Acceptable Sins

We all know the evils that people do. There are murderers and rapists. There are those who injure children and those who torture puppies. There are those who rob banks and deal in drugs. We all know of these bad things. It's awful. It seems that we have, on the other hand, a range of "acceptable sins", things that, well, if you're going to get technical, are sins, but, look, everyone does them and, really, they're not that bad, are they?

The first one that comes to mind for me is unforgiveness. I mean, if someone does you wrong -- serious wrong -- who would blame you for holding a grudge? Indeed, in some of these cases, if you forgave, people would think you were really odd. No, no, morality does not require that you forgive in all cases. But then you read Jesus's words when He said, "If you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matt 6:15) and you might want to reconsider that position. Jesus doesn't seem to consider it an "acceptable sin". In the story of the two sinning servants in Matthew 18, one servant owed his master 10,000 talents and the other servant owed the first servant 100 denarii. Now, 100 denarii is not pocket change. A denarius was a day's wage. Think about how much you make in 100 days of work. A standard work week is 5 days, so that would be 20 weeks. This guy owed 20 weeks of pay to his fellow servant. On the other hand, the first owed his master, according to this converter, 88,831,168,831,169 denarii. Well, you do the math. However, the first servant got his debt forgiven. That left the second servant. The first owed nothing and the second owed 100 days' pay. So, in view of our "comparative sinning" perspective, which was the worst offender? As it turns out, in Jesus's story the worst offender was the guy who failed to forgive. His failure to forgive his coworker in light of the amount forgiven him cost him everything. Everything. Maybe we ought to reconsider the "acceptable sin" of unforgiveness.

You know, of course, that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Just going to the standard Ten Commandments, we'll find this kind of thinking is fairly standard. Idolatry? Not so bad. Making carved idols? Really bad. Taking God's name in vain? Pretty normal. Keeping the Sabbath (in any sense)? Really outdated. Honor your mother and father? Downright foolish. Murder, adultery, stealing, yeah, those are all really bad. Oh, well, murder isn't so bad if you're talking about hating someone (Matt 5:21-22) and adultery is actually standardized in the media (and the way some women dress to go to church, for that matter) if you're going to reference looking with lust (Matt 5:28), and, hey, everyone steals when it comes to things like income tax or the employer's time, so those aren't all bad. When it comes to "bearing false witness", that depends on the magnitude of the "false witness". Telling someone a lie to make them feel better is actually commendable! And then there's covetousness. Isn't that actually the backbone of Capitalism?

You know, when it comes right down to it, we have a lot more "acceptable sins" than unacceptable ones. Is there any wonder that we balk at God's divine justice and complain when He displays wrath rather than the mercy and grace we clearly deserve? I mean, we aren't really doing much that bad, are we?

You know, maybe we ought to reconsider our underlying premise of "acceptable sins" in its entirety.