A look at how different belief systems define and deal with transgression.
Story by Andrew Deskins
Lust, gluttony, greed, pride, sloth, wrath and envy: the classical seven deadly sins are a theme seen throughout human history. Religions and philosophies have tried to explain the phenomenon of sin for almost as long.
Protestant
Kurt Queller, a professor of linguistics at the University of Idaho and published biblical scholar, said the most common word for sin in the New Testament is the Greek word hamartia, meaning “missing the mark,” but there is a deeper meaning to sin within the Hebrew language.
“The most fundamental meaning (of sin) in Hebrew is breaking the faith, or breaking the covenant,” Queller said. “The central Hebrew idea of sin is rooted in a treaty. This actually comes out of the political realm before it became religious. In Middle Eastern politics there were these things called the suzerain vassal treaties which were uneven relationships between a more powerful individual, and a less powerful individual or group.”
Queller, a practicing Lutheran, said the Apostle Paul’s conception of sin, and some of the quotes from the letters of John are particularly important in understanding sin.
“There is a phrase from the first letter of John, ‘we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves,'” Queller said. “That sounds at one level like a pretty hopeless view, but the teaching of Paul and of the Gospels is that freedom from sin is a free gift from God, it isn’t something that you can earn.”
Queller spoke of humanity trapped in a system that forces compliance in the suffering of others — a kind of contemporary original sin.
“The world economic system is a system of injustice,” Queller said. “So the world is a bloody mess — literally and figuratively.”
Buddhist
Jay Feldman, an instructor of philosophy at UI and a practicing Buddhist, said the notion of sin doesn’t exist at all in Buddhism. Sin traditionally requires a God to set the rules — something non-theistic Buddhism lacks. Feldman said the closest thing Buddhism has to sin is a series of precepts, but he stresses they are not categorical rules.
“For Buddhists, the information that helps us determine the way we should act is the fundamental nature of life itself,” Feldman said. “The first claim that Buddhists might make is that life is very paradoxical, and to make hard and fast rules is to deny the very nature of life itself.”
Feldman said an important element of Buddhism involves the concept of karma, or intentional actions that have consequences, or as Feldman described them — ripples on the world pond.
Catholic
Father Caleb Vogel, pastor for Saint Augustine’s Catholic Center, described the broken world referred to by Queller as the consequence of original sin. He said the story of Adam and Eve is a theological attempt to understand the broken world.
“The story of Adam and Eve is that Adam and Eve chose against God. (They said) ‘Thank you, but we can do it on our own. I get to be the determining factor of what is good or bad,’ well no, that’s God’s domain,” Vogel said. “God, who is love, allows for freedom, and so he allowed for his love to be rejected, and a new race was sinned into being and was once again subject to the natural order: death and illness.”
Vogel said only Christ has the power to restore a state of full communion with God. He called sin an offense against God, reason, truth and right conscience, and said it includes any thought, word, deed or omission contrary to the law of God. He used the metaphor of a breeze through a room to describe the grace of God and how sin affects it.
“To get a breeze going through we have to open some windows, but I can do things in my life that shut the window — that’s what we call a mortal sin,” Vogel said.
One of the most well-known aspects of Catholicism is confession. Vogel explained that the tradition comes from an act of Christ.
“Jesus, when he rose from the dead, appears to the disciples and he says to them ‘peace be with you,’ and then he breathes on them which is Bible talk for giving them his spirit,” Vogel said. “Then he says to them, ‘receive the Holy Spirit whose sins you forgive are forgiven, and whose sins you hold bound are bound.'”
Unitarian
The Rev. Elizabeth Stevens of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse — a church that welcomes people of all faiths — stressed that sin is a normal part of being human. She said Unitarians believe salvation is achieved through character, a departure from the beliefs of Queller and Vogel. Stevens said the Unitarian Universalist church grew out of the rejection of Calvinist ideas of total depravity. She said Unitarian Universalists haven’t believed in original sin for 400 years — and they don’t believe in hell.
“Our ancestors concluded the only hells that exist are the ones we create for each other,” Stevens said.
Stevens sometimes gives a sermon called “Revising the Seven Deadly Sins.” One of the retooled lists of seven deadly sins mentioned in the sermon comes from Gandhi: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, knowledge without character, politics without principle, commerce without morality and worship without sacrifice. She said these sins aren’t so much against God, but against fellow people and being a Unitarian Universalist is about striving to improve.
“As each of us individually learns to aim better, learns to be true to what is best in us, we begin to make the world a better place,” Stevens said. “We become sources of salvation.”
While there are almost as many ways to describe sin as ways to actually sin, one thing is clear — the forces of the seven deadly sins are likely to continue shaping human history until it comes to an end.