Post #2 - Sin

For the purposes of this blog, my rough definition of "sin" is "a thought, word, deed, action, or inaction which puts one's own agenda ahead of God's plan". Pretty broad and esoteric stuff, but that happens alot when God is involved.

We all have sinned. We all are sinning right now. We will all continue to sin. We can't help it - we're all broken, fallen creatures and life in this world is about 85% sin by volume.

(Fortunately, Jesus took care of that for us through forgiveness and grace and the whole cross deal, but that's pretty well documented - this post is about sin itself.)

There are sins of commission and there are sins of omission. There are active sins and passive sins, external sins and internal sins, sins of word and sins of deed... there are just a screaming buttload of sins. Odds are if you think you aren't sinning, you're deceiving yourself, which is itself a sin. Deal with it.

We cannot stop sinning - all we can do is make conscious efforts to curb it. Keep not doing the obvious dumb stuff like killing hobos or mounting your spouse's cute relatives at Thanksgiving dinner. Put thought before action in situations like giving the single-finger greeting to the gentleman that cut you off on the freeway or justifying doing things that you condemn others for doing.

With practice, it gets easier to avoid most of the preventable sins. You'll notice a change in yourself - less anger, less resentment, more peace, more understanding and more gratitude. So, yes, there actually can be some earthly payoff as well as an eternal one to this whole Christian thing.

Of course, you'll also notice a whole other layer of sins you've been committing pretty much subconsciously your whole life that you need to work on. I didn't say it was going to be easy - just better.