Mar 18 2008
Seven “new” deadly sins?
After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalisation. The list, published yesterday in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “securalised world” and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.
The Catholic Church divides sins into venial, or less serious, sins and mortal sins, which threaten the soul with eternal damnation unless absolved before death through confession and penitence.
Read about it here.
[From me]
Who give the Catholic Church the right to add additional sins? Isn’t that tampering with the Bible? Also, a sin is a sin in the eyes of God. You can’t rank sins. There may be different consequences but sin is sin.
What do you think?
16 responses so far
Kevin,
Responding to your statement: “You can’t rank sins,” Josh Malone (still here, Josh?) asked an interesting question in an earlier post: “Do we equate speeding with murder?”
Kevin,
I forgot to ask: how do you know that God doesn’t consider some sins more heinous than others?
Romans 3:23 says that “all have sinned.” No where do I see a ranking of the worst sins. Even the 10 Commandments are just a few of the sins.
The only unforgivable sin is not accepting Jesus.
A3,
There is also this passage in James 2:8-10–
“If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”
In this sense, there is no rank in sin because one of any kind makes you positionally a lawbreaker–which is no different than one who has murdered, stolen, etc.
Consequences in life, or punishments/disciplines in life for such behavior can and does vary–but the eternal consequence will be the same. Does God know the difference… of course He does–does it change our status? No. Dante’s Inferno with multiple levels of hell where it gets worse on the way down is not biblical . Hell was really created for the “devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41) not for you and me. Separation from God and all goodness and light is as bad as it will ever get.
Likewise, there won’t ever be someone who has just “one little bitty sin” who receives an unwarranted, unfair onslaught of God’s judgment.
Jesus took the ethic of sin far beyond outward behavior to that of the heart–someone who hates is brother is just as guilty as murder; someone who lusts in his heart and mind is just as guilty as physical adultery, etc.
In this I know I am busted. Even if I just sinned an average of 3 times a day (which I think would make me a REALLY good person), over the course of my life that would be–37,230 sins–talk about a repeat offender. I am in no better position before God than Jeffrey Dahmer. My sin earns a wage–that is death–that is the appropriate payment.
God is just and must deal with my sin appropriately, but God also wants me to live. I cannot receive my earnings and “live”–so God settled the debt and made the payment on my behalf in what Jesus did on the cross. If we refuse that, we pay it ourselves and that death is final. That’s what this week is leading up to on the Christian calendar.
That was longwinded to say: positionally/categorically all sin puts us in the same status before God–a lawbreaker.
Thankfully, God did not leave us there to fend for ourselves.
Kevin & Kelly,
So if I understand you both correctly, the reason you believe that God ranks all sin the same is not because there is anything explicit in the Bible stating that that is the case. Instead, you presume that it is the case in the absence of explicit statements that God ranks sins differently (the unforgivable sin of blasphemy notwithstanding). You also choose to ignore the different consequences of various sins in deciding if one sin is worse than another. So you both conclude that the sin of speeding is just as displeasing to God as is the sin of murder. Is that a fair summary?
A3,
Why do I feel a set up?
Yes, all sin seperates us from God. The good new is through God’s grace I am a new person. Now when I allow Christ to live through me I don’t have to worry about sin. My identity is in Christ not my sin.
Well, somewhere along the line, “we” decided we knew how to “better” the worship service and added instruments.
The Pope is condemning the killing in Iraq - I totally agree with him. I don’t understand how someone can be against abortion and be so totally for the war. Killing is killing. I’ve heard some argue that people choose the military. Maybe so. BUT not everyone that is killed is in the military.
A3,
Actually, I’m confident that the James passages makes that point very well. In the American legal system, I have broken the law and become a lawbreaker as a Speeder or a Murderer.
That does not negate how we see it lived out in the Old Testament nation of Israel where the details of laws and severity of punishments are outlined. In this earthly life, you see more of a “punishment that fits the crime” in the law sections. That is appropriate for a society to be built upon.
The New Testament does not provide nor is it couched in a Law Code mentality (something Muhammad really disliked and thought a weakness about Jesus and Christianity) only with the spiritual implications being a lawbreaker and what that does to our relationship with God and the means of the “ministry of reconciliation”.
If the Law was our only standard and the judge of our lives, we would be in trouble because we are all lawbreakers in some way. The Law points us to our need for God–the Grace of God frees us from the burden of the Law and allows us to truly live in Freedom. One way this happens is through the realization that my standing before God is no longer based on whether I am “measuring up”–that is a life of fear and bondage. I am not free to do and live however I want (antinomian?), but I am free from the “Oh no, I messed up, God won’t love me anymore. He’ll cast me aside, strike me down…,” etc.
Do I feel guilt and shame when I continually mess up? Yes. Does the idea of God being disappointed in me hurt? Yes. Do I fear that God no longer loves me? No. Do I fear that God is somehow done with me and will never forgive me or use me again? No.
There is a tremendous difference in living under the law of the Old Testament and living under the New Covenant of Grace.
Kevin,
I never mean to set you (or anyone) up.
Just to clarify, I often question someone’s position to explore it in more depth, either because seems inconsistent or because I simply don’t understand the position. When I ask questions, I try to ask them so that it is obvious to other person why I’m asking it. That is, I try to make the inconsistency or the misunderstanding obvious by the way I ask the question. Sometimes, the answers I get show me how the position actually makes sense after all. Other times, when the person evades the question for example, then I presume first of all that I successfully conveyed the reason for my question (or else the person would simply answer), and secondly that the person recognizes that his position is indeed inconsistent (or again, he would simply answer). In that case, I’ll sometimes press a bit harder to encourage the person to either clear up the inconsistency or at least acknowledge that there is an inconsistency. I don’t use tricks.
On the flip side, when someone asks me a question, I try my best to answer as candidly as I can, or to admit that my position was inconsistent. I may even change my opinion based on the exchange. But the one thing I try not to do is to be evasive because I want to be as honest and candid with myself and with others as possible.
Since you chose to tell me about how you don’t have to worry about sin, rather than to consider the questions I posed about ranking sin, I’ll presume that I was successful in pointing out the inconsistency of the position that no sin is worse than another.
Mrs. Osipov,
Very good points on the war!
Kelly,
While either speeding or murdering makes one a lawbreaker, would you agree that breaking the law by murdering is more heinous than breaking the law by speeding? In your view, would God be more offended by the sin of mass murder than by the sin of telling an “innocent” lie (like saying someone’s hair looks nice today when it really doesn’t)?
I know it’s hard to understand, but all sin is heinous and offensive to God. The idea of holiness is that strong. Here’s an analogy: I have 2 shirts. One of them is filthy, covered with dirt, smudges, food. If I spill a drop of grape juice on that shirt, I’m not that upset about it–assuming I would even notice it. If however, I spill the same drop on my brand new, totally clean shirt I was planning on wearing with my Tuxedo–it stands out like crazy–in some eyes, the shirt is “ruined” forever and unwearable. Don’t carry the analogy too far, but suffice to say, the “cleaner” or more holy something, someone gets, the more glaring the stain of sin.
Saying that, however, since speeding isn’t listed as a moral command, I’m guessing that it doesn’t violate some universal principle.
What speeding does suggest is a rebellion against an authority which we are supposed to submit ourselves to (so long as it doesn’t violate our walk with God). So speeding is a symptom of a larger rebellious spirit–if we’re rebelling against this authority, we also going to be rebelling against the higher authority. In which case, they’ll be a whole lot more to convict of than just speeding.
Kelly,
Thanks for the explanation - I particularly like the clean-shirt / dirty-shirt analogy. But I couldn’t tell from your explanation where you stand on the question: do you believe that God would be more offended by the sin of mass murder than by the sin of telling an “innocent” lie?
Kelly - What is the difference between the Day of judgement and Hell? Does God judge each man according to what he has done? Are we rewarded in Heaven for what we have done?
Kelly - Let me refrase my first question, “How does the Day of Judgement play a role in the sentencing of eternal Hell?”
Unknown,
This is a challenging question and I can’t say I’ve looked at it in great detail so I’ll temper what I say with what I think I know and claim my answer could easily be wrong at this time. I can research it in more detail later.
God Judges everyone based on what they have done in responding to the Gift available to them in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of our sin, everyone deserves death and hell. But God does not desire anyone to perish but all to come to repentance. However in that, He will not drag someone kicking and screaming into heaven if they don’t want to and they have rejected the offer.
The Day of Judgment as I understand it–on one level could be a false distinction based upon our finite, time-limited perspective. In eternity, I don’t believe there is a real distinction from one “day” to the next. However, we are still awaiting a day in our future from our perspective when this moment will take place.
Saying that, the Bible does talk about the separating of the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the tares, but again that seems to be in the context of our time perspective. The central thing is that there is a distinction between believers and unbelievers and there is a separation that will take place–each to different destinies.
As to the reward question, I touched on that in another thread.
http://kevinbussey.com/2008/03/20/librarian-fired-for-reporting-child-porn/#comment-5897