Stop Hitting Yourself

Holy Watermelon

If sin were ugly, the world would be a paradise. Sin has a lot of faces in religious traditions around the world, some more consequential than others.

Hamartiology is the study of sin, and it looks like some folk only want to define the line so they know how close they can stand. Sin is simply the misstep or error that divides people. Some people are more interested in listing sins than in uniting people. Ther principle that defines sin even exists in atheist philosophy, when appropriately defined.

Buddhist thinkers differ on the value of discussing sin, some deny the principle altogether, others recognize that harm begets harm.

In Shinto doctrine, sin (or tsumi) is the idea that bad things have lingering effects, this even includes personal ugliness in cultural manifestation. Harae is the process of cleaning up those things that get in our way.

Thinking about karma too much is bad, but doing bad things gives you more bad karma, so that's even worse.

The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) is a terrible misnomer, built on the cultural obsession with round numbers. There are in fact 14 individual commandments in the decalogue, that's why different traditions give different lists. The Torah actually lists 613 commandments, but they don't have the weight of the decalogue, not being written by the finger of God.

The Seven Deadly Sins are great, but poorly understood by many, we'll give you the short version.

As the Doctor says, "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many."

The sacrifice of Christ as taught by most Christians was a lot more than a rough weekend of not being alive, it included intense suffering beyond the comprehension of most, all to empower his demand that we orgive one another, just as we need forgiveness.

All this and more....

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