To die, to sleep--Hamlet reflects on suicide, and realizes that the reason more people aren't afraid to do it - the reason why people instead "bear the whips and scorns of time" is that they fear for what will happen to their souls after their deaths, which he calls "the undiscovered country."
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. [...]
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, [...]
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns [...]
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
[...] Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered. (Hamlet, III.I.71-97)
It is this place after death that Christianity fills with the rolls of Heaven and Hell, and the fear of the latter is what is used to urge people to fight against sin, to instead choose to live righteous lives. I'm a bit reductive here, as there are positives noted in Scripture as well; but, we would be remiss not to acknowledge the role that sin and the fear of sin take in our spiritual lives.
We sin, we go to Hell.
We have forgiveness of sin, we go to Heaven.
That's the extent of it. There is no in-between for believers. And, since our default position is sin, we start out going to Hell. This is more than a bit troublesome for many believers, especially in light of 2,000 years of high infant mortality. If a human being starts out having a sinful nature derived from his or her parents, then if he or she dies before that sin can be forgiven, he or she will be doomed to Hell.
In Protestant Christianity, we fumble around this one by saying that a human can't be a sinner until he or she has learned the difference between right and wrong. In Catholicism, they just baptize babies and are done with it.
(As an aside: this could be the reason Catholicism is so adamant about abortion - anyone conceived and then aborted could be in spiritual jeopardy. In “No Embryos in Paradise,” found in his collection, Inventing the Enemy, Umberto Eco explains Thomas Aquinas's description of how an embryo forms a soul, and it turns out that Aquinas thought its human soul wasn't complete until fairly late in the process and thus there was nothing to either be condemned or saved. Catholics who find themselves torn between abortion viewpoints might want to check out that essay to help support a pro-choice stance, though Eco himself doesn't specify a stance either way.)
But let's go back to that idea. We sin, and we start out in sin. Paul says, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23), and it's from there that we assume babies, too, are tainted with sin.
But none of it says what sin is.
That's the weird thing. We define sin not by any verse of the Bible. Instead, we seem to define it in abstract ways.
For the legalistic among us, we describe it as breaking God's law. It's why, when some on the right claim that homosexuality is immoral, they refer to laws of the Old Testament - because those laws are sacrosanct. They represent clear delineations of right and wrong. Except when those delineations aren't clear, and then there's a huge profit to be made in writing books commenting on the Bible and teasing out justifications for various different things. For instance, the Old Testament clearly says "Thou Shalt Not Murder" - and then God's chosen people turn around and brutally slaughter surrounding tribes. The apologists argue that murder is OK in cases of war, self defense, and legal discipline (though they might try to rephrase it as "killing" or "execution").
In such a case, both murder-apologists and anti-murderers claim to hold the moral high ground. In Romans 14, Paul showed us another situation where two different camps interpreted scripture differently, and thus this could provide us insight into this murder issue.
I already provided some background on this in my Shades of White article, but let's go further into the exact reasoning behind it:
Paul spoke to Christians who held different beliefs on the practice of eating meat. Some I've heard interpret this scripture do so to say that Paul was not referring to vegetarianism per se, but that those who chose not to eat meat were concerned that the meat had been sacrificed to pagan gods. Nothing in Romans 14 indicates this strictly, but the passage closely parallels 1 Corinthians 8, which does specifically call out food sacrificed to idols.
Using that argument, we see a potential point of view that goes something like this: "I can't be certain whether this meat was sacrificed to pagan gods or not. If, by eating that meat, I'm reminded of those gods whom I used to worship, I might be tempted away from God. Ergo, I should not eat that meat." It probably wasn't so clearly stated, but the intent seems to be the same.
Paul, for his part, thought that the meat itself shouldn't be such an icon and shouldn't cause such temptation. He couldn't personally relate to the effect it had on those who were tempted away from God by it. But, he could understand their argument, could place himself in their shoes. In so doing, he realized that to keep pressuring them to eat meat might, in fact, pull them away from God. The result - they'd be sinning.
(Even assuming Romans 14 stands alone and is talking about vegetarianism, the result of the argument is the same - by trying to force something on people who aren't able to handle it, you might cause them to sin.)
It's interesting to me that this argument takes place at the end of the book of Romans, because throughout that letter, Paul had been trying to explain to the Romans about sin and the law. Here, finally, he lays out an argument that has nothing to do with the law - in fact, Christ had already abolished the law on unclean meat by saying that it is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean. Paul reveals that sin doesn't have to be tied to the law, just as righteousness is not tied to the law.
In Romans 14, as in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul describes sin as something that happens not as the result of acting against the law, but instead acting in a way that threatens our relationships with God. That is, by eating the potentially-idol-sacrificed meat, a Christian who might find him/herself straying to other gods was knowingly risking his/her relationship with God. Acting in such a way that you open yourself up to separation from God, being willing to make such an action without regard to that relationship, is sin.
There's a corollary as well - acting in such a way that you put another Christian's relationship with God in jeopardy.
And thus, the definition of sin is not acting against God's law, but acting against God's love - either personally with God, or tangentially with another believer.
There's another way to arrive at the same conclusion, which is fortunate - if my hypothesis about sin is correct, it must fit other arguments that are Biblically-sourced.
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”We know from Christ's own words that the law can be broken down based on what's most important for believers - and that the two most important parts are the commands He quoted: "Love the Lord your God" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." These quotes come from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, respectively. According to Deuteronomy, "Love the Lord your God" was the first commandment given to the Jews. Interestingly, though, the command to love our neighbors was buried deep within the commands given only to the Levites, shortly before the command not to wear linen and wool blends and to execute anyone who engages in adultery, and shortly after the command to pay employees on time.
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34-40)
Christ really had to understand the law deeply to see that as the second greatest commandment. Had He not taught it to us, we might have ignored it as simply a line in the midst of a lot of other lines about treating people fairly. And, and I say this to shame those who take this tack, we might have simply discarded it as a command given only to the Levites, the priests of God's people. A 3-second-long Google Search will prove to you how often we currently do that regarding other commands in that book we don't like (it's why I pointed out the linen and wool blends command and the adultery command - those are two that apologists have argued away by saying they were "only for the Levites").
But not only does Christ point out these two laws as being "greatest," He further goes on to say that "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." What could that possibly mean?
With the Ten Commandments, at least, the answer is usually easy:
- "You shall have no other gods before me" - loving God with everything we are means loving Him more than anything else, including other gods.
- "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below" - loving God means recognizing God and not the symbol or sign of God (the writer of Exodus understood Saussure?).
- “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God" - loving God means respecting the name of God (but that writer didn't understand Saussure that well).
- “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy" - loving God means taking one day a week to remember Him.
- “Honor your father and your mother" - this is the start of the "love your neighbor" section. Your father and mother are closer than neighbors, and have sacrificed much for you, more than neighbors generally will. Ergo, you should love them by keeping their commands (within reason - the "honor" command is awfully vague).
- “You shall not murder." - Obviously, committing violence against someone is not a loving act. Love demands you recognize the right of other people to live.
- “You shall not commit adultery." - When a couple have pledged themselves to each other, coming into that relationship and tearing it apart is an unloving act. It hurts both of the people in that original relationship, and will probably hurt you as well. Ditto if you are one of the people in that relationship - you are violating your partner's trust in the most extreme of ways.
- “You shall not steal." - When someone owns property, and you take that property from them, you're declaring that you have a greater right to that property than they do - and they paid for it, whereas you did not, so that not only are they out the property, they're out the original money for the property. It's a bum deal. Love demands respecting other people's property.
- “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor." - When you testify that your neighbor has done wrong he/she has not done, that can cause extreme distress, jail time, even death for your neighbor. False testimony can only be driven by hate.
- “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” - Well, first of all, people aren't property in a civil society. That out of the way, this seems to be in-line with the later postulations of Jesus when He said that it wasn't enough not to murder but also not to think angry thoughts at someone. This is the only thought crime of the Ten Commandments, and the only one that is only inwardly-driven. Remember that the command is "love your neighbor as yourself" - that is, you also have to love yourself. When you love yourself, you recognize that coveting someone else's property or relationships is painful, it causes you to feel bad about yourself, it causes depression, anxiety, and so on. It can also lead you to doing the four things in the list above coveting - murdering, stealing, cheating, and lying in testimony.
That said, once people learn to love, they no longer need law.
That's what Paul seems to be trying to say in Romans:
So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:4-6)We are now dead to the law - that is, we no longer need the law to inform us, because we have the Love of Christ. The Love of Christ drives out sin, it prevents it and purifies us. Paul tries to explain that the law can lead us to sin, and the reason is simple: when we only live by a standard of "do this" or "do not do this," we have no reason for it, no understanding behind it. If we don't have love for one another in our hearts, we can see someone else's property and think "I shouldn't take that, because it's against the law," but, the moment we think we can do so without anyone noticing, the moment we think that we can get away with it, we'll steal. The evil that lurks within all of us can be somewhat controlled by the law, but it is not perfect. But, when we love, we don't need the law to tell us not to steal - we know that by stealing, we would be hurting that other person, and our love will not even allow us to consider the concept.
So then, if we have the love of Christ, we are free from the law. We are not bound to do what it says. Christ showed us this Himself when He healed a man and a woman on the Sabbath:
On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”
The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Luke 13:10-16)
One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.In each case, Jesus called people out for being willing to do for themselves what they were unwilling to do for others, citing the law. The Pharisees were using the law as a shield to prevent them from having to show love - that is, if they had the power to heal, they would still hold it back, as they sought to hold Christ back, and would proclaim that this was simply God's will. But God's will is love, and loving means sometimes breaking God's law in order to achieve God's love.
Then he asked them, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” And they had nothing to say. (Luke 14:1-6)
As Paul notes, that does not mean we can do whatever we want. Or, rather, we aren't free to sin in whatever ways we would like. We cannot use the love of Christ as a writ saying that we have complete freedom to do anything without repercussions. But, if we actually have the love of Christ, we are free to do whatever we want - because what we want will always be what's loving.
The challenge is that we don't always love. Even Paul notes that he has problems with that:
For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. (Romans 7:18-19)That is, we must be careful and evaluate each thing to know whether it is the love of Christ that compels it, or our sinful nature. But, if we are sure that what we do is good, then we should do it without regard to whether or not the "law" says we should not.
Paul gives us a test by which we can know whether something is part of the love of Christ or the sinful nature:
All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. (1 Corinthians 6:12, KJV)If something is not beneficial, it is controls us, if it does not help build us up, if it is only for our own good and not for the good of others, then it is not done with the love of Christ.
All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth. (1 Corinthians 10:23-24, KJV)
Many scholars have claimed that Paul was either sarcastic with his "I have the right to do anything" comments. In fact, the NIV added in the words "you say" so that he's shown to be quoting an audience and reflecting what they're claiming; which is why I quoted the KJV instead, to show that that isn't apparent in the original. I would argue, instead, that Paul does actually believe that "all things are lawful" - that is, because he is no longer bound by law, he can do anything he wants. But, he applies this test, of whether or not something controls him, whether or not something is edifying, etc., to see whether he should do it or not.
Finally, we find that homosexuality - and indeed, anything - is "good" so long as it is beneficial, does not master us, and so on. "Sexual immorality" is dangerous not because it acts against the will of God, but because it's such an intimate act and has the potential to hurt people in ways that other activities do not. It also has the ability to control us ("I will not be mastered by anything," as Paul says), as an addictive activity.
But if two people, regardless of their gender, love each other, are honest with each other and with themselves, are open and communicative in discussing their needs, then they are showing love toward one another. They can do anything within the bounds of that relationship that they both agree upon, so long as they aren't being mastered by those things. If those two people happen to share the same gender, that's OK - if they act with love toward one another, they are doing more good than a heterosexual couple behaving unlovingly toward one another.
Which is worse, my fundy readers - a gay couple who stay devoted to each other for 30 years; or straight couples who divorce and remarry constantly, who cheat, who lie about themselves and their needs to keep their partners happy, who stay in unhappy relationships for "the sake of the children," who abuse each other, and so on? One is loving, the other is not. We should never promote an unloving relationship above a loving one.
Love never fails.
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