You would not believe all the questions people ask me about specific behaviours
wanting to know if they are seen by God as sins.
Sometimes it is an attempt to get me to approve their actions
and other times it is because they have let themselves become condemned over quite innocent things.
Is it a sin to flirt?
Is it a sin to tell someone to shut up?
Is it a sin to hide the truth when selling something?
Is it a sin to drink alcohol?
Is it a sin to flatter someone?
The list goes on and on.
But I have always felt that there was something wrong about the whole exercise
even though it has not been easy to put my finger on what it was.
One of my misgivings is because I feel that, with most of these questions
they could be solved without me, just by these people asking themselves a few questions...
mostly about whether the particular activity is helpful, harmful, or something in between.
Another one of my problems with people asking me whether such-and-such is sinful
is that there are so many things which really are not black or white.
People want me to give them a yes or no answer that will fit all situations
and I can't do that.
Rather than compiling a longer and longer list of The Million Commandments
we need to be learning how to recognise what the real moral issues are in any situation
and then we need to be learning how to weigh everything up against those moral issues
to arrive at the best possible conclusion for that particular circumstance.
There may, for example, be a time when you really SHOULD have a glass of wine
times when it doesn't matter whether you do or not
and finally, times when it would definitely be the wrong thing to do.
Can you work out when circumstances would change the answers?
That is the kind of thing we need to all be learning.
If we could start doing that for ourselves then we avoid the risk of being misled
that happens when we let our religious leaders arbitrarily define where the lines should be drawn.
We need to stop taking what many people have called a "legalistic" approach to what is right or wrong.
I can relate this same attitude to our wrong understanding of salvation.
People want a rule, or a list of rules
that they can tick off and then get an ironclad guarantee that they have salvation all wrapped up in a box.
Far too often this legalistic approach is based on the false assumption that
if you do nothing, you have done nothing wrong.
All the rules are negative: Don't do this. Don't touch that. Don't look at that. Don't eat this.
Rather than looking at what we can or cannot get away with
why not look for how much good we can do?
There doesn't seem to be an opposite word for sin
maybe because we are not in the habit of aggressively doing good.
Why not ask, "Is there a way that I can be more loving?
"Is there a way that I can be more humble?
"Is there a way that I can be more honest?"
Jesus replaced the hundreds of detailed rules in the Old Testament with just one rule (or maybe two).
He said, “Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbour as much as you love yourself.”
Obviously you don't steal from your neighbour
or kill him, and sleep with his wife, if you really love him.
To that extent, the Ten Commandments were also teaching us to love God and others.
But Jesus said it has to go far beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees
with their obsessions about the Torah.
This positive command to love God and others has to show forth in everything that we do.
I like the way James described it in his epistle.
He said: "He that knows to do right and then does not do it, to him it is sin."
In other words, “Do good”. Do what is right. Love God. Love others. Obey Jesus.
Even if you slip up along the way, God's grace will be there
because he sees you as someone who is hungering and thirsting after more and more of his righteousness
growing in faith and love and honesty and humility day after day.
Let's concentrate on overcoming "sin" (in a general sense) with goodness
while not bothering so much with a list of individual sins.
It could turn into a much more positive and fruitful way to spend the rest of your life!
God bless you.