There are several classification systems for sin, but the most commonly referenced include the following:
A Biblical taxonomy of sin:
- Overarching definition of sin: rebellion against God - as in doing just as I please
- Sin (examples of): abuse, adultery, arrogance, boasting, brutality, conceit, debauchery, deceit, depravity, discord, dissension, disobedience to parents, divorce, drunkenness, envy, evil, fits of rage, God-hating, gossiping, greed, homosexual practice, idolatry, impurity, insolence, jealousy, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, love of money, lust, malice, murder, not lovers of the good, orgies, pride, selfish ambition, sexual immorality, slander, strife, theft, treachery, unforgiving, ungratefulness, unholiness, wickedness, witchcraft, without self-control (taken from Galatians 5v19-21, 2 Timothy 2v2-4, Romans 1v18-32)
- Unforgivable sin: none of the above
Western church taxonomy of sin (there are variations, but generally):
- Not sinful: greed, overwork, pride
- Normal human behaviour: envy, gossiping, half-truths, love of money, selfish ambition, strife
- Regrettable: deceit, divorce, drunkenness, slander, sleeping around, smoking
- Historical, and no longer extant: idolatry, witchcraft
- Sin: marital unfaithfulness
- Unforgivable sin: homosexuality
Western secular taxonomy of sin:
- Not sinful at all, in fact to be celebrated: greed, homosexuality, pride
- Normal human behaviour: drunkenness, envy, gossiping, lack of self-control, lust, pornography, sleeping around, strife
- Clever and to be admired: corruption (so long it is to one's benefit), manipulation, spinning the truth
- Interesting: witchcraft
- Understandable human failings: deceit, unfaithfulness, slander
- Historical, and no longer extant: idolatry
- Sin: paedophilia
- Unforgivable sin: anything which questions my right to do just as I please
Sometimes church is the very last place where we want to admit our deep sinful failings. Maybe we have seen others do something like this and then seen the church’s reaction - to look down upon, to verbally or physically exclude, to make clear in one way or another that 'we don’t want your sort in here!’.
Meanwhile, those inside the church who so exclude others, those with a critical and judgemental spirit, also deny their own sinfulness and maintain the self-deception that they are different, better, holier! And so others are much more careful and dare not let their guard down; they appear fine on the outside, yet hurt on the inside while the pretence is increasingly difficult to maintain.
So churches that shoot their wounded remain filled only with ‘decent’ people, while those who know they are broken sinners - those who have been abused, those addicted to pornography, those whose marriages have ended badly, those confused about their sexual identity - do not feel they could ever belong.
So the hypocrisy of the church that ‘shoots its wounded’ is plain to see and the damage done all round is profound.
Consequently, some Christians take a clearly different stance, which looks much more gentle and loving. They say to the fallen brother or sister, “We are all sinners, you are very welcome here and we will not judge you! The church is exactly the right place for sinners feel at home. Come on in, for Jesus is the friend of sinners.” They make no comment about the behaviour that is clearly unscriptural, not wanting to pass judgement for fear of discouraging or appearing to reject, or maybe regarding the behaviours as so commonplace that it does not even occur to us to pass comment.
But both stances preach a half-truth. The first recognises that God cannot stand in the presence of sin, and that God is the Awesome Judge of all. But there is no demonstration of God’s mercy and grace, nor a humble recognition that we are all, indeed, sinners - even if forgiven sinners! We take upon ourselves the role of judge, when Jesus is alone the Judge; and also forget our own sinfulness, for we are no better than those we exclude and don’t want to associate with.
The second preaches a fake love, inclusivity but not cleansing! It forgets that our sin must be crucified before we can come into the presence of a Holy God. So, we deny the seriousness of sin - for example, saying ‘well, everyone sleeps around these days, it’s only to be expected in this day and age - in effect implying that Jesus need not have gone to the bother of being crucified over such a small matter, such a common behaviour!
But sin has very serious consequences: a separation from God and from others while a sense of shame pervades; trust is broken and people get deeply hurt; relationships, families, even communities are shattered; the domain of the Enemy is advanced!
We need to address the seriousness of our own and others' sinful behaviour, and yet together plead for God’s mercy, confident only in Jesus to cleanse our filth. A Love that does not challenge and deal with sin is no love at all.
(I wrote about the true nature of love in one of my earliest blogs: 'Whatever you do, do not love me’)
It seems common amongst Christians to dislike and distrust our earthly nature, to see every earthly desire and need as an expression of 'the fall' (which was the rebellion of humankind against God, as described in the Bible in Genesis 3), and to assume that our goal is to overcome our sinful humanity.
And yet ... God created us human!
God made us frail people, created out of dust, who get hungry and need food, get tired and need rest, get lonely and need relationships, and as human beings our knowledge and understanding is limited. And this was before the fall. God created us human, and said his creation was "very good".
So, what happened after the fall? Well, amongst other things, we misused our God-given good desires, and became gluttonous, lazy, misused sex outside of marriage, and we thought we knew better than God. And so we decided that we didn’t want to be human; we thought we should be more than mere humans, we should be gods ourselves!
Consequently, people spend a lot of time and effort trying to prove that they are not human, that they can live 24/7, that they can keep going with some kind of 'pick-me-up', that they can exceed their human boundaries, that they 'know it all' and can 'do it all' and be 'super-human'. And many Christians join in, working 'tirelessly' yet getting exhausted, rushing around being busy, thinking we understand it all, and trying to be 'super-Christians'! And in this way we all fall for the Enemy's lie that we are not mere humans, we are surely something more…
We confuse ‘pressing on toward the goal’ (Phil 3v14) with thinking we should ignore tiredness, ignore rest, ignore our limits, pretend our small understanding is great knowledge and wisdom … in fact, ignore that we are human.
No, God made us human, and that was "very good". But why? So that we may live content within the God-given limitations that he created within us. For being human is not a sin. It is how God intended us to be - his creatures living in relation with our creator and dependent upon him for his love and every provision.
We talk about 'being true to our feelings' as if to do so is to be 'honest', 'authentic', 'natural', to really 'be ourselves'. There is an implicit but clear notion that this is good and should be encouraged.
Working as a counsellor I am certainly interested in people's feelings; these give information and meaning to bald facts about a person and their behaviour. But the common assumption is that feelings are neither good nor bad, right or wrong - they 'just are'.
For example, if I feel hurt after a confrontation, we tend not to make judgements about whether it was right or wrong to feel hurt; we are more likely to ask what it was that hurt, or to agree that it was quite natural to feel hurt after such a bruising encounter.
But this is to overlook the great degree to which our thinking influences - even begets - our feelings. And our thinking is, in turn, heavily influenced by societal norms and our own worldview.
So, returning to my simple example, it may be that I am hurt because some uncomfortable truth about me is brought to light in the confrontation, and I think, "who do they think they are to pass judgement upon me?". So it is my pride that is hurt.
But from a Christian perspective, my sinful proud nature has been revealed. My feeling of hurt was a further outworking of this sin. A more Godly response would have been to admit my arrogance, humbly take it to God and to praise Him that He loves me nonetheless. So, not hurt, but gratitude to the other person for speaking the truth, and to God for His forgiveness!
So, it turns out that feelings, far from being neutral or 'just being whatever they are', reveal our (usually sinful) nature.
A blunter way of saying this would be: thank God that I am not being really true to my feelings - for otherwise I too would be a thief, a murderer, a tyrant.
What about you?
The world's gone mad!
- Unruly youth
- Binge-drinking
- Drug addictions
- Corruption in high places
- Increasing divorce rates
- Growing sexual perversions
- Addiction to pornography
- Rioting in the streets
- Violence
... and that's not the half of it.
How we long for those former days - quieter, more genteel, better mannered, more Christian! Why don't people behave like that nowadays? What has become of our Christian nation?
Oops! There's a lie of the devil in there somewhere. Just because (in our rose-scented memories) life was 'nicer' in the past, don't confuse that with Christianity, and don't confuse civilisation with sanctification. Whatever being 'civilised' means, it is not the same as being Christian. Civilised people just have more polite ways of expressing their sinful nature...
In fact, the Bible makes clear that such behaviour is not a new problem at all. Written in the 1st century AD, Paul says: "The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like." (Galatians 5 v19-21)
Non-Christians are free to get on with doing things in whatever way they like. That, after all, is the definition of a non-Christian: they have chosen to do things their own way - not Christ's way.
Let's stop the pretence that we live in a Christian nation - we don't! Let us praise the Lord that as the world gets darker, Christians will stand out as more distinctive, with our counter-cultural Christ-centred ways. It's only in the dark that a light shines. Again, it is the Bible that says it well: "Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." (Matt 5 v16).
So, instead of moaning about the signs of the times, maybe we will get on with the job of rescuing people from the clutches of the devil, through the power of Jesus who gives new life. This isn't about simply expecting people to conform to certain behavioural norms of decency - which isn't Christianity anyway.
By the way, there are still decent young people, couples who are faithful in their marriages, men and women who are honest, etc. And these are people who need the saving love of Jesus no less than the others.
In case you thought you were not part of the darkness all around, the Bible makes clear that each of us is sinful. It is God, by his grace, who has shone his light into our hearts. "For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ." (2 Cor 4 v6)
So we are not to condemn or look down on anyone, however unpleasant and evil they may seem; they are merely displaying our own true nature more clearly. Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it well: "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
And for those of a nervous disposition, whatever is happening in society, there is no need to fear that Christ's light will be extinguished. Speaking of Jesus, the gospel writer John says, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it". (John 1 v5). Nor will it ever.
Financial debt
Financial debt - personal, corporate and national - has been much in the news recently. We're beginning to recognise the glaringly obvious: that we can't continue to live beyond our means. Debts have to be repaid sooner or later and this is usually painful.
As a nation we are struggling to put in place austerity measures which will bring the debt mountain down while still protecting the poorest and most vulnerable. So far we seem to be failing on both counts, in that our national debt is still increasing, while it is the poor, the young and the vulnerable who are being worst hit by the cuts.
The cost of addressing this debt is counted in redundancies, unemployment, longer working lives and reduced pensions. It's painful, and is likely to last years.
But this is only the financial debt - the one kind of debt we are waking up to and daring to address. There are other, much greater debts, not even spoken of or considered, and which will demand a much more savage repayment.
Debt to the third world
We in the Western world continue to live our affluent lives on the backs of exploited labour and plundered resources, which we take without proper recompense from the third world. This is a debt to the majority of the world's population, kept in poverty in order to maintain the minority in comfort - so we can pamper our pets, worry about losing weight, and have shiny cars to wash. ['The West' - the North American, European and Australasian continents plus Japan - amounts to about 22% of the world’s population.]
The cost of addressing this debt would be much greater costs for many goods, and a consequent significant decrease in the living standards in the West over the decades to come. No - let's not even think about that!
But do we think this can continue forever without some pay-back? Civil unrest, mass migration, wars and the fall of western powers are all likely.
Debt of natural resources
But there is a yet greater debt! It arises from the profligate use of the world's natural resources. We use up millions of years of coal and oil in a few decades; we take iron, other raw materials and precious natural minerals as if there is no tomorrow.
And in so doing we rape the planet, change the climate, melt the ice caps - and make it increasingly likely that there will be no tomorrow for our children and our grandchildren.
The cost of this debt is weighed in the survival of the human race in any form that we would recognise today, quite probably within the space of hundreds of years.
The debt of sin
Finally we enter the realm of debt where the cost is not just a matter of belt-tightening or redundancies, nor even significant changes in lifestyle, but is a matter of personal life and death.
All the above comes under the heading of sin. And for this there is no repayment possible other than falling on our knees in humble repentance and seeking God's undeserved forgiveness.
Don't assume this is a small matter - the cost to Jesus was death, and to us is choosing whether to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. And this decision has consequences not just for tens or hundreds of years, but for all of our eternity.
Like the financial debts, none of these other debts are going to go away; they only get worse while we pretend we're fine. The question is: are we going to continue to turn a blind eye until it is too late and we reap the consequences of our actions? Or are we going to begin right now?
There is an ongoing frustration, even sometimes an exasperation, between those Christians who are careful to "uphold the truth", and those who seem more inclined to say "well, it's rather more complicated than that". This usually occurs in some argument over a matter of Biblical interpretation.
Paul in the New Testament (1 Cor 3) exhorts Christians to move from being spiritual babes taking milk to mature adults eating solid food, to put aside childish interests and become mature believers. Becoming more mature would seem to imply that we have ironed out many of our uncertainties and become clearer about the truth. And yet the opposite often appears to be true - it is the 'young hot-heads' are the ones who seem most certain of the rights and wrongs, and the 'older and wiser ones' who often seem less sure about the details and distinctions. Have these older people let go of their former zeal and clarity, and let worldly arguments and complexities cloud their judgement? Have they lost sight of the simple truth?
Perhaps that is the problem: the truth is not often simple.
False certainty
Certainty may arise out of ignorance or arrogance, not only from sure knowledge - and distinguishing between these can be very hard indeed. Moreover, passion about a subject more often arises out of some personal vested interest, rather than out of any objective understanding. So it is much more likely that when we are adamant that we are 'upholding the truth' about some issue, that we are merely holding tightly to our own preferred view of how things should be, and most at risk of using the Bible to back our personal cause.
Women in church leadership is a topical example, but there are many. It is possible to find some Biblical support for both positions.
Where is the place for saying 'we don't really know for sure', when not knowing is sometimes, perhaps often, an honest and mature answer? It may also be that the more mature believers take a stance that is best summed up by 'it doesn't matter that much' - while recognising that it matters greatly to those who feel strongly about it, it's not a matter that defines one's faith or warrants any splits.
Even those issues which do define a faith - for example, that God exists and came in human form as Jesus, whose death on the cross made possible the cleansing of sin - are still matters of faith and not 'right' or 'wrong'. The Christian faith is, after all, faith.
Where we are indeed upholding the truth, need that look the same as having a closed mind? And does being willing to seriously consider an opposing view on an issue of Christian teaching necessarily mean that you are compromising the truth?
The truth stands
In fact, the truth is never compromised - it does, and always will stand firm. Rather, it is we who are compromised - by our pride, our insecurity, our desire for certainty, our personal need to be 'right'. (See an earlier post: 'Craving-certainty')
God either exists or he doesn't. He was, or was not, shown through his Son Jesus. My careful or outspoken arguments one way or the other make no difference to the fact! At some future point the truth will be plainly known.
Remember, for now we see and understand the truth 'through a glass darkly' and so may too readily mistake our reflection for the truth. Perhaps the older and wiser Christians just have a clearer view of that grubby glass and are more prepared to put aside peripheral issues and focus on the heart of the matter? Maybe that is why St Paul, writing the letters in our New Testament, moved from asserting his right to being an apostle in his early writings (e.g. 1 Cor 9 v1) to saying in one of the last letters he wrote, "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst" (1 Tim 1 v15). At the end of his life, Paul was sure of these things: that Christ came to save sinners, and that he was himself the vilest of sinners. In this context all other trivia falls away.
So the truth remains, totally untarnished, despite our total sinfulness.
