Can someone explain what Sin is?

[nebulaJP]

Animals and people get trespassed against all the time and have no problem brushing it off or forgiving the trespasser. For example, my cat licks my food when I'm out of the room sometimes and I can forgive her without requiring any 'nebly' sacrifice. God on the other hand, doesn't seem able to do the equivalent of this at his scale. The standard reason why is:

God can't because He's perfect

That sentence doesn't make sense to me. Another one is:

God can't because He's holy

So 'holy' means weak? Is this why I can do something God can't do? If God is suppose to be all-powerful and I'm not then how is this possible?

God can't because He has perfect righteousness

But how does that affect his ability to forgive us or 'reconcile' (meaning what in this context?) us to himself?

 

[BleedingHeart]

Needs to be moved to Exploring Christianity.

 

[nebulaJP]

Why? Exploring Christianity is in the Outreach section, which is suppose to contain:

"Forums where Christians can offer support to non-Christians. For debate please go to the Society or Theology sections of the board."

I'm only looking for an answer, not support.

 

[s_s]

Your title and your topic are not the same. You are asking a totally different question to what is sin. decide what you want to know, first.

 

[skm9]

Sin is usually anything in opposition to the will of god. The question you seem to be asking is why does god forgive some sins under some circumstances and not others. Different christians and different denominations have different answers to that.

 

[nebulaJP]

This is what I'm getting at: isn't Sin the reason why Jesus' sacrifice was necessary? If God is all-powerful, how come he wasn't able to reconcile the human race to himself without there being a 'Godly' sacrifice (that sacrifice being Jesus)? An animal can forgive another animal or a person without getting a sacrifice. Why can't God do something even an animal can do? What is the meaning of the word 'reconcile' in this context and how does it explain the contradiction that God is all-powerful yet there's something he can't do?

 

[skm9]

Perhaps god isn't that smart, or maybe he just wanted to kick Jesus' ass. The question I always had is that if the wages of sin is death and everybody dies, shouldn't that be the end of it? Why do we also have to "kill" an innocent guy?

 

[nebulaJP]

Exactly. Maybe the ideas of Sin and the sacrifice of animals in the OT (representing Jesus to Christians) and Jesus in the NT arose from the belief of humans that if they displeased the gods they would have bad harvests but if they gave sacrifices to the gods they would have better harvests. The only difference with Jesus being that instead of getting a good harvest you get eternal life.

What I'm trying to understand is, OK, you go against the will of God. So what? He can't handle it? What does it do to him exactly? If we're in the Image of God and we can handle being trespassed against fairly easily why can't he?

 

[nebulaJP]

Here's an idea:

If God exists or the universe has a consciousness and if this consciousness did actually inspire the biblical authors in some way, by whatever means, and if there was conclusive scientific evidence for this, I still wouldn't believe that any of the content of the Bible ever literally happened. Here's why:

1. If a deity (such as God in the Bible) is all-powerful it should be able to do whatever it wants in any way it wants. It should not have to send it's son to the planet (for our sake, out of necessity) for any reason, as a response to an idea like 'sin' (which I suppose is only a narrative device) or anything else. This would mean that the sacrifice on the cross would be allegorical (only meant to demonstrate or represent something) by it's very nature even if it literally happened.

2. The Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark stories have been proven to be nonliteral conclusively enough for me and my reasoning is that "if the stories in the Bible that we can scientifically investigate prove fictional, why should we assume other scientifically unverifiable stories are literal?".

3. From this I would conclude that the book written by the consciousness through human authors is complete fiction from beginning to end and only meant to convey some cryptic message but nothing literal. In this case, the Bible would be a fictional novel written by a real deity or a 'conscious universe' with its anthropomorphic caricature 'God' and his son Jesus being fictional characters within that novel.

4. Supporting evidence would include the God of the Bible condoning or commanding things like murder, slavery, rape, sexism, genocide, mutilation etc. and demanding the death of his own son because of something that Adam did, which doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem like the type of behavior we would expect from an actual benevolent deity but rather an extreme, fictional one in a dramatic, allegorical novel.

 

[nebulaJP]

This is how the Bible as a divinely inspired book and Christianity as a faith can make sense to me, sort of.

1. If a deity did actually inspire the Bible's authors, then it's a cryptic, nonliteral, allegorical message from a 'conscious universe'.

The end.

I still 'have Jesus' as a fictional character in God's (or the universe's consciousness' as I personally conceive of it) book. Actually, the 'God' in the Bible is himself a fictional caricature of the universe within the book.

This still leaves the question of why would an all-powerful, all-knowing deity do this? Why would it write a fictional book that it knew would be taken literally? Perhaps the answer has to do with why there are so many miracles and fantastic stories (Jonah in the whale, parting of the Red Sea, Jesus walking on water etc.) in the Bible - so that we would know it's nonliteral fiction/allegory. I don't think that the universe, if it has a consciousness, would be perfect or all-powerful or all-knowing or all-righteous or have the exact attributes of its anthropomorphic, caricature version 'God'. It didn't interact with us to make sure we were getting the interpretation right just as it didn't personally teach us morals (or common sense) in the Garden of Eden. (Instead, the universe, whether it has a consciousness or not, gave all social animals morals through evolution.)

If the universe does have a consciousness, I would assume the universe itself is the consciousnesses' body and brain. In theory, the universe would think utilizing methods somewhat similar to those we use in our brains only on a cosmic scale. It's somewhat plausible to me that if this consciousness exists it transmitted information to some humans using some kind of 'wave'. It would not have to be all-powerful to do this.

Since the atoms and molecules that make up our bodies at the time that we die will still be somewhere in the universe in millions (and billions) of years in other elements/substances it would be possible for an all powerful deity such as God to reassemble the molecules by taking them from wherever they happen to be on earth or the rest of the universe, whenever he wishes, thereby destroying parts of earth or other parts of the universe, or all of it, in either a Resurrection or eternal state as described in the Bible. But that doesn't seem very plausible to me.

I'm no scientist but from what I've heard, the space in the universe does a kind of expanding and contracting 'breathing thing' where it goes from a singularity (an infinitely dense point in space the size of a pore in your skin) to an expansion period: In the expansion, all the 'black parts' of space expand in all directions. That is, all stars and galaxies move away from each other in all directions because all space in between everything is always expanding. You can see the expansion most on the scale of galaxies moving apart (red shift, Hubble etc), rather than in our own galaxy or solar system.

Anyway, right now the space of the universe is expanding but some physicists hypothesize (as I recall from a documentary I saw about about it once) that when it's done expanding it will start contracting. Eventually it will contract all the way back to a singularity and then start over. When it gets back to a singularity all the atoms that made up our bodies at the time that we died would be 'gathered up' into the singularity along with everything else. That would be, in my opinion, the time for a 'Resurrection' if such a thing is possible. Maybe the universe has a way to give us 'eternal life' in some other dimension or something? I don't know, possibly. I wouldn't count on it.

 

[AlexBP]

Questions of the form "why does God do ________" or "why doesn't God just _________" tend to be among the most frustrating ones to debate on this board because there's a fundamental misunderstanding of how many non-Christians view Christianity. We Christians do not claim to have a complete understanding of why God does everything that He does. In Christianity there are holy mysteries. The mystery of God's atonement by the cross is one of the central ones, along with the mystery of the Incarnation and the Trinity.

However, the term "mystery" is also often misunderstood. Mystery does not mean something forever unknown, but rather something that will be revealed. Here on earth, we address the question on why Christ's death was necessary by saying, for instance, that if God's justice is perfect then there must be a penalty for human sin; human sin cannot just be made to vanish without. The answer is somewhat inadequate, but we believe that as we draw closer to God and our knowledge and understanding increase, the adequacy of the answer that we have to this question will also increase.

 

[Simply_Amazing]

Questions of the form "why does God do ________" or "why doesn't God just _________" tend to be among the most frustrating ones to debate on this board because there's a fundamental misunderstanding of how many non-Christians view Christianity.

Why just non-Christians? Christians haven't been able to settle on what Christianity is for hundreds of years.

 

[nebulaJP]

Questions of the form "why does God do ________" or "why doesn't God just _________" tend to be among the most frustrating ones to debate on this board because there's a fundamental misunderstanding of how many non-Christians view Christianity. We Christians do not claim to have a complete understanding of why God does everything that He does. In Christianity there are holy mysteries. The mystery of God's atonement by the cross is one of the central ones, along with the mystery of the Incarnation and the Trinity.

However, the term "mystery" is also often misunderstood. Mystery does not mean something forever unknown, but rather something that will be revealed. Here on earth, we address the question on why Christ's death was necessary by saying, for instance, that if God's justice is perfect then there must be a penalty for human sin; human sin cannot just be made to vanish without. The answer is somewhat inadequate, but we believe that as we draw closer to God and our knowledge and understanding increase, the adequacy of the answer that we have to this question will also increase.

This is how I deal with that stuff:

The Bible: a completely nonliteral, dramatic allegory, whether divinely inspired or not.

Sin: a narrative device used to create a conflict between the God character and mankind (Adam) in the Bible.

The Cross: The dramatic resolution to the conflict between God and man introduced in the Garden of Eden, Knowledge of Good and Evil story.

Atonement: an intellectual attempt at a literal interpretation of a nonliteral text, that attempts to explain how a counter-intuitive, fantastic, allegorical idea (that for our sake all-powerful God HAD to send Jesus to the planet and couldn't have saved us any other way) logically makes sense in reality.

 

[Verv]

Animals and people get trespassed against all the time and have no problem brushing it off or forgiving the trespasser. For example, my cat licks my food when I'm out of the room sometimes and I can forgive her without requiring any 'nebly' sacrifice. God on the other hand, doesn't seem able to do the equivalent of this at his scale. The standard reason why is:

God can't because He's perfect

That sentence doesn't make sense to me. Another one is:

God can't because He's holy

So 'holy' means weak? Is this why I can do something God can't do? If God is suppose to be all-powerful and I'm not then how is this possible?

God can't because He has perfect righteousness

But how does that affect his ability to forgive us or 'reconcile' (meaning what in this context?) us to himself?

Wait, so this is why doesn't God forgive sin so easily?

Perhaps your question could be answered here:

Parable of the Faithful Servant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That deals with the nature of God's forgiveness a bit...

He has varying standards for people of varying awareness and enlightenment, and their respective positions towards God.

This is quite a doctrinal question...

Plus, you bringing your relationship with your cat into it is not very comparable.

Humans are not cats.

 

[WretchedMan]

Sin is any willful act, attitude, or thought that is opposed to the nature of God. It doesn't do anything to God, it does something to us. It defiles and corrupts us, separating us from God because we are not in a condition capable of existing in His presence. As sinners we are spiritually dead and the atonement provided by Jesus serves to make us alive if we turn from our sin and to Him. It is not a mea culpa that He "weakly" requires from us to make Him feel better after we lick His food when He is out of the room.

God's omnipotence doesn't mean He can do every possible thing that can be imagined. There are logical limits due to His nature. He cannot contradict Himself, He cannot lie, and He cannot abide unholy, unregenerate beings in His holy presence for all eternity.

 

[nebulaJP]

Sin is any willful act, attitude, or thought that is opposed to the nature of God. It doesn't do anything to God, it does something to us. It defiles and corrupts us, separating us from God

Is God not powerful enough to reunite us with him, without the literal sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross?

because we are not in a condition capable of existing in His presence.

If he is all powerful then can he make us capable of existing in his presence, without any literal sacrifice of Jesus?

As sinners we are spiritually dead

If God is all-powerful then can he make us spiritually alive just by saying the word? Or is he restricted in what he can do, which would contradict his being 'all-powerful'?

and the atonement provided by Jesus serves to make us alive if we turn from our sin and to Him.

Can it be that the sacrifice is only meant to visually demonstrate God's love, forgiveness and acceptance but is unnecessary in a functional sense because the all-powerful deity God can do whatever he wants in any way he wants?

It is not a mea culpa that He "weakly" requires from us to make Him feel better after we lick His food when He is out of the room.

If the Cross was in any way necessary for our sake or his, it's a weakness and does not describe a God that is all-powerful in my opinion.

God's omnipotence doesn't mean He can do every possible thing that can be imagined. There are logical limits due to His nature. He cannot contradict Himself, He cannot lie, and He cannot abide unholy, unregenerate beings in His holy presence for all eternity.

To me that is intellectualism that goes against common sense. I think that if a deity exists it wants us to use our common sense rather than listen to intellectuals' convoluted explanations of a literal interpretation of its non-literal, allegorical text (if it inspired it).

 

[nebulaJP]

and He cannot abide unholy, unregenerate beings in His holy presence for all eternity.

I know that the God of the Bible is described as 'holy'. I assume, outside of the context of the fictional/allegorical 'Bible', that that word represents something else, maybe meaning 'sacred' or something. The idea in your quote above is rather meaningless to me. Don't Christians believe that God is omnipresent? Doesn't that mean we are in his presence right now, whether we're 'unholy' or not?

 

[WretchedMan]

Is God not powerful enough to reunite us with him, without the literal sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross?

It's not an issue of power. Is the government not powerful enough to pardon us all for every crime we commit? Of course it is. Should it? Wouldn't government be violating its core purpose if it did? Are we content when there is a failure of justice?

What you are asking is whether God is powerful enough to deny Himself and violate His nature. It is a nonsensical question akin to, "Can God make a rock so big He can't move it?"

(I am not making a statement about you. There is nothing wrong with the question in terms of seeking to learn and understand. I am just speaking to the question itself. We ask many such questions in the course of learning about anything. It only becomes a problem if we do not advance beyond them.)

If he is all powerful then can he make us capable of existing in his presence, without any literal sacrifice of Jesus?

So, should we be able to cheat, lie, murder, abuse, live completely self-absorbed lives and be ushered in to the presence of a holy, just, pure God for eternity? I don't see how that would makes any sense.

(The next reply is also applicable to this question.)

If God is all-powerful then can he make us spiritually alive just by saying the word? Or is he restricted in what he can do, which would contradict his being 'all-powerful'?

Do you not want the choice? Do you want Him to take from the sinner his decision to deny God and seek his own way apart from Him and impose on him holiness and an eternity in the presence of the very God he rejected in this short life?

As I mentioned, God is restricted by His nature. That is not a contradiction. Your idea of "all-powerful" could only be applied to a completely chaotic being. It is not consistent with what the Scriptures reveal about God or with what we would logically expect of the God that created us due to what we know about ourselves and the universe we inhabit.

Can it be that the sacrifice is only meant to visually demonstrate God's love, forgiveness and acceptance but is unnecessary in a functional sense because the all-powerful deity God can do whatever he wants in any way he wants?

No. Again, you misunderstand God's omnipotence. What He wants to do is consistent with who He is. He is not subject to arbitrary whims. He does not want to violate His nature, He cannot. If He could, He would not be God.

If the Cross was in any way necessary for our sake or his, it's a weakness and does not describe a God that is all-powerful in my opinion.

How is it a weakness to save someone when they are incapable of saving themselves? How is it a weakness to love someone enough to take the consequences they have earned on yourself so that they don't have to endure it?

There is a price to sin and God would be unjust to let it go unpaid. You are calling God weak for not violating who He is.

To me that is intellectualism that goes against common sense. I think that if a deity exists it wants us to use our common sense rather than listen to intellectuals' convoluted explanations of a literal interpretation of its non-literal, allegorical text (if it inspired it).

It's logical. Your depiction of an "all-powerful" god is one of a monster that would be capable of doing absolutely anything at any time for any reason at all. It would be a god that is not consistent, is not just, is not good, is not trustworthy, and as his creation we would be unable to trust our own reason and would be without a conscience due to the fact that there would be no objective morality. Anything would go and justice would not exist in this life or the next.

As with reality, what any of us want God to be is inconsequential. We must conform to who God truly is, not what we want to make Him. We are not capable of reforming God as we please.

 

[WretchedMan]

I know that the God of the Bible is described as 'holy'. I assume, outside of the context of the fictional/allegorical 'Bible', that that word represents something else, maybe meaning 'sacred' or something. The idea in your quote above is rather meaningless to me. Don't Christians believe that God is omnipresent? Doesn't that mean we are in his presence right now, whether we're 'unholy' or not?

This isn't the place to get into, but your conclusions about the Bible are poorly informed. I hope it is something that you are still investigating for yourself and this isn't a dogmatic position you've established.

Yes we are in the presence of God's Spirit, but that is not the sense I am talking about. We are not in eternity, we have not stood before Him in judgment, we don't see Him as He is, and are not face to face with Him in His domain.

Even still, those who haven't turned to Christ, though there is nowhere they can flee from God's Spirit in this universe, don't have the relationship or presence of God in their life that those who have turned to Christ have.

 

[nebulaJP]

It's not an issue of power. Is the government not powerful enough to pardon us all for every crime we commit? Of course it is. Should it? Wouldn't government be violating its core purpose if it did? Are we content when there is a failure of justice?

It's more plausible to me that we gave our own 'need for justice' attribute to the God character in the Bible even though (to me at least) it doesn't make sense that a deity would operate this way in the real world, if one exists.

What you are asking is whether God is powerful enough to deny Himself and violate His nature. It is a nonsensical question akin to, "Can God make a rock so big He can't move it?"

This is the reason I don't believe the God in the Bible really exists. He is said to have infinite power yet he has these things like holiness and righteousness and perfection that make him 'in need' (of justice).

Without referring to a religious text, I can conceive of a deity that doesn't have any of these attributes (righteousness or perfection or omnipotence), one that operates on scientific principles and is unconcerned with humans' 'imperfection', 'sinfulness' etc. Even though I don't believe in any kind of conscious deity, one that operates on scientific rules rather than moral rules makes more sense to me in theory. To me, if a deity exists it doesn't necessarily have to be perfect, or interact with us in any way. If you conceive of the deity as having the universe as its body, our planet is merely a part of its body the way one cell is in one of our bodies.

So, should we be able to cheat, lie, murder, abuse, live completely self-absorbed lives and be ushered in to the presence of a holy, just, pure God for eternity? I don't see how that would makes any sense.

You can have that same debate with a universalist Christian (one who believes Christ literally died for all mankind, regardless of whether they believe in him or not and that all will eventually enter the Kingdom.) All I want to know is "why was a literal sacrifice necessary?".

Do you not want the choice? Do you want Him to take from the sinner his decision to deny God and seek his own way apart from Him and impose on him holiness and an eternity in the presence of the very God he rejected in this short life?

I can't conceive of a deity that would inspire a book full of miracles and fantasy stories that it would then expect anyone to take literally. Also, like I said above in this post, I don't believe that a deity, if one exists, shares the attributes of the God in the Bible, such as 'holiness' for example. So 'sinful' humans 'coexisting' with a 'holy' God is not an issue for me.

As I mentioned, God is restricted by His nature. That is not a contradiction. Your idea of "all-powerful" could only be applied to a completely chaotic being. It is not consistent with what the Scriptures reveal about God or with what we would logically expect of the God that created us due to what we know about ourselves and the universe we inhabit.

With "what we know about ourselves" I can see how we created the God in the Bible. Primitive men's notion was that the gods needed to be appeased to pay for their trespasses so that the gods would give them rain for their crops. These antiquated notions aren't valid any more. We can explain scientifically how precipitation is produced now. It no longer has to do with the gods being appeased. Why should our notion of a deity (if any) or our interpretation of the Bible be based on an antiquated view?

I can't see how our offenses on this tiny planet are of any concern to a deity if one exists. I think the idea of 'sin' is a narrative device and also possibly an allegorical tool representing bad social behavior, which is destructive.

No. Again, you misunderstand God's omnipotence. What He wants to do is consistent with who He is. He is not subject to arbitrary whims. He does not want to violate His nature, He cannot. If He could, He would not be God.

That conception of a deity works very well within the framework of the Bible. It works in conjunction with the narrative device 'sin' to set up a conflict. If there was no conflict there would be no story. If God didn't have the attributes you describe, he would have just forgiven Adam immediately and the Bible would only be a page long, and therefore nonexistent. That is, people wouldn't be carrying around a one page holy text.

How is it a weakness to save someone when they are incapable of saving themselves? How is it a weakness to love someone enough to take the consequences they have earned on yourself so that they don't have to endure it?

There is a price to sin and God would be unjust to let it go unpaid. You are calling God weak for not violating who He is.

People who take the Bible literally claim that God is omnipotent, yet he was incapable of saving us without a literal sacrifice. It is a weakness in that he has to save us in a certain way. That doesn't make sense to me in the real world. In the Bible on the other hand, of course God would have to send Jesus to the planet. You can't just have God reconcile us from somewhere in heaven. He would be able to do this instantly and it wouldn't make for a good resolution to the conflict set up in the Garden of Eden. The Cross is the perfect, dramatic resolution to this - within the framework of the story. But it doesn't make sense in the real world. Nor do the over 120 miraculous, fantastic events found throughout the Bible.

It's logical. Your depiction of an "all-powerful" god is one of a monster that would be capable of doing absolutely anything at any time for any reason at all.

That is what being omnipotent or having infinite power means.

It would be a god that is not consistent, is not just, is not good, is not trustworthy, and as his creation we would be unable to trust our own reason and would be without a conscience due to the fact that there would be no objective morality. Anything would go and justice would not exist in this life or the next.

Well I'll have to read up on objective morality, but my thing has always been: even animals have morals, they know the difference between right and wrong according to the way their social groups define right and wrong. They all understand the principles of good behavior within their social groups. I haven't read up on 'animal justice' but I think some animals may ostracize members who misbehave, I remember reading something about it. (I'll have to check up on that one.)

As with reality, what any of us want God to be is inconsequential. We must conform to who God truly is, not what we want to make Him. We are not capable of reforming God as we please.

In my opinion there's no reason to reform the God in the Bible as long as he isn't taken to literally exist.