Monday, September 12, 2011

All Sins are Created Equal

Recently got into a discussion of whether or not some sins are worse than others.

In my opinion, the only difference between sins are their eternal vs. temporal consequences.

A man who lusts after a woman who is not his wife might experience ZERO consequences during his lifetime.
Many are able to separate fantasy from reality, and never experience negative consequences in their lives or marriages.

A man who commits murder is far more likely to experience negative consequences in the here and now, whether legal or psychological.

However, both of the above have the exact same eternal consequence: making the offenders unworthy of God's presence.
Similarly, both are equally capable of being covered (and thus blotted out) by God's grace.

It seems legalistic to me to say that some are worse than others when speaking in a spiritual context.

I have no problem with the argument when made in terms of temporal consequences, but using the eternal to make some sins seem worse than others sounds like a Dante's Inferno doctrine, with different sins (handpicked by church people, of course) leading to better or worse punishments in the hereafter.

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