Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:31 PM | August 13, 2023

My weekly profound thoughts:

What is sin?

That seems like an odd question because we all have a pretty good idea of the answer. We sin when we break God’s law. It’s not when we do “sinful” things, but rather it is rejecting God’s laws.

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When human beings are innocent–without the knowledge of good and evil–there is no sin. This is why we smile at children who unknowingly commit morally undesirable deeds. We can even find such acts amusing while correcting their behavior. Who hasn’t laughed at a child who has broken a social norm or committed what would be a sin in an adult?

I was led to this train of thought by one of my cats running up to Margaret and me to proudly display a sparrow he had caught. His brothers all heard the commotion he made and rushed over to admire his hunting skills while the poor bird struggled in its death throws. They wanted to play with it while it was still moving.

As grossed out as I was and as sorry as I felt for the bird, it would never occur to me to think that Turtle had done something wrong. In fact, one of the charms of cats is their “hunting” their toys and watching them chase around after the simulated prey. They are predators, and we are attracted to their predatory behavior, although when it results in the actual death of a bird or rodent we often turn away in disgust.

It is our knowledge of pain and death that makes sin terrifying, and the results of a hunt disquieting to the softer among us (like me). We are attracted and repelled at the same time.

Losing our innocence is a natural consequence of growing up, and as in the story of Adam and Eve the loss of innocence is a tragedy. We discover shame, the necessary limits on appetites, and a sense of good and evil.

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Most civilizations are sustained by parents and communities teaching children to control their appetites as they become rational and capable of understanding sin. This is what social norms, religious instruction, and moral formation are for: to teach rules of behavior that turn us away from cruelty and sin as we come to understand why we should and that there is a right and a wrong way to behave.

The loss of innocence and the discovery of good and evil go together. Or should.

The postmodern revolt against social norms and religion is, at base, an attempt to deny the loss of innocence that comes from eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The revolt against social norms is a rejection of the idea that human beings are no longer innocent.

In other words, alphabet ideologists don’t believe in the concept of sin, and the one thing above others that cannot be allowed is the assertion that God’s laws exist and that human desires should be suppressed when they violate those laws. Every bodily desire–gluttony, or the exercise of unlimited sexual liberty for instance–must be indulged, and any attempt to denigrate the indulgence in those desires must be rejected and ridiculed.

It is, perversely, an attempt to recreate innocence in the world. To simply deny that the Fall ever happened. There is no sin because we simply are who we are, and who we are is expressed in our thoughts and desires which by definition are the ultimate good.

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This belief, I think, is why the alphabet people are simultaneously the least judgmental toward perversions and disgusting desires and yet the most tyrannical against anybody who judges others’ expression of their appetites. They see our judgment as oppression.

It’s hard to see how, with the decline of Judeo-Christian morality as the central truth in Western culture, the slide into this perverse form of atheism can be avoided. It’s not that atheists are more inclined to be immoral–in my experience, most atheists are as intent on being good and decent people and are no more likely to be bad people than a lot of Christians I know.

Most atheists have not rejected the concept of good and evil…yet.

No, the problem is that there is no solid moral ground on which atheists can stand. The Judeo-Christian tradition provides very bright lines beyond which you cannot go, and we are left to argue the specifics of various behaviors and just how bad an act might be. When atheists are challenged regarding why some behavior is considered wrong they find themselves often on a slippery slope with no solid ground. (That’s not to say that Christians and Jews can’t fall into the same traps, as many clearly do).

This is how you get kids showing up at sexualized drag shows. The decline happened slowly at first, then all at once because…why not? Who are we to judge people being who they are? We must embrace them!

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One of the fundamental arguments we are engaged in is this: what is innocence? The alphabet people think our carnal desires are essentially innocent and that societal restrictions on our appetites are the greatest evil.

The foundational idea of Western society is that man is fallen and that our carnal desires lead us into sin.

There is no compromise to be had here because our fundamental views of humanity are opposed.

And this is why we can now find opinions like this in mainstream newspapers:

With that sobering thought, we go on to the funnies:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love the Babylon Bee:

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Interesting things I found around the web:

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And finally:

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