Sin Is A Social Disease

Their hands are upon what is evil, to do it diligently;
the prince and the judge ask for a bribe,
and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul;
thus they weave it together.

Micah 7:3

When people do something wrong in private we call that sin.

When people do something wrong in public we call that corruption and crime.

Yet when people do something wrong in public it is still sin.

If it's wrong, it's a sin. Whatever else we choose to call it, if it's wrong, it's still a sin.

Whether we do what is wrong in private or in public, when we do what is wrong, we sin. There is no escaping that very simple reality.

Nor is there escaping the consequences of sin. When we sin, we separate ourselves from God. We put distance between ourselves and God. That distance becomes death—death of the soul, and eventually death of the body.

When we sin in public, we risk another death as well—the death of our communities.

We only have to look at neighborhoods blighted by crime to see that this is true.

We only have to look at countries run by evil and perverse dictators.

In every such neighborhood, in every such country, hope—the lifeblood of every person and every community—is steadily draining away, and in some instances has disappeared altogether. Instead of a belief in a better future, people in such circumstances struggle merely to endure the present.

Yet it should be simple to revitalize such communities—simply arrest the criminals and remove them from the community. That gives people back the chance to make good choices and live better lives—and that can be the spark that reignites hope.

Only time and again we do not see that happen. In city after city, country after country, we see government officials make excuses. In city after city, country after country, we see leaders and magistrates seduced by corruption, selling their offices for bribes.

The criminal who violates people in his community sins by his serial assaults on others. The police officer who gets paid to look the other way, the prosecutor who would rather not prosecute so as to have more voters on his side come election time, the mayor or governor who treats the public fisc as a personal slush fund—all of these people sin as well.

Whether a robber, a fraudster, an elected official, or a bureaucrat, whenever they do wrong, they sin.

There is, of course, nothing remarkable in that observation. Sin is the essence of corruption, and corruption is always the equivalent of sin. There is no part of public or private life for anyone where that it is not true.

Yet there is something we do well to recognize in public sin: in the corrupt official especially, we rarely see any true understanding that their misdeeds are in fact wrong. For many caught up in corruption and crime, the only thing they perceive themselves as having done wrong is getting caught.

This tells us something about the corrosive nature of sin—it erodes our ability to discern right from wrong. We may fairly surmise that by the time a person is caught behaving badly in public, their discernment has been degraded almost to the point of nonexistence.

The more we do wrong things, the more we sin, the less able we are to perceive how our wrong actions harm other people. The more we do wrong things, the more we sin, the less able we are to love others even as we love ourselves.

Even if our wrong actions at first are confined solely to our private lives, the inevitable corrosion within us is sure to over time impact our public lives as well. Our private wrong actions eventually lead to public wrong actions. Our private sins become public ones.

Sin is thus a true disease within society. Sin is what blights our communities and steals hope from our children’s futures.

None of us lives in total isolation. All of us are connected in some way to the rest of humanity. Even the most introverted of souls has some interactions, some interconnections with others.

As none of us live in total isolation, everything we do has some impact on others.

If we take care of ourselves, we are better able to be caring and compassionate towards others. If we fail to take care of ourselves, we are forced to lean on others, and make them shoulder burdens they would not otherwise carry.

If we do wrong things, we are harming others. When those around us do wrong things, we are harmed by them.

Sin never damages just one person. As with a stone tossed into a pond, a sinful act ripples outward, touching everyone to some degree, harming everyone to some degree.

There is but one antidote, one cure—stop doing what is wrong and start doing what is right. Stop making sinful choices and start making righteous ones.

The more each of us strives to make good and righteous choices, the less those around us are harmed by our poorer choices. There is not one person on this good earth for whom this is not the order of things.

So my prayer this day is that we may all be mindful of how our choices touch the lives of others. My prayer this day is that we may all be inspired to recognize that the truest way to love each other even as we love ourselves is to above all else make good and righteous choices. My prayer this day is that each of us can take the one step we all can take to heal our communities and our societies, the step of choosing righteousness over sinfulness.

Sin never damages just one person. As with a stone tossed into a pond, a sinful act ripples outward, touching everyone to some degree, harming everyone to some degree. There is not one person on this good earth for whom this is not the order of things.