Total Number of Possible Sins?

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IN WESTERN, EURO-AMERICAN minds sin is often conceived of as a case of “don’t -do”. There are very few positive sins – sins of omission – in this concept. Even when they exist, as for feeding the hungry, they are usually expressed as negatives: don’t forget to… Don’t ignore… This is true inside and outside the church. One gets in trouble for doing something one should not have done, rarely is one in trouble for not-doing and, again, even then it’s usually expressed as don’t not-do that. Non-payment of taxes is usually expressed as cheating on taxes, or under paying.

Certainly, there are lists of do and do-not in most religious traditions. Christianity, while having many of the same lists, insists that merely doing or not-doing things won’t justify a person before God. To some, this is taken to mean that actions do not matter. Amy Grant sang, “being good is just a fable”. But here I mean in a more theological way: This is especially true in certain areas, usually sex, and not true in other areas: many people who insist God does not harshly judge anyone for their sex lives are convinced God will harshly judge anyone who thinks God does care about sex lives. There are rules, you see, about having no rules. Yet Jesus, who seems to care so much about many things, sets rules about not-doing and then adds rules about not-wanting-to-do, and not-acting-like-you-might, thus implying that the rules are much more involved than we might have thought.

However, throughout Christian history, beginning with Jesus and proceeding through Saint Paul and all the Church Fathers, there is this insistence that it is not the keeping of rules that justifies us before God. Rather it is faith. Abraham was justified by his faith. All the saints were so justified, and only thus will we be justified before God as well. What can this mean? And what, if anything, does it have to do with rules? What is sin? If sin is the thing that makes us unjustified before God, and sin is simply an issue of breaking rules, then there must be a way in which keeping the rules makes us just. To further complicate this there is the idea that no one can keep all the rules, so God has created a system that is, at its heart, unjust: God has created a system that requires us to do something we cannot do. For this, we require an atonement to make up for not-doing the thing that is impossible for us to do.

Something seems very off in this popular reading of Christianity; very off. The writer admits this reading is very American, very Protestant, but, also held by some American Catholics. It cries out in a way that will be familiar to anyone who has ever asked, “Why didn’t the eagles just fly them to Mordor?”

Perhaps, if “the law cannot justify us” (as St Paul and the Church teach) then there is something else meant by “justification”.

First, it must be noted that breaking the rules actually is sin. To take the Lord’s name in vain, to steal or commit adultery, and so forth, these are all actual sins happening. So, also, is to not-feed the poor, to not-pay workers justly, to covet. Yet, it is my point that these are not “sins” in the sense that each is a discreet, markable item on a shopping list of possible sins. Paul says the Law is our teacher, our tutor. This is convenient since, in Hebrew, “torah” means “instruction”. We can take that to mean that the law is there to teach us the shopping list of 613 different things. (The writer uses that number because it is the traditional total number of laws in the Torah.) Or, possibly, that the 613 things are there to teach us we cannot keep the full list – but that would seem to make God rather silly. What is the law there to teach us? Today on the Byzantine Calendar is the feast of the Prophet Moses, so it’s a good question to look at today!

There’s this story from Matthew 14:22-34. It’s a familiar one where Jesus is on land praying, but the disciples are on a boat out on the Sea of Galilee. A storm rises at night and, while the disciples are dealing with the situation, Jesus is seen to be walking on the water across the sea to the other side. Peter says, “Jesus, if that’s really you, tell me to walk to you across the water.” And Jesus says, “Come”. So Peter gets out of the boat and starts to walk on the water. But – soon enough – he is distracted by the waves, wind, and rain. He starts to get scared and sinks, crying out, “Lord, save me!” And Jesus catches him sinking, and brings him back to the boat.

Where is the sin?

The author has heard several homilies on this passage. The “location” of the sin varies. Peter doubting “is it really you”, Peter challenging Jesus, Peter getting scared. The author has even heard one homily (more an anti-Catholic rant) where the sin is Peter getting out of the boat, “like the Pope making up the Filioque and leaving the other Patriarchs”. All of these homilies are predicated on the idea that sin is a checkmark-able thing on a list. One of the actions in this story must be Peter’s sin. That’s why he ends up crying out “save me, Lord” and why we (the homilies all go) must also cry out to Jesus.

Psalm 51 says, “in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Verse 7 in the MT, but generally, Verse 5 in English translations.) Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics pray this Psalm of repentance multiple times a day. It’s on Verse 5 (or 7) that I would like to pivot: what both the Christian East and the Christian West refer to as our fallen human nature – although it is claimed they disagree about what that means. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, discussing Original Sin in ¶396-421, indicates that Original Sin (the Sin by which we are all fallen) is not an action. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” – a state and not an act (¶404). This state of sin is what we all live in. The Orthodox refer to the sins we commit, “known and unknown, voluntary and involuntary”. The idea of an unknown, involuntary sin sounds very much *not* like the west’s idea of mortal sin. And yet, what if all sins are mortal – just not in the same way? We must, absolutely, repent of even little sins. An unrepented (even enjoyed) peccadillo will take us away from God and into death much quicker than a repented major sin – which, by virtue of the repentance, became a way to heaven. But what is it we are repenting?

On my way back into the faith after 10-plus years away, I considered, for a time, the possibility of conversion to Orthodox Judaism. Like any good “religion shopper”, I bought a lot of things: Sabbath candles, kippot, a tallit, a sidur. At this time (late 90s – early 00s) there were a lot of resources online. So, unwilling to make my housemates keep kosher, I thought perhaps I could at least eat Kosher. There are time limits for how long after eating meat or milk before one can eat the other. So, there I was, standing in the Castro Safeway in my kippah, planning my meals and snacks with this “kosher clock” in my head. It was as if I was praying right there in Aisle 6. The process of shopping with intention, aware of God’s presence, was prayer in some way that my hitherto Epipsco-Pagan brain could not understand. What if all 613 laws in the instruction of Moses’ code are that? A reminder of being under the hand of God?

Decades later, reading in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that it is the personal relationship with God that is prayer, I would get a glimmer of what Fr Victor meant.

Back to Peter and the boat. “Is that You, Lord?” Yes. “Then tell me to come walking with you!” Come on out, Bro! “Lord, save me!” The failure happens in the middle there. Once, in Confession, the late Fr Victor Sokolov that “The first thing to confess is the failure to recognize God’s presence.” Peter, having taken a couple of steps actually walking on water, forgets momentarily that it is God in front of him. He forgets that it is God that told him to walk on the water. And he sinks.

Forgetting God’s presence (or pretending to be unaware of it) is the first sin. All other actions performed under that pretense are sin continuing. There is only one sin: to ignore God. One can be feeding the poor, loving people, not-judging them. One can be a pastor or a successful preacher. One can heal the sick, work miracles, and even look very holy. But any of those actions performed, as it were, behind God’s back is this one and only sin being acted out. It’s not a list of things to do or not do, rather it’s a relationship. One does not wake up in the morning and say, “today I shall pretend not to be married.” To do so would be sin from the get-go, even if it never crossed over into actual adultery.

Justification, then, is to be acting in God’s presence. He cannot abide sin and sinners cannot abide his presence: they melt before him as wax melts at the presence of fire. One can stand in God’s presence in Aisle 6 of the Castro Safeway even as the person with the other shopping cart can be engaged in active sin. It’s a matter of grace and cooperation.