Recently I\u2019ve had a very pleasant chat with some extremely nice people; among several topics there were memories from the distant past. A person recalled that Catholics had been perceived as people preoccupied with sin, whereas other denominations apparently were passing on a much happier message about God\u2019s love. And now a few decades later nobody seems to talk about sin, as seemingly nobody wants to hear about it. It\u2019s actually understandable: church-goers usually are pretty decent people without seriously indecent sinful tendencies \u2013 so talking about sin is missing the point. For others talking about sin is questioning their own lifestyles and labelling them with an unpleasant tag. It seems there\u2019s no audience for any talk on sin. So I\u2019m going to give it a go.<\/p>\n
Part of the problem with sin is its massively simplified understanding. In common perception a sin is a breach of religious law; a bit like speeding or petty crime. Consequently it seems to be an artificial concept having little or nothing in common with everyday reality. It seems that most of the Ten Commandments are a) covered by civil law or b) outdated, i.e. without any real application to life. One way or another, there\u2019s no need to bother about them or other religious rules. My suggestion: for this sermon let\u2019s abandon the word \u2018sin\u2019 and replace it with a different one: \u2018selfishness\u2019. If you think carefully you will realise that those things we traditionally call \u2018sins\u2019 are different expressions of selfishness.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s first reading presents the final stage of king David\u2019s adultery; a moment of whim and lust that turned nasty, with lies, manipulations, deception and eventually murder. All those were driven by the king\u2019s selfishness: seduction at the beginning, and cover up in order to avoid responsibility. He was in the absolute centre of all those acts \u2013 nothing else and nobody else mattered. You could argue that the story doesn\u2019t apply to your lives as you are rather decent people; and you\u2019re probably right. But in our own case, perhaps on a much smaller scale, is each one of us totally selfless? I wouldn\u2019t dare say so about myself.<\/p>\n
![\"dog\"](\"http:\/\/tadthepole.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/06\/dog.jpg?w=186&h=300\")
And that\u2019s the point. Your selfishness can affect people in a direct or indirect way; and that\u2019s something very unpleasant regardless. There are some small things that can be really tiresome. When I bought my dog I trained him just in order to make it bearable to other people. Unintentionally the dog is a pretty likeable creature, but that wasn\u2019t the purpose \u2013 it just came as a by-product.<\/p>\n
At the end of the first reading there\u2019s a rather strange statement by the prophet Nathan: \u2018The Lord, for his part, forgives your sin.\u2019<\/i>God\u2019s forgiveness is just one dimension of dealing with the king\u2019s selfishness; he, the king will have to face consequences from those affected by his actions. And that\u2019s actually the more difficult bit, because we, people, are not so quick or keen to forgive and forget. So, instead of fixing troubled relationships perhaps it\u2019s easier to keep them trouble free in the first place, simply by working on our own selfishness. That\u2019ll do the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently I\u2019ve had a very pleasant chat with some extremely nice people; among several topics there were memories from the distant past. A person recalled that Catholics had been perceived as people preoccupied with sin, whereas other denominations apparently were passing on a much happier message about God\u2019s love. And now a few decades later nobody seems to talk about sin, as seemingly nobody wants to hear about it. It\u2019s actually understandable: church-goers usually are pretty decent people without seriously indecent sinful tendencies \u2013 so talking about sin is missing the point. For others talking about sin is questioning their own lifestyles and labelling them with an unpleasant tag. It seems there\u2019s no audience for any talk on sin. So I\u2019m going to give it a go. Part of the problem with sin is its massively simplified understanding. In common perception a sin is a breach of religious law; a bit like speeding or petty crime. Consequently it seems to be an artificial concept having little or nothing in common with everyday reality. It seems that most of the Ten Commandments are a) covered by civil law or b) outdated, i.e. without any real application to life. One way or another, there\u2019s no need to bother about them or other religious rules. My suggestion: for this sermon let\u2019s abandon the word \u2018sin\u2019 and replace it with a different one: \u2018selfishness\u2019. If you think carefully you will realise that those things we traditionally call \u2018sins\u2019 are different expressions of selfishness. Today\u2019s first reading presents the final stage of king David\u2019s adultery; a moment of whim and lust that turned nasty, with lies, manipulations, deception and eventually murder. All those were driven by the king\u2019s selfishness: seduction at the beginning, and cover up in order to avoid responsibility. He was in the absolute centre of all those acts \u2013 nothing else and nobody else mattered. You could argue that the story doesn\u2019t apply to your lives as you are rather decent people; and you\u2019re probably right. But in our own case, perhaps on a much smaller scale, is each one of us totally selfless? I wouldn\u2019t dare say so about myself. And that\u2019s the point. Your selfishness can affect people in a direct or indirect way; and that\u2019s something very unpleasant regardless. There are some small things that can be really tiresome. When I bought my dog I trained him just in order to make it bearable to other people. Unintentionally the dog is a pretty likeable creature, but that wasn\u2019t the purpose \u2013 it just came as a by-product. At the end of the first reading there\u2019s a rather strange statement by the prophet Nathan: \u2018The Lord, for his part, forgives your sin.\u2019God\u2019s forgiveness is just one dimension of dealing with the king\u2019s selfishness; he, the king will have to face consequences from those affected by his actions. And that\u2019s actually the more difficult bit, because we, people, are not so quick or keen to forgive and forget. So, instead of fixing troubled relationships perhaps it\u2019s easier to keep them trouble free in the first place, simply by working on our own selfishness. That\u2019ll do the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-c"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}