The New Sins

President Obama defined sin as "Being out of alignment with my values." "To thine own self be true" may be good Shakespeare, but not good theology. Still, to many this is now classed as a sin over against, you know, all those things the Bible seems to list. Instead of the standard ones supplied by God, we have a new list of no-no's to avoid.

"Thou shalt not be boring" is high on the list. Boredom isn't unfortunate. It's evil. I know someone whose spouse left them because they were boring. Dirty, rotten scoundrel.

"Thou shalt not be sure." Certainty is always considered wrong, at least in others. I mean, you can be sure they're wrong, but their certitude that you are wrong isn't a mistake; it's evil. It is, of course, much worse if they're sure about, say, what the Bible says or what is orthodox Christian doctrine or that kind of thing. Because the ultimate good in those matters is "I'm not sure" ... and, "above all else, I'm sure of that."

Sister to the sin of certainty is the sin of faith. Confidence in God (and especially His Word) is not only unwise; it will likely brand you as a whacko. And I'm pretty sure that if "whacko" isn't a sin, it ought to be.

In today's world there are very few evils foisted upon anyone worse than the sin of discrimination. Now, be careful here. When you look for this sin, do not consider the actual definition of the word. That could just get confusing. Because "discrimination" is defined as "recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another." In fact, recognizing right and wrong (whether you are right or wrong in doing so) is discrimination. The other definition of "discrimination" is "prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things", which you would be doing by pointing out that you think it is evil for someone to discriminate. Not to say that it's right to treat people unjustly on the basis of certain factors, but we seem to forget that castigating people for doing so is ... discrimination. A circular sin, then? No, it's simply one of those sins that "you can commit but I don't when I do it myself."

Perhaps at the top of the list is "telling me what I like to do is wrong". To be truthful, no one has ever liked being told that what they like to do is wrong. It's just that in our day and age it has been reclassified as evil. Of course, the only way that could be so is if "what I want to do" is classified as "good", regardless of what it is. And while no one is actually verbally doing this (because it would clearly end up in insanity), society still treats it as darn close to "good". No one ever seems to ask, "Is it good?" or the corollary, "If I affirm what is not good, is that good?" They simply know that if you say it's not, you're a bad person.

Bottom line, of course, this whole article would be "sin" in today's version. Which simply illustrates that while Christianity offers a biblical version of "sin" based on God's Word, our world is not opposed to sin. It's just opposed to God's idea of sin. I wonder what will make the list next? Biblical Christianity? Probably already on some lists.