What is the most pernicious evil in the world today and has been for a long time, but has been rejected or denied or ignored by most people because they do not see the baneful effect of it?  Some even redefine it to fit their personal, political, or social agenda.  Even churches rarely warn against it.  In fact, the term for it is rarely heard or written about.  I  refer to what used to be called sin.

The first sin in history was almost fatal to the human race which at that time consisted of only two people.  Its devastating effects have plagued the human race ever since.

What is sin?  Since it affects everyone, we can deal with it without needing to mention religion because it is not peculiar to any particular group; it is a human problem.  Sin is an irrational act.  It is a failure of common sense.

Humans are a mixture of the rational and the animalistic or as has been said, humans are rational animals, animals who can think.  We certainly share many characteristics of animals.  In fact, Darwinian evolutionists have been attempting to convince us for more than a hundred and fifty years that we are nothing more than sophisticated monkeys.   But we also have a mind which gives us the ability to think, analyze, evaluate, ponder and abstract.  Animals cannot do this.  Thus humans can develop literature, law, music, art, and invent.  No animal has any of those talents.  A dog who came back to life after dying 50 years ago would be right at home with your dog; a normal man coming back to life after 50 years would be astonished at what he had to learn and relearn today.  Thus, the human intellect, even at the C or D  level, is outstanding compared to any animal.  That is why your dog cannot speak a single word in your language.

The intellect or mind is far more important than the body; it is meant to direct and control both itself and the body.  Thus we say that sin is an irrational action because it acts against the best interests and welfare of the person (soul and the body).  A sin is performing an act, or failing to perform one when required, which militates against some good of the body and/or the soul.

The reason that religion need not be mentioned here is that every person is endowed with a sense of moral right and wrong regardless of his religious belief or lack of it.  We instinctively know when something is morally good or bad.  This is called the Natural Moral Law which comes from the Creator.  But the Natural Moral Law is not looked upon favorably in modern society because it makes moral demands and too many “modern people” prefer evil to good.  The most concrete expression of the Moral Law is found in the Ten Commandments because they simply make sense; a society cannot function without them.  Imagine what would happen in your city if the Ten  Commandments were suspended for a week, or even a day.

While the idea of sin may be ignored or rejected, the evil effects persist regardless of our attitude towards the concept of sin.  Whenever we violate a natural law, either physical, intellectual, moral, somewhere, sometime, somehow, there will be a price to be paid.  Violate the law of gravity and you will pay the price immediately; violate the laws of learning and you will not acquire knowledge; violate the moral law regarding sex outside of marriage and all kinds of miseries will befall you.  There is simply no way to avoid or evade the consequence of irrational behavior.

Sin is also grossly deceptive.  It always promises far more than it will deliver.  In fact, sin has been defined as evil under the appearance of good.  We sin because we expect to get some reward, and we may in the short run, but sin, especially habits of serious sins will leave its mark.  We fool ourselves into thinking that moral evil will give us a better life than a moral good, but since sin is basically irrational, it cannot help but deceive the sinner.

Another aspect of sin is that vice (habits of sins) can lead to a kind of slavery.  The sinner becomes addicted to evil and cannot seem to stop sinning because the perceived benefit clouds his mind to the  adverse effects.  His mind no longer functions reasonably or with common sense.  Think of the drug addict, the serial adulterer or fornicator, the pornography addict; they are enslaved to vice and more often than not, are not even aware of it.  This is the ultimate deception of sin, slavery to the irrational.

When a people or a society reject the idea of sin, great misfortunes come to them:                                                                                     a. What used to be considered bad is now considered good and vice versa; for example, abortion used to be illegal and public prayer was never deemed inappropriate.

b. A minority of persons, sometimes just one person, can bring a whole cultural habit to a halt.  Example: Nativity scenes, public prayer by individuals, Christian prayer, display of religious symbols.  How many times has one atheist been allowed by a judge to disenfranchise thousands from participating in some religious practice because the atheists might be “offended”?

c. People develop a hardness of heart so that immorality seems to have no effect on their thought processes.  Nothing negative seems to bother them.  If you question them about violence on TV or sexually suggestive dialogue or totally humorless “humor”, the response will usually be a shrug because the moral beacon has been extinguished.

I have chosen to deal with this subject from the aspect of reason alone because, as I wrote above, morality affects everyone.  However, appealing to religious authority or orthodox Christian morality would make the case against sin even stronger.  There are those who claim that an anti-abortion attitude is merely a Catholic or Mormon doctrine.  The reality is that the anti-abortion argument can be made solely from a rational viewpoint without mentioning religion at all because abortion is in reality premeditated murder.  The pro-abortion arguments are easily refuted on the basis of reason alone.  Thus, being anti-abortion is simply being rational.

The world is awash in moral evil.  Every one of the Ten Commandments is being flagrantly violated and we are paying the price in the United States whether we realize it or not, because so much in society is going wrong.  Nothing seems to work out; no problems are really being solved; government officials do not seem to move from crisis to crisis with any effective plan to solve the problems.   Colleges have become little more than biased indoctrination centers.  The media has lost all semblance of honest and fair reporting; instead, it preaches an agenda. And on and on.

Unless we regain our grip on reality and start using our heads as nature intended and demands, collapse is inevitable.  Not a pleasant reality, but a definite historical reality.  While sin can be discussed without mentioning God, the reality is that life cannot be lived without Him. There is a Creator who designed the human person to have a relationship with Him. This has been shown over and over down the centuries whether we believe it or not. Not only that, but He has set a goal for us to be united with Him for eternity….whether you believe it or not. Whether we attain that goal depends on our choices throughout our lifetime. Sin, whether you consider it from a rational or religious point of view, militates against this goal. The deliberate habitual sinner will lose out.

The most important day of your life is the last one.   You may or may not know it’s the last day.  Your relationship to the Creator at that time will determine whether you have achieved the goal of human life or not. If you have lived in a mirage of enjoyable sin, you will not enjoy the following day.