The lenses for Sin

Lets take a moment to talk about sin. Sin is defined as an immoral act specifically against divine law. We can argue about the divine law part, but that's not really the direction I'm going here. I am writing from the position that God is the divine being to whom we are accountable. Period. Now that I have that established we can move on to the point of this post.

I believe that most people would agree that we are all guilty of sinning in some way, shape, or form. If there is any doubt, we can look to the ten commandments for confirmation of our lacking in perfection. There is not a person alive who hasn't coveted, lied, or stolen.

There are two general ways that sin is viewed. The first is through a societal lens and the second is through a divine lens. It would probably be more appropriate to switch the order of these since God, being responsible for the divine lens has existed for ever. However, this is the order in which I will be discussing them.

The societal lens refers to the way we as humans view sin. We look at various sins and rate the severity of a sin based on the effect it has on the society as a whole. For instance, infidelity is not illegal in America because it doesn't have a direct effect on the society as a whole. In this case, the cheater, the mistress and the spouse are theoretically the only ones affected by this sin. Therefore, there are no laws against it.

However, theft has an effect on the local economy. If someone steals a car, the dollar amount of that car has been removed from the local economy. The car lot must suffer the loss of the value of the car from their inventory. This affects their ability to pay their employees and may possibly cause their insurance rates to go up. The insurance company may seek to recover their losses by increasing the rates of all the car lots in the area, burdening the local economy in a broader sense. Because of the effect of this sin, the perpetrator will be fined over $1000 and imprisoned in a federal facility for at least one year.

Murder removes a person from a society forever and effectively squelches any potential that person had for contributing to society. By killing someone, one destroys anything that person might have become whether it be good or bad. Society takes this very seriously. Murder is considered one of the worst sins by societal standards and is punishable by life in prison or the death penalty.

The societal lens is very useful. It allows us to provide second chances for those guilty of “lessor” crimes and give them a chance to contribute to society.

The divine lens gives us an entirely different view of sin. God looks at all sin as being the same. Where society arranges sin by severity based on the effect it has on the community, God sees all sin as the same. This is something the we as humans struggle with. The average citizen is probably guilty of speeding, lying on occasion and coveting his neighbors boat. This citizen would cringe at being placed in the same category as a murderer or rapist. But to God, we are in the same category.

Let me explain. God places us in two categories. Those with Him and those separated from Him. It doesn't take much to separate us from God. All it takes is sin. One sin. Any one sin. God is perfect and does not tolerate imperfection in his presence. It doesn't matter how close to perfect you think you are, you're not close enough.

Think of two glasses of water. One of them has one single solitary pellet of rat poison in it. You can look into the glass and see the pellet sitting conspicuously on the bottom. The other glass has five pellets of rat poison in it. Which glass are you going to drink? I'm guessing you said neither because one pellet of rat poison is enough to separate you from that water. That is how I view sin. One single solitary sin is enough to make me unworthy of stepping into Gods presence.

To summarize, God looks at all sin the same because every sin has the same effect on our relationship with Him.

Now, here is my point. We as Christians have the inside scoop. We know better than to categorize our sins based on severity. This should make it easier for us to relate to unbelievers. It should make it easier for us to leave our judgmental tendencies behind when we're reaching out to non-believers. The problem is that we forget that we were once every bit as separated from God as the murderers on death row. We forget that we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We forget that Jesus Came not to call the righteous but the sinners. We forget that we are all in the same boat without God and that boat is sinking straight to Hell. We as the followers of Christ need to stop looking at sin through the societal lens and view it as God does. Only then can we reach out to minister to those around us where they are.