causes you to sin
by inventing sins is evil.
Doctrines that make you worse when you do wrong are evil and vindictive
doctrines.
CONCLUSION
The doctrine of sin implies horrendous things and is a charter for religious
terrorism and violence. Full to the brim with hypocrisy and deceit it has to be
exposed and to expose it is to expose the harmfulness of belief in God. Whoever
invents extra sins the way the Church does – eg: contraception used as a
once-off in a marriage – is commanding evil.
WORKS CONSULTED
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS CATHOLICS ARE ASKING Tony Coffey, Harvest House, Eugene,
Oregon, 2006
FRIDAY PENANCE, John C Edwards SJ, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1985
CITY OF GOD, St Augustine, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1986
EVERYMAN’S ROAD TO HEAVEN, Leo J Trese, Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1961
APOLOGETICS AND CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Most Rev M Sheehan DD, M H Gill & Son,
Dublin, 1954
RADIO REPLIES, VOL 1, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul,
Minnesota, 1938
THE SINNER’S GUIDE, Ven Louis of Granada, TAN, Illinois, 1983
CHRISTIANITY, David Albert Jones OP, Family Publications, Oxford, 1999
THE INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, John Calvin, Hodder and Stoughton,
London 1986
BIBLE VERSION USED
The Amplified Bible
