A Hierarchy to Sin?

"...the subject of AIDS... brings out the best in the church, like you see today in response to these children suffering HIV...but if we're honest, it has also brought the worst out of the church. Judgmentalism, a kind of sense that people who have AIDS, well, they got it because they deserve it. Well, from my studies of the Scriptures, I don't see a hierarchy to sin. I don't see sexual immorality registering higher up on the list than institutional greed (or greed of any kind, actually), problems we suffer from in the West."
Rock star Bono to pastors, parents, and children gathered at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport a few weeks before Christmas as part of an airlift of 80,000 gift boxes to HIV-infected children in Africa, organized by Franklin Graham's Operation Christmas Child.

I came across this quote when I was reading a 2003 article from Christianity Today about Bono's expression of Christian faith. Perhaps I'm the last to know, and maybe this betrays my own biases, but the idea that Bono is a Christian was dumbfounding to me. Nevertheless, I have no intention of criticizing Bono's Christianity. I do plan on criticizing his theology, though.

From a purely secular and purely rational standpoint it should be clear to all that everyone's innate sense of right and wrong has a system of proportionality built into it; the very word value , which we use for guiding principle, has as its first meaning a degree of worth or how much something costs. And so our criminal system is categorized by degrees, the two main categories being misdemeanor and felony. Even within those larger categories, crimes are designated by degree (i.e., first degree murder & second degree murder) to denote the range of culpability, mitigating circumstance (was it provoked, premeditated or a crime of passion, etc.,) and therefore the severity of punishment to be meted out by the state.  This innate sense of degree and proportionality built into our sense of good and evil is so obvious and rich with example it would be hard to argue against the idea that it is merely reflecting God’s moral principles, but there are cases in which God’s word, especially the words of Jesus, teach us to go against, if not our sense of right and wrong, at least our sense of fairness such as turning the other cheek when struck by an enemy.  So we are presented with the question of what the Bible has to say about a hierarchy of sin.

Let me start by pointing out the clear hierarchy of God’s commandments.  Consider this passage from Matthew 22:35-40 (Eugene Peterson’s The Message)  
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:  "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
 
So we have it from no less than Jesus himself that there is a hierarchy to the commandments.  It follows, therefore, that if there is a hierarchy to the commandments—God’s moral law—there must also be a hierarchy associated to breaking those commandsments—sin. And that's stated plainly here:

For instance, if we see a Christian believer sinning (clearly I'm not talking about those who make a practice of sin in a way that is "fatal," leading to eternal death), we ask for God's help and he gladly gives it, gives life to the sinner whose sin is not fatal. There is such a thing as a fatal sin, and I'm not urging you to pray about that. Everything we do wrong is sin, but not all sin is fatal. (I John 5:16,17 The Message)

John doesn't tell us precisely what this fatal sin is, but he does clearly establish the Biblical principle of gradation to sin. I propose that since Jesus has authenticated that the most important commandment is to love and worship God, then the greatest sin we can commit is to fail to love and worship God. And this is why none of us can stand before God with our own righteousness, why it was necessary for Jesus to pay the price for our sin and justify us in the eyes of God--because every man, woman and child of us has committed that worst of sins.

Indispensable Guilt

Perhaps you're familiar with the movie, Seven? It was a very dark, even outre' film, yet powerful in its emotional impact, and, I think, in the implications of its themes to modern society. In it, a mysterious serial killer is "preaching" (as Morgan Freeman, playing an older detective investigating the case, calls it) by committing a succession of grisly murders, each with the theme of one of the seven deadly sins. When Freeman's character, on the verge of retirement, finally recognizes the pattern, he researches the sins and informs his superior and the young detective he is training to take his place (Brad Pitt) that the seven deadly sins were a common topic of medieval sermons, but have long since fallen out of style. Such is the skill of the writer, director and actors that as we watch the gruesome case take its course, we find ourselves almost sympathetic to the murderer as the sordid objects of his cruelty get their comeuppance--especially the lawyer and the child-molester. In this way the film engages in some interesting, and perhaps even useful, social commentary. But in the end we are convinced that the murderer is driven mad as much by his religious impulses as by his abhorrence of the depravity of contemporary society.

The overarching message of the film--that moral outrage at sin, or guilt for one's own sin--is a mental disorder, has been a recurring theme from popular media, entertainment...and the professional mental health community in western civilization now for many decades. This is not a new idea, however. We first encounter its most primitive form in the story of the fall. The serpent's statement to Eve concerning God's prohibition of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge and his warning of fatal consequences was, "You won't die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you'll see what's really going on. You'll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil." (Genesis 3: 4,5 Eugene Peterson's translation, The Message) In other words, "it's all a trick; God's just 'having one over' on you. No need to feel bad about it. We're all adults here." Sound familiar? Maybe something like, "guilt is just (insert authority figure of choice here, i.e. parents, society, organized religion, etc.)'s way of controlling you,"?

This concept has been inculcated with extraordinary success in modern western culture. Over and over, from thousands of different sources, sometimes overtly, often times subtly, we are instructed that much of what the Bible calls sin is just another socially valid variety of human behavior, and that any feelings of guilt that may arise from that behavior is pathology, a form of mental disfunction that we should purge from our thoughts to be truly healthy and well-balanced. In its most advanced stages, this vision of progressive orthodoxy expresses itself in a kind of moral inversion such that any public endorsement of Biblical behavioral prohibitions is itself condemned as sin--the sin of intolerance, bigotry and hatred. Nowhere is this more prevalent than with regard to sexual behavior. Western culture has come to esteem sexual indulgence of almost every kind to the point where it is celebrated as a virtue. The Marvin Gay song Sexual Healing comes to mind.

All of this begs the question: what is sin? The dictionary definition of, "a transgression of religious or moral law" (American Heritage) seems a bit thin, although I think by looking to the Ten Commandments we can get a clue as to its most essential meaning, specifically the very first of the ten. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before (or besides) me." (Exodus 20: 2,3 ESV) And here's the crux of the matter. This very first law of God holds the key to all we must call sin. It's man's rebellion against God's right of sovereignty and the self-evident obligation to worship God that is (1) the greatest sin, and (2) the source of all other sin. This first and most deadly sin is the one that condemns us all; at the moment of our birth, innocent of all other things, with our first breath we cry out in a petulant scream of worship to ourselves as the center of the universe, a recapitulation of Eve's first sin. Eating the forbidden fruit? No, aspiring to break the obligation of worship and submission to God, to be, in effect, equal with God. Remember the serpent's words of seduction: "...the moment you eat of that tree...you'll be just like God." No need to worship your equal.

So, where does that leave us with regard to this modern secular view of guilt as pathology? If we take as a given that human existence is a spiritual battle to determine our eternal destiny (which I do because it's scriptural--see Ephesians 6:10-13); and that Christ's incarnation and death on the cross was the divine redemptive act to pay for our sin and re-establish our relationship with God; and that the spiritual forces of evil at work in this world want to keep us from accepting God's redemption--then it naturally follows that this widely disseminated view is an effective weapon in the arsenal of those forces working to keep us separated from God.

Look at it this way for a moment: sin is man's biggest problem. The smallest granule of human misery in this life is directly attributable to sin, and dooms man to eternal separation from God. Now God solved the sin problem through Jesus's incarnation and sacrificial death, but the one prerequisite to "cashing in" on that redemption is man must repent of his sin and accept the Lordship of Christ (I know that sounds like two prerequisites, but it's actually a package deal). Yet for man to repent of his sin, he must first be convinced of it. That's the role of the gospel (preaching) and the work of Holy Spirit. "God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb--preaching, of all things!--to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation." (I Cor. 1:21 The Message), and, "...you know perfectly well that the Spirit of God would never prompt anyone to say 'Jesus be damned!' Nor would anyone be inclined to say 'Jesus is Master!' without the insight of the Holy Spirit." (I Cor. 12:3 The Message) So, if our spiritual adversary (that's the literal meaning of the word satan, by the way--"the adversary") wishes to keep us from redemption, one of his most potent tools is to persuade us that we don't need it, that sin is not a problem for us because there either is no such thing, or if there is, it's not anything that we have done.

"I've never killed anyone! I've never raped anyone! I'm basically a good person. And besides, if there is a God, he's a God of love, right? He wouldn't send me to hell. There probably is no hell anyway. That's just an archaic tribal superstition." With these and similar internal monologues the member of a modern western society can silence the voice of his conscience as the Holy Spirit tries to convince him of his sin.

"They live blindfold in a world of illusion, and are cut off from the life of God through ignorance and insensitiveness. They have stifled their consciences and then surrendered themselves to sensuality, practicing any form of impurity which lust can suggest." (Ephesians 4:18,19 Phillips translation) Muzzle the conscience for long enough, and it will go mute permanently. Guilt is more than useful, it's indispensable.

Danse Macabre

One of the great tragedies for people living out of relationship with God is that so many of them think they are living a decent moral life, yet are in reality living a life of empty pretense. Paul confronted this situation in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15 verse 19: "If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." and again in verse 32: "What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'" (ESV)

The central theme here, of course, is that there is an eternal dimension to our existence, and that our relationship with God, purchased for us by Christ's redemptive sacrifice, will not just be for the duration of our physical bodies. If this were the case, Paul says, if our relationship with God only lasted for the duration of this physical life and "...all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we're a pretty sorry lot." (I Cor. 15:19 in Eugene Peterson's translation The Message). Paul's quotation of Isaiah 22:13 in verse 32 "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," must have resonated with his Greek readers, because it seems to sum up the philosophy of the Epicureans who held that pleasure was the ultimate good and so devoted themselves to hedonism as an expression of that good. Paul seems to say, if there is no eternal dimension to our existence, no resurrection, no hope of eternal relationship with God, forget about Christianity and its moral constraints, forget about any greater meaning that your life might have because it doesn't have any meaning; live for the moment, become a hedonist and indulge yourself!

It's true enough that there are many people today who are doing just that, but I submit that most people are doing something different. They are playing a game, trying to pretend that their lives do have meaning and moral decency, while, in the ultimate tragic irony, they deny the very source of that meaning and are cut off the basis of all moral truth--which is, of course, God.

There's a good reason so many play this game. It takes some doing to completely abandon meaning and morality; man was created by God to desire meaning and morality, to seek God, to be in relationship with God. In times past we've called this the conscience. C.S. Lewis wrote extensively about it in Mere Christianity calling it the law of human nature, that innate sense of right and wrong that nobody seems to be able to live up to. The Apostle Paul spoke of this in his lecture to the Athenians, "And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him..." (Acts 17:26-27 ESV), and again in his letter to the Romans, "When the gentiles, who have no knowledge of the Law, act in accordance with it by the light of nature, they show that they have a law in themselves, for they demonstrate the effect of a law operating in their own hearts. Their own consciences endorse the existence of such a law, for there is something which condemns or excuses their actions," (Romans 2:14-15 Phillips translation).

And this is the dilemma most of humanity finds itself in: people want to think of themselves as fundamentally good, they want to think that their lives have meaning; yet due to the fallen nature of humanity, they do not want to submit themselves to Christ's lordship. Many even deny the existence of God while paradoxically validating at least some of the moral code which only derives its authority from God.

If John Lennon's song Imagine is to be taken seriously, there are apparently some who yearn for a meaningless, moral-free life--"Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today ..." --but for the most part I believe this is adolescent self-pity expressing itself in a misguided attempt to be profound. Most people are trapped in the vacuous charade of pretending that their lives are connected to some greater meaning and moral value even as they disavow the origin of their existence, the source of its meaning and the authority of all moral truth, a self-delusional danse macabre that will result in their own eternal separation from God.