Sin
A friend sent me this personal anecdote after both the Grenfell fire in
London and the fire in Waikiki:
I was once asleep on
the 22nd floor of a Marriott in Cambridge, Mass. when the fire alarm went off.
I could smell smoke. It turned out to be a minor fire, and I was able to get
back into my room after a few hours. But ever since, when I enter a tall
building, I look for sprinklers. They aren’t foolproof but they’re certainly
better than nothing.
People who check into a hotel or move into a high rise trust the
contractors, cognizant government approval authorities, and others have all
honestly collaborated to construct a safe building, something that obviously
failed to happen in London but may have been true in Waikiki. Standards should
improve over time and retrofitting is often expensive, but the responsible
parties should still make a good faith effort to keep the building safe. People
who do not believe in human sin should consider the Grenfell fire as a case
study in greed triumphing over concern for one’s neighbor.
The word “sin” is out of favor in many intellectual circles. For example,
some evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins describe human selfishness in
terms of genetic dynamics that program humans to act in an individual’s
perceived self-interest (cf. Dawkins’ book, The
Selfish Gene).
Others, including some theologians and evolutionary biologists, believe
that biological dynamics include not only selfishness as usually understood but
also reciprocal altruism, a form of selfishness that presumes self-interest is
sometimes maximized by actions whose immediate benefit is for others, not self.
The work of Frans de Waal, an evolutionary primate biologist, supports the
concept of reciprocal altruism (cf. my Ethical Musings’ posts Metaethics
- part 2 and Loving
and being loved).
Sometimes people apparently act in good faith and bad things still
result, as with the deaths, injuries, and other harms caused by the apartment building
fire in Waikiki. Other times, bad things happen because of what theologians of
many different faiths call “sin,” i.e., persons acting selfishly discounting or
disregarding potential harms to others and to creation.
Forgiveness is not the remedy to sin. Sin’s remedy is described by
words such as reformation, transformation, healing, and so forth – all words
that denote an individual more fully balancing self-interest with the
well-being of others.
The daily news is full of reports that demonstrate a widespread need
for this type of change: stories about “America first,” tax proposals that
favor the wealthy over the poor, health insurance proposals that seek to
balance the budget by reducing the access of a society’s most vulnerable to
healthcare, etc.
Christians believe that Jesus is the remedy for our sin because he
exemplifies the triumph of love (reciprocal altruism) over sin and evil. May
we, like Jesus, recognize the reality of sin, dare to stand up to evil, and
thereby experience the life abundant that only love makes possible.
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