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 My Catholic Faith
SIN
nat
 
http://mycatholicfaith-n.blogspot.com
 
Sin 12
Sin
THE greatest evil, in fact one might say the only real evil, is sin. It is an evil because it is anoffence against God. And it is an evil for us because it cuts us off from God and if we remaincut off, turned away from God, we fail to achieve the purpose for which we were made. Alltrue religion is based on the love of God. The more we love God the more we realise the evilthing that sin is.
SIN IS FOLLY
SIN is stupid. We break a law of God and expect to find happiness in doing so. And that isthe height of folly. This is obvious enough with physical laws. A man who jumps off a roof because it’s too much trouble to go downstairs is a fool. He doesn’t find a more convenientway down. He smashes himself to pieces because he comes up against the law of gravity. Aman who tries to avoid sea-sickness by walking on the sea is a fool. He drowns.Everybody sees this when it is a question of physical laws. But in the case of sin, which isa breach of the
moral
law, we try to persuade ourselves that the consequences don’t follow.But the moral law of God is a law just as much as the others. Break the moral law anddisaster follows either here or hereafter.
ARE WE FREE?
HOW then can we say that a man is free? He is free because God will never physically forceus to keep His law. We are free to obey or to disobey. But we are not free to choose theconsequences of our action. A man is free to jump off the roof. But he can’t change the law.And the consequences will be that he will smash himself to pieces. In the same way we arefree to break the moral law of God. We are free to lie, steal, murder, commit adultery and therest. But we are not free to choose the consequences. The result of sin is certain.Unhappiness in the long run or even in the short run and the missing of our goal.
SIN AND GOD’S JUSTICE
NOW consider sin from the point of view of the justice of God. God’s justice is not like therough and ready justice of men. God’s justice is exact. The penalty is exactly proportionedto the offence (except where His mercy may diminish the punishment which justice claims.)The reward is exactly proportioned to the merit. God never exaggerates.In the light of this principle we can bring home to ourselves the reality of sin by thinkingover the two outstanding sins whose consequences are described for us by God in theScriptures.
1. The Sin of the Angels and its Consequences. Hell.
 First of all there was the mysterious sin of the angels. The angels were created by Godpure spirits, intelligent far beyond anything that we know among men, with no body, no pullof the flesh to evil, no hindrances to their freedom. A number of them rebelled against God.They chose their own will rather than God’s. And the consequence is expressed in OurLord’s words:“I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.” (Luke x: 18.)Page 2 of 6
 
Sin 12There came into existence Hell. Hell is a reality, not a myth. To deny hell is to deny thewords of Christ. Time and time again He warns His hearers against the danger of hell. (Inthe Sermon on the Mount Christ warned His hearers no less than six times.)If we will not choose God, if we persist in choosing ourselves and our own way, then wechoose frustration. God forgives us if we repent and tam to Him again. But there must comea time when the choice is made once and for all. Otherwise we could make a mockery of God. And if the choice is made against God then we have chosen eternal frustration, eternalemptiness. This is what is called the pain of loss.Christ spoke of hell in terms of fire:
 At the last day,
He said,
God will say to the wicked: Depart from Me ye cursed intoeverlasting fire that was Prepared for the Devil and his angels
. (Matt. xxv.)There is no need to wonder about the nature of this tell “fire”. We can’t what theconditions of life in the next world will be. It is enough to know that out of all the words Hemight have used Christ chose the word fire with all that it implies of anguish and pain.Hell is not against the justice of God. God is justice itself. If it were ever unjust foranyone to go to Hell then no one would ever go.Hell is not against God’s goodness. God’s goodness makes us for Heaven. If we refuseHeaven we refuse the one thing that could make us happy and, consequently, choose misery.As for the pain which Our Lord calls “fire”, that is a merciful warning of God to keep uson the straight road to our goal. On the shores of eternity God has set two beacons — thegreen light of Love — the red light of Hell. When the green light is obscured by the storm of passion the red light may still pierce the murk.We shall never miss Heaven except through our own fault. God gives us all the help weneed to reach it. The choice is our own. He pays us the compliment of making usresponsible beings.
2. The Sin of Adam and Eve and its Consequences.
 Consider the other great sin described for us in the Scriptures. The disobedience of our firstparents Adam and Eve, the Fall of man and its consequences. The root of the sin as indeed of all sin was pride. They refused to obey God, preferring their own way. As a consequencethey lost the grace of God, that supernatural life that God had given them and with it all theother privileges which were theirs. There came into the world death, pain, suffering. It maytruly be said that at the moment they committed the sin they began to die. Matter returned toits own law — corruption and death. That is why St. Paul says:
The wages of sin is
 death.
(Rom. vi)….Death of the body here; spiritual death, that is, the loss of God, here and in the next world.No doubt there are many things we do not understand about these two examples. But it isenough to know the facts and to realise the consequences.
By thinking over these we can realise more readily the consequences of our own sins,the disaster sin must bring to ourselves and others, even though we do not immediatelysee those consequences.By thinking of the evils which sin brings in its wake we can realise just what an evilthing sin is in itself.
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