As a result I designed a five week course that I entitled 'Christian's Crazy Claims'; a course of which inspired the name for this blog. This course that analytically looked at the necessary set of beliefs that one has to accept if they are going to believe the Christian Gospel message. It is these claims that are ridiculed as being crazy by this unbelieving world. One of these necessary points that I discussed is the idea of 'sin'.
Sin: What is it?
What exactly is sin? Inspired by Child Evangelism Fellowship, (CEF) but also commonly adopted in many Christian children's ministries worldwide sin is encapsulated as 'anything that a person says, thinks or does that breaks God's law.' And like the Gospel message as a whole if one is going to accept this definition of sin they by necessity have to believe in the existence of God as an actual being and not as a fairytale; and if one comes from such a premise CEF's definition of sin logically follows. However if one springboards off of the presupposition that God does not exist then there is no law of God to break by any means and thus CEF's definition of sin is null and void.
So is CEF's definition of sin off base or is it on point? So to answer this we have to look at three things: 1) Morality: what is it? 2) What is the origin of morality? And 3) why is 'law and order' a basic fundamental in the fabric of human society?
- What is morality? Merriam-Webster defines morality as: "beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behaviour"[i]. Let's break this definition down. Morality is a set of beliefs that categorizes behaviours into three camps: right, wrong and neutral. Even though this definition talks about beliefs being slotted into 'right' or 'wrong' categories and neglects the category of moral neutrality it is important to be sure to not exclude moral neutrality as the third option; this is because there are many behaviours that are right or wrong, such as murder, there are also actions that are neither right nor wrong, such as going to the movies vs. going to a restaurant. This means that these three camps exist and every human being recognizes this fact. Every human being has within their nature an aspect that C.S. Lewis calls The Law of Nature (Mere Christianity, pg. 7). This natural part of the human being is what enables people to decide that an moral action is either right, wrong or morally neutral.
- Where does morality come from? There are three options to choose from: A) biology, B) human opinion or C) a standard that transcends human opinion and biological systems. If morality comes from one's biology then is something as grotesque as genocide really wrong? No. As such morality becomes Darwinian of sorts: survival of the fittest; for an example Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party's success lasted as long as it did simply because they were the fittest (that is until they weren't) and not because they prevailed on the positive side of the moral scale. Furthermore, if morality comes from human opinion then the Holocaust being wrong is wrong but only in the opinion of those who don't agree with it. However it was also morally okay as Adolf Hitler and the members of the Nazi party thought it was good. So if morality is in fact merely human opinion then nobody is correct in there assessment about anything may it be genocide or charity as their assessment is merely their opinion. This makes the very essence of morality neutral therefore rendering and the other two camps: right and wrong void. However if morality finds it ontology in the existence of a transcendent standard that is outside of and superior to human opinion and biology then what Adolf Hitler and the Nazi's did will either be objectively wrong or objectively right or morally neutral. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis may think it was good to do what they did to those millions of people; but if those who believe that the Holocaust is wrong is correct then irregardless of the views held by Hitler and his supporters or the views held by those who believe that the Holocaust is morally relative the Holocaust is objectively wrong. In the same way if the Holocaust is absolutely morally relative then despite the distain that many people have towards this event there is nothing objectively wrong about it; and this same standard must be applied to the notion of the Holocaust being objectively right if Hitler and the Nazi's views of it being right is objective.
- Given the fact that people protest things as individuals and as nations is evidence that the point made above (see point #1) regarding CS Lewis' "Law of Nature" is correct. All nations are run on order and justice. When a crime is committed the victim demands justice. If a society subscribe to morality as either of the first two options then there would be no way to make something law; why should murder be prohibited, as it is only wrong by the means of opinion; and can a society really legislate opinion? No. Of course countries do right into law personal values that they hold to either be permissible, promotable or prohibiting - values that others disagree with - however when one gives an opinion they are burdened with the expectation of an explanation as to why X is their opinion. What caused them to arrive at the opinion that action-X is either wrong, morally neutral or right?
There is another important thread that needs to be tied down: Where did the human being get this consciousness of right and wrong? We are left with two conflicting options: A) biology or B) a creator with a conscience. Again, if our conscience is exclusively biological processes then its Adolf Hitler's conscience vs. my conscience vs. your conscience, etc. But if however this conscience is intelligently designed into our natures just as a computer chip is intelligently designed into a computer then our morality finds its origins in the same place we find ours: God; but again whose God? If this 'god' is a natural one then we are back to morality being biological. If however it is the supernatural God then there is a metaphysical aspect to this physical world. And if morality is metaphysical and finds its origins in a supernatural intelligent creator then there are foundational laws that give birth to our laws; and the same thing goes for social punishment for when these laws are violated. And of course there is the question of 'whose supernatural God' is God? Allah, Yahweh, Elohim, Hare Krishna, etc. but that is a discussion that is best for another post. The point of the matter is the premise of sin being a violation of God's law is valid and to believe that sin is merely a biological processes or human opinion is false.
However there is one last view that needs to be discussed: Human error. Aren't human beings really just imperfect? That is to say we are error prone good creatures? Under the premise of morality being merely human error makes morality invalid; as if the grotesque actions of mankind like genocide are merely human mistakes then that puts a genocide on the same moral plain with forgetting to pass along a phone message to someone due to being stressed out.
So is CEF's definition of sin valid? ANSWER: Yes.
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[i] - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morality - accessed June 26, 2014
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