Padford said:
hi there, just some questions to stimulate answers, looking for allll different types of responses, so- go ahead and answer!
Does sin exist?
What is your understanding of sin?
Is sin the same as the concept of wrong?
Where did your understanding of right and wrong come from?
Are the seven deadly sins a good moral code...are they relevant today?
If we don't have the concept of sin now, what is it replaced by?
Who has the right to judge?
Is the concept of fear and punishment a good idea?
What about confessionals? Are they relevant?
I don't think you can understand any of your questions about sin unless you first learn the history of the concept of sin. Sin made into Western culture by way of Christianity, and it made it into Christianity by way of Judaism. How it become part of Judaism is the key to understanding sin, because the concept of sin is based on an ontological belief.
If you study Israelite history, you will see like most peoples they’ve had ups and downs. A couple of things that are different however is how strongly Israelites tried to maintain cultural integrity through it all, and how closely the ups and downs were kept track of. If the ancient Hebrew tribes were among those flooded out by the Black Sea some 7500 years ago (http://www.pbs.org/saf/1207/features/noah.htm a Scientific American article about that), then we can see they kept track of events for some time. Those events ranged from successes in war against the indigenous peoples of the Savant (now Palestine) and the glorious times of King David and Solomon . . . to Egyptian enslavement, Babylonian captivity, Roman rule, the destruction of Jerusalem in 69 AD and full diaspora about forty years later.
Through it all the Israelites stuck together, and they also began thinking about why things went well sometimes and so poorly other times. Eventually the conclusion they came to became a major aspect of their religion; and more than a few religious scholars contend that this conclusion stemmed from the days before Moses when the tribes were pagan.
What the Israelites decided was that things were good when their god was pleased, and things were bad when their god was displeased. But what pleased their god? If you read the OT, you will see the Israelites struggled with that one (e.g., Abraham considering sacrificing his son), but after Moses and the commandments, they got a better idea of it. Still, things continued to go wrong, so it must have meant that they needed to do more. Before the priests were through, they came up with 633 precepts for being a perfect Jew which included everything from morals to eating habits. They devised a contract, or
testament with God which was an agreement they had to live up to in order to ensure God’s approval and the good fortune they believed went with that.
So “sin” was what offended God, or what broke the contract; and you could tell if you’d “sinned” by how things were going. That’s why you hear those prophets come out of the desert preaching about the wrath of God. They would see people doing all this stuff that broke the contract, and concluded God was about to exact payment for that.
The question is, if there is a God, does he/she/it punish sin? Does living a perfect life exempt us from suffering in life? Well, after a few centuries of trying out this theory, even the Jews wondered about it. In the story of Job one sees the angst they felt over believing someone had lived a perfect life yet still had everything go wrong.
In Christianity, they modified the concept of sin so that it applied only to the individual, and to say that everyone sins (we’re created that way), that there is a way to escape punishment for sin, and that God forgives sin in the otherwise faithful (the “new” contract or testament). Yet today the original idea of sin persists thanks to religion.
Just from a practical point of view, I think we all know that doing bad things can bring one negative consequences. But it seems to be how reality works rather than some punishment imposed by God. Also, bad fortune is caused by ignorance, like dietary habits so bad they give one a disease, or working on a fuse box standing in water; finally, there is the principle of “sh*t happens,” which is just the result of living in unpredictable elements of the universe.
My opinion? Sin has proven to be a false concept if it means incurring punishment from God for unapproved behavior.