Sin and Guilt

Born into a Catholic family, systematic indoctrination in the 

Christian belief system started as a child. This continued till High 

School. Later, during the few years I spent in a seminary, the brainwashing was complete.

After retirement, with time in hand, I started reading up on religion in general and about Christianity in particular. What fascinated me was the history of the development of Christianity.

I have made it a point to read books written by authors with an

objective and critical outlook rather than those religiously biased. 

Among the various authors I have read, two have shocked me. 

Their ideas are in total contrast to my brainwashed belief system. 

They are Kenneth Humphries and D. M. Murdock aka Acharya S. 

The former claims, with proof, that Jesus never existed while the 

latter, in a similar vein, says that Christianity developed based on 

ancient myths.

I will return to these two frequently. For the following, I am largely indebted to Humphries for ideas and certain expressions. 

The philosophers of the ancient world had no notion of "sin". The 

Greeks did not really have the concept of sin as the Abrahamic 

religions define it. They regarded various acts as impious and likely to bring down the wrath of the gods. Lack of respect for one's parents was one. Excessive pride and tempting fate were others. The Greeks felt that the gods  would punish someone who indulged in such an act. But it wasn't a "sin," exactly; it was just unwise.

The Greeks called this notion akrasia. Akrasia was defined as a lack of self-control or the state of acting against one’s better judgment. For Plato, akrasia essentially did not exist. Plato did not see how we could go against what we thought was best. Aristotle believed that our reason can be overpowered by passions so that we do not make a judgment of what is best. Aristotle’s concept is that “you never act contrary to what you think is best and so you never sin.”

The idea of sin is unique to the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. In earlier Judaism, the notion of sin as a weight to be carried was dominant: hence the ritual of sending a scapegoat, burdened with all the transgressions of the Israelites, into the wilderness. Between the sixth and fourth centuries BC there was a radical shift in perceptions. Sin was now conceived as a debt that had to be settled: it was very similar to an economic transaction. The Israelites thus saw their Babylonian exile as a way of paying off their sinning past and, a few centuries later, Christians identified Jesus’s sacrifice as the most epochal transaction of them all: Christ paid the ultimate price for centuries’ worth of errant human behavior.

Paula Frederiksen is the author of the book, Sin: The Early History of an Idea. To the question: What did Jesus teach about sin and redemption from it, and how did Christian theologians from Paul to Augustine amend his ideas?  she answers as follows:

Jesus spoke to fellow Jews largely about “Jewish” sins, framed by reference to the Ten Commandments. Paul spoke to pagans, and so he concentrates on “pagan” sins, the foremost one, in his (Jewish) view, being idolatry. Jesus tells his Jewish audience to repent, and to forgive those who repent of wrongs directed at them; Paul tells his pagan audience to repent of worshiping pagan gods via their images (“idols’) and to commit to worshiping exclusively the God of Israel.

Four centuries later, Augustine believed that sin is not so much as something that we do; rather it is a condition that humans are universally born into; he called it original sin. He also held that most of humanity was predestined to damnation. His ideas would have baffled both Jesus and Paul.

When God created man, He gave him free will to act. The temptations around are so many and so appealing, he will, in all likelihood, go against ‘God’s will’ as dictated by the perverted minds of Christian theologians. He inevitably ‘sins'. As a solution, the priestly class come forward with the notion of repentance and atonement, which involves obedience of, and payments to, the priests as well as animal sacrifices. Sin became a priestly protection racket. Religion creates the 'problem' and then offers the 'solution'!

In the twisted minds of Christian theologians, sin became more obnoxious than it had ever been. As Christianity developed, so too did sin. No longer was 'sin' just an action; transgression could occur in word or thought.

With Augustine’s theory of original sin, the natural self, with carnal instincts, had to be denied. The guilt that any transgression engendered, even for the tiniest infraction, fed the psychosis upon which Christianity flourished. Sins became cardinal or deadly. Deliberate disobedience of the will of God (as imagined by the priestly class) required the harshest punishment – eternal damnation and the everlasting torments of hell!

In Augustine's judgment – and subsequently, that of the Church – sexual desire and gratification ("lust") had to be controlled, limited and confined. Libido was stigmatized as a sin, detracting us from God. In contrast, celibacy, chastity, and virginity were lauded as being far closer to the perfection of God and were to be the choices of preference. Centuries of misery – sexual and psychological – were the consequence as millions became celibates or fought their own nature. Since such precepts severely threatened the continuation of the human race, passionless, matrimonial intercourse solely for the procreation of children remained permissible.

Thanks to St Augustine and the Church, guilt over the most fundamental of human instincts passed on to generation after generation of humanity – a pang of irrational and morbid guilt no less present among "believers" in the twenty-first century as it was in the fourth or fifth century.