Category: Religion

This is the the wrong time of year for this post, but I thought about it any­way so stop judg­ing me already!

Sin [or immoral or uneth­i­cal behav­ior or the oppo­site of Right Action or what­ev­er you want to call it] is sub­tle. You can do some­thing that isn’t sin­ful, but if done with that kind of evil intent, would prob­a­bly still qual­i­fy. [These thoughts mayn’t be canon­i­cal, I dun­no.] So if there is an orchard of apple trees and you sneak in and grab a cou­ple to eat and sneak out and eat them, with the idea that if you get caught you’ll get in trou­ble [even if the lady who owns to orchard real­ly does­n’t mind if peo­ple come take her apples] then you’re sin­ning.

Sin­ful thoughts are hard to avoid, but as long as they don’t inspire inter­nal rev­el­ry or exter­nal action, then they aren’t real­ly sin. But one can also do no harm although they intend to do so and I would con­sid­er that a sin. There is also doing some­thing with evil intent that has a pos­i­tive [though unin­tend­ed] res­o­lu­tion. The unin­tend­ed part is cru­cial because oth­er­wise you fall into the “a wrong does­n’t make a right” sit­u­a­tion. The eas­i­est exam­ple of evil intent with unex­pect­ed pos­i­tive res­o­lu­tion that comes to mind is at the end of The Return of the King, when Gol­lum’s lust for the ring results in its destruc­tion. I think that’s prob­a­bly still a sin, because it appears my def­i­n­i­tion of sin­ful­ness is pred­i­cat­ed on what my mom­ma taught me, will­ful dis­obe­di­ence is always a per­son­al feel­ing of self­ish­ness. What about not know­ing you are doing wrong, but do wrong? I think that only becomes a sin when the igno­rance is rec­ti­fied and behav­ior is not changed, nor resti­tu­tion sought. I think that cov­ers it.