Jesus Says He's The Reason We Are Sinners

[Miles]

[Purple Knight]

[Miles]

[Miles]

[Purple Knight]

Thing is, if Jesus never saddled you with sin you wouldn't be really doing something wrong.

It depends on what sin means. If it's something that offends God, well then it offends someone and if I'm in my right mind I don't do it. It's hurting someone, even if only emotionally. I shouldn't care if that person is despicable. I don't want to be despicable. It's like the dreadlocks thing. Nobody is saying you shouldn't have the legal right to wear your hair however, but if it's bothering somebody, the right way to handle that is not to do it. It doesn't matter if they have a good reason. It doesn't matter if they're correct that they invented it. It bothers somebody, don't do it, that's the end of it.

In the context of the question, Christianity is true and God exists, so somebody is bothered by this action. He tells me about it, I will try not to do it. Sending me to Hell for it is merely despicable on his part, but I don't think I should care. I don't think me being decent has too much to do with the decency of the person I'm being decent to. If the restriction is crippling, I may deeply wish that I lived among people who weren't always so bothered by everything. I may even resent them. Hate them, even. I'll even realise that I could have that thing I want if he just stopped using omniscience to peep at me, and he could not be bothered. But I can't control what others do. I can only control what I do.

I used to live in a place where up to 10 female chickens were legal and I wanted them. However, someone was bothered so I didn't have any. When I was younger, I saw her constant calling of the police and reporting and reporting and reporting (someone else who had a few hens) until this person got rid of the chickens, as being an insufferable busybody and power-tripper, and wrong, and someone who should just go away. Now I look at that behaviour equally sadly, but because I think, people shouldn't have to do that.

And if sin is something more real and means that I'm (even if indirectly) hurting other people, and that's why he is bothered, then the case is even better that I should want to know about it and shouldn't do it.

[Miles]

Thing is, if Jesus never saddled you with sin you wouldn't be really doing something wrong.

It depends on what sin means.

Then pick your meaning. Whatever it is, Jesus burden you with it. Not being a Christian or a theist of any kind, I don't really care how it's defined; however, as a matter of convenience in discussing sin I find the following definition from the Oxford Dictionary: Oxford University Press to be pretty workable, i. e., most Christians seem to go along with it.

sin
/sin/
noun
noun: sin; plural noun: sins
an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.

.

[Purple Knight]

Personally, I go along with the following definition from the Oxford Dictionary: Oxford University Press.

sin
/sin/
noun
noun: sin; plural noun: sins
an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.

Sounds like it's both then. Sounds like you get both: It's immoral, and it violates divine law.

Some things may be immoral, but not violate divine law, like feeding the very possibly rotten/diseased meat of animals that dropped on their own to gentiles.

Some things may violate divine law but not be immoral. I know many people may say "homosexuality is a sin" but according to your definition I'd place it here.

A sin would be both. At least, according to this definition.

This is where it gets tricky because we don't know which of these criteria Jesus added. I see three possibilities.

1. If an act can't be immoral unknowingly, and all he did was remove the unknowingly, the act became a sin simply because people were told about it, but it was hurtful to others before, and also offended God before.

2. If God just recently started caring. In other words, Jesus is writing the divine law right now, as the statement is being uttered, but the acts in question were always harming other people, and the perpetrators may or may not have known about it.

3. The acts in question always bothered God but never hurt anyone else before, and somehow, by Jesus saying or doing something, the acts begin to hurt people. This is... extremely unlikely. The only even hypothetical way this could be valid is if Jesus started stirring people up to be offended by what did not bother them previously.

In every case but 3, which is a little ridiculous, and if we're still in the hypothetical Bible is all truth, these sins were always hurting people, and then I'm glad Jesus dropped the truth bomb because I do not want to go on hurting people, even if I could have stayed ignorant and been rewarded because I didn't know anything I was doing was wrong.

However, what I will say is that we're in the domain that breaks Christianity specifically because of the reward/punishment dynamic. Take a case like this where there are a lot of rules, and let's say for the purposes of the question that these are all true rules, meaning that doing the things they forbid actually hurt people, and in the reward/punishment dynamic, knowingly violating them brings punishment. (Some of them clearly aren't, but, let's say.)



This dynamic leads logical people to look away from the blackboard and pursue a case where they know as few of the rules as possible so as not to risk knowingly violating them and earning punishment. Even if we say, well, you can't just cover your eyes, that's wilful ignorance, people will, at very least, not go on personal journeys to seek more Mrs. Mutners, and more blackboards, with more rules. But if they're true rules, as in, they forbid things which are actually immoral - actually hurting people - we would want to find every last blackboard.

[Bobcat]

[Miles]