On Sin

Let's take a moment to talk about Sin.

I think sin is a great word--it's powerful and it invokes a very singular feeling, a feeling of something "bad"--the definition of which you can decide for yourself. Religions have a pretty solid stance on sin, and most of us take the word in a religious sense, but putting aside Dogma and God for a moment, there are practical issues with sin. My definition of sin is "a flaw that negatively affects or influences your life."

There are seven deadly sins--Pride, Sloth, Lust, Wrath, Greed, Blasphemy (we'll prolly ignore this one) and Envy. Everybody experiences all of these sins to varying degrees throughout their lives, but it is certainly not difficult to see that there is usually one or two of these seven that really embody a person's "flaws". A man who is too proud may refuse to back down or accept any other ideas or philosophies or ways of life besides his own. A greedy man will take as much as he can from as many people as he can, regardless of how it may affect them. Sins take a variety of forms, but the important measure of sin is this--a sin, one of these seven at least, is something that you do, either actively or unconsciously, that brings sadness, discomfort, suffering or pain into your life.

For me, my sin is sloth. A pretty common sin amongst my generation, right up there with greed and lust. My sloth is that I generally dislike doing anything that I don't want to do. Even if it is something I HAVE to do, a responsibility--cleaning, researching a paper, studying--my slothful nature makes me drag my feet in doing so, and my procrastination oftentimes results in negative effects--my house becomes dirty, I get a bad grade on a paper or a test, I fail a class. I know what my sin is--I accept it, which is a good first step that, I find, a lot of people don't reach.

Identifying and accepting your sin is just the first step, though, and if you want to move forward at all, you have to follow a first step with a second. The second step is overcoming your sin, and THAT, my friends, is the real kicker. Overcoming a major flaw is time-intensive, requires work, dedication, and the solid, single-minded desire to NOT cave in to your...desires. You don't do what you want to do, you do what you know you should or have to do. To overcome my sin of sloth, I would have to actively refuse to do what I want to do--play video games, surf the web, sleep, stare at an interesting discoloration on my wall--and instead do things that do not neccessarily bring me pleasure: clean, pack, study, or, in general, work.

We are sinful creatures, and strangely, we're the only ones in nature who are. You don't usually find beavers or magpies starving to death because they were too lazy to go out and get food or chew on trees or whatever it is that beavers or magpies do. Nature doesn't allow for sin, because indulging in it oftentimes results in a quick and unpleasant death. Even wrath has its downsides--viscious animals will almost always end up getting killed because of their viscious nature, and even the Alpha wolf doesn't indiscriminately go out and bite the shit out of some nearby camper. There's temperance in nature, a temperance forged by uncompromising rules and boundaries that all wild things must adhere to under pain of death.

Human beings don't have this--well, we do, but not to such a degree. We've insulated ourselves in a dazzlingly complex societorial "safety net" that catches us and allows us to take time to NOT focus on surviving or breeding. We have spare time, in other words, and that's a rather curious thing. Given the opportunity to NOT do what we must to survive means that, more likely than not, we WON'T constantly strive to follow the hardline rules of survival, because we don't have to.

My slothful nature could only be fully cured if I completely isolated myself from any possible distractions--if I unhooked my internet, threw out my video games and DVDs, closed all the windows and focused solely on the task at hand. Then, with my sin purged, I would be productive, reliable, successful--and pretty miserable.

Yes, isn't it a sad irony that, without a modicum of sin, we're left feeling rather unhappy. If you don't sin at all, your life isn't exactly glamorous or exciting. Yet, if you sin too much, your life is chaotic and stressful, or unfulfilling or frustrating. As much as we are told to NOT sin, our mental well-being hinges UPON sinning. Its a catch 22, and it rather sucks.

What can we do, then, but find that happy medium? Sin once in awhile, then penance yourself through hard work and responsibility or charity or whatever it is you need to do to address your specific sin. Its not a terribly new or even surprising conclusion--its the "middle path" if I may indulge my self-righteous inner Buddhist. All in moderation.

That's the lesson, really, all I'd have to say that's useful. I wonder, at times, whether the only reward for abstaining from sin is a material one. The religious say that living a fruitful, fitful and sinless life will bring you eternal glory in an afterlife, but we don't know if that's true or not. We do what we must--but what MUST we do? Have we truly reached the point in our evolution that we no longer know what we are supposed to do, what our global niche is? Where on the universal totem pole does humanity factor? What are we put on this planet to do? Maybe we don't have a purpose--we don't need one, some would say. But, hang on a second. Nature has roles. The wolf fulfills its role as a population controlling device. The magpie eats seeds and invariable spreads seeds around, allowing new plantlife to grow and expanding the scope of life to other areas. The beaver...makes dams.

Yeah, I don't really know what beavers do, but frankly, it makes me feel better to know that humanity isn't the only race that has a vendetta against trees and takes every opportunity to brutally chop them to bits, so I'm satisfied with beavers giving my conscience some peace of mind.

So, reflect on this, O my brothers--what are we, as a race, DOING? What is it that we accomplish, do or don't do, perhaps, that benefits the world? Why do we exist? Its all well and good to try and abolish flaws and sins in our lives, but without a reason, without a GOAL or a cause to believe in, what's the point? If you want to solve a problem, solve it holistically--figure out what the human race is here for, and then make sure that you can help it accomplish that goal as much as you can.

That's all. Good Evening...and Good Fortune.