the nature of sin

[Belacqua]

Sin is the preposterous religious notion that The AllMighty Creator of the Universe cares what you do with your genitals.

As so often with this kind of subject, a lot of people seem to think that Christian morality has to do with arbitrary commands handed down by a sky tyrant. For some Christians this is no doubt true, but to pretend that it's the only view is far too narrow. 

Dante spelled out the nature of sin in The Divine Comedy. This is a fictional story but it dramatizes and symbolizes orthodox Christian belief. The differences between Dante's views and those of Augustine or Aquinas are negligible. 

Dante's view of sin, like that of Aquinas, is a Christianized version of the Nicomachean Ethics. It is not about breaking commandments. It is about misdirecting one's love. Dante's view of human nature is very positive; he thinks that we all naturally desire the good -- what's best for us and our societies -- and we only do what's wrong due to misunderstanding or ignorance. Sin is badly-aimed desire, which we think -- mistakenly -- will bring us a good end. 

A simple case is with gluttony, which modern people might call overeating or just general unhealthiness of diet. It is natural to want ice cream, and it's natural to eat it. It's harmful to eat only that, or to desire it to the point of making yourself sick. In all cases like this, virtue consists of the middle path. You eat what's good and what you want in the proper proportions. Each sin has an opposite sin -- in the case of gluttony it would be anorexia or excessive self-denial. 

In my own case, I might feel depressed and get the idea that eating a whole box of caramel Tim Tams will make me feel better. After many experiments, I can definitively say that I feel better after about two, but feel worse after eating the whole box. This is a very minor instance of what Dante means by sin. It is the desire to aim toward the good, which ends up with bad results. 

All this translates very nicely into modern psychological terms. Love of what's harmful, and pursuing it though it gets bad results, can be renamed as obsession or addiction or some kind of neurosis. In this sense psychological health is what Dante means by virtue: balanced behavior which results in what's good for oneself and one's society. 

As always, it's likely that the majority of Christians don't think of sin this way today. Nonetheless the views of Dante and the others I named are a fundamental part of Christian thought, and to discuss the nature of sin without knowing what they said would be like passing judgment on Russian literature without ever having read Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.