By Peter Laurie
I can hear the howls of outrage: what kind of stupid question is that? That's like saying we can do away with right and wrong.
Okay, hold on.
The thought was triggered by recent media reports that The Vatican had replaced the Seven Deadly Sins with modern equivalents that included drug abuse, excessive attachment to wealth and environmental pollution.
The Press got it wrong. The Vatican official was merely suggesting that our notion of sin needed updating and broadening beyond its traditional scope.
So what is sin?
In religious tradition sin is a transgression of the laws of God. God has given us these laws to put us in a right relationship to God and our fellow human beings. The laws teach us to behave correctly. Good behaviour is rewarded and bad punished.
Spirituality
A more modern take on sin is anything we do, or fail to do, which interferes with the development of our spirituality. The purpose of this spirituality is to teach us to love and respect ourselves, other human beings, and God, the ultimate source of that spirituality.
This spirituality isn't merely otherworldly. It spurs us to seek justice and peace in this world.
We all have an intense need for some transcendent spiritual meaning (the sacred) that will allow us to overcome the materialism, selfishness, and hopelessness that often define and sometimes engulf our lives.
Indeed, many argue that it is in the encounter with the sacred that we become truly human. Some go further: the erosion or denial of the sacred inevitably leads to our dehumanisation.
The idea of Original Sin, metaphorically depicted in the breaking of the covenant with God in the Garden of Eden, captures the sense in which human beings are weak creatures always striving for perfection but always missing the mark.
Yet the traditional idea of sin is, in some respects, dated.
First, our understanding of what are God's laws is inevitably clouded by human fallibility. God speaks to us, but always in the language and culture of a particular place and time. Our task today is to seek to understand the timeless essence of God's call in terms that conflict neither with our modern scientific understanding of the world, nor with our modern commitment to universal human rights.
If we fail in our task, those traditional laws will come to rest on faith propped up solely by tradition and authority rather than faith informed by God-given reason.
Fixation on punishment
Second, our fearful fixation on punishment for sin has violently distorted the concept, leading us to envisage the consequences of sin as suffering horrendous physical tortures in the afterlife. It's high time we abandoned this revolting medieval metaphor of hell.
Sin, understood as a turning away from the spiritual core of our being, can indeed lead to suffering, meaninglessness and despair in this life. But that's a different matter.
Thirdly, the traditional approach to sin is too often obsessed with sexual behaviour to the detriment of the wider ethical emphasis on social justice that is the heart of Christianity.
We condemn as sinful a man and a woman living together in a sexual relationship outside of marriage, even where that relationship is based on love, caring, responsibility and mutual respect. We, however, rarely see as sinful a wealthy businessman who systematically exploits his employees or pollutes the environment.
But sin is, more often than not, rooted in exploitative political, social and economic relations – what Pope John Paul II called "structures of sin".
So, yes, sin is obsolete if we confine ourselves to narrow, traditional ideas of sin; but, no, sin is still very much relevant if we understand sin, more positively, as anything that prevents us getting closer to God, the ultimate source of our spirituality.
Okay, howl now.
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