Sin

I've said it before, I'm a bit slow at putting things up on here. This was the topic at the Conversation before last.

Sin is anything that separates us from God. In RE we said it could also be understood in a secular sense as things that separate us from other people.

The person leading the discussion had some statistics. What amazed me was how many people thought that sex before marriage was just fine, but very few people thought that having sex with someone while being married to another person was wrong. What's the difference? Ok, so in the first instance you have not made that vow yet, but still. I think this is a longer topic which I should go into in greater detail at a later point, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Another one that interested me was the number of people who thought that drinking any alcohol was a sin. I'd like to point out that Jesus turned water into wine. I'm not saying go out and get drunk, but I can't see justification for giving it a blanket label as evil.

Something that Paul said in one of his letters (Romans I think), is pretty relevant here. "Everything is permissable, but not everything is beneficial". This is the nature of free will. Think of it this way. It's permissable for me to do absolutely no revision for my exams. However, it's not going to be beneficial to me. It's permissable for me to go sleep with anyone I feel like sleeping with, but is it really beneficial? Well, no.

Gossip is listed as a sin. I'm sure that most people are guilty of that at some point or another. Why is it a sin? Well think what harm gossip can do to a relationship with someone. If I go around telling people that such and such is having troubles in this relationship, but keep it quiet because I'm not really supposed to know, doesn't that damage my relationship with such and such? And if it isn't true, and it gets back to the other party in the relationship, that could cause the problems in the first place.

Just remember. God made you special and he loves you very much.