• Question: Is sin serious?

    Asked by issi2001 to Blanka, Emma, Mike on 5 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Michael Cook

      Michael Cook answered on 5 Jul 2012:

      It depends!

      If you’re religious, it might be (although many religions have lots of writing about forgiveness and ways of making up for sins committed).

      Lots of sins in religious writing like The Bible have ended up being laws too, either because they make a lot of sense (like not killing people) or because religion used to be a big part of the law in general.

      The tricky parts today are the grey areas – things that the law says are okay, but religions might disagree with, and vice versa. This is why people are sometimes very passionate about issues like abortion, sex before marriage, homosexuality and some scientific experiments.

      There have been lots of questions about religion over the last two weeks, but this is a good one to have towards the end, because the important thing to remember is that lots of people live in a society. Some of them have the same views as you, and others don’t. What matters is that we try and protect everyone, and help them live their lives as they want to (as long as they don’t harm others).

    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 5 Jul 2012:

      I think Mike’s given a brilliant answer.

      We don’t all really agree on what actually counts as a sin and whether sin matters is quite a personal thing.

      If a sin is against the law then it obviously matters because society has decided that thing is wrong and you might go to prison if you do it.

      There are some sins that the bible mentions that I do think are important (and it is wrong to do them) – these tend to be behaviours that hurt other people (like murder etc.)

      Eating too much is also a sin (the sin of gluttony) – to me that is not as important as if I get overweight I am only putting myself at risk and not other people (my opinion might change though when I have a family of my own)

      In the end we rely on the laws to control the ‘big’ sins and people’s individual consciences to control the small ones.

      Does any of this answer your question?

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