The most obvious personal relationship that is affected by sin is that between God and the sinner. In sinning a man fails, to a lesser or greater degree, to accept God's loving gift of Himself. He fails also to respond with his own gift of love. In serious sin man refuses intimate friendship with God. In venial sin he dulls the ardor of that friendship. Man, in so far as he sins, maintains that he does not want his life to be directed by the loving hand of his heavenly Father. He wants to be a law for himself; he wants to be the one who decides what is good for himself and what is not. Schoonenberg observes: "Especially in the prophets sin is an aversion from and an unfaithfulness to Yahweh himself; hence it is placed in the heart rather than in the wrong deed. We see that aversion, that rebelliousness, that lack of faith which precede the act of transgressing the Law already in the story of the sin in paradise, where it is presented as the wish of possessing autonomously the knowledge of good and evil, of being independently the Law unto oneself. . .”¹ 

As we sin and fail to love God, we close in upon ourselves. We prevent a further growth in openness to transcendence, to God and to His grace. We block off the source of our only real self-development and fulfillment. To the extent that we close in upon ourselves in sin, to that extent we feel the misery of sin. This misery of spiritual "self-enclosedness" is a faint participation in the essential pain of hell. The damned are eternally and completely closed in upon themselves, completely deprived of God and other personal relationships. This, then, is hell – the damned really experiencing no one but themselves. Hell is God's ratification of the choice which the unrepentant serious sinner has himself made. This choice is one of radical self-isolation. 

Sin is primarily a refusal to love God, a refusal to be loved by Him, to be guided by Him. In sinning, man seeks for a false fulfillment, and therefore actually becomes impoverished. The great St. Augustine puts it this way: "For when the soul loves its own power, it slips from the common whole to its own particular part. Had it followed God as its ruler in the universal creature, it could have been most excellently governed by His laws. But in that apostatizing pride, which is called 'the beginning of sin', it sought for something more that the whole; and while it struggled to govern by its own laws, it was thrust into caring for a part, since there is nothing more than the whole; and so by desiring something more, it becomes less. . .”² 

Yes, sin is an act disruptive of one's relationship with God. But sin has other dimensions also. It is a refusal to love other men as we should. For the Christian, sin is an offense against the covenant life of the People of God. In some way the sinfulness of the individual Christian makes itself felt in the corporate body which is the Church. The Christian, in sinning, is failing to love the corporate good of the People of God. He is failing to contribute his share to the progressive maturation in Christ of the total Christian community. The Christian in his sin becomes a burden to the People of God.  

Sin also is an obvious refusal to love others in those instances when one directly harms others through his transgression. So many sins come under this category: theft, all forms of uncharity, social injustice, scandal, detraction. Furthermore, not only does one man often sin against another, but he frequently leads another into sin. In God's plan man is supposed to help his neighbor achieve his temporal and eternal happiness, but how often, even among Christians, the opposite is true. Not to make a positive contribution to the true growth of others is failure enough, but to be a positive hindrance is a far greater evil. 

There is still another way in which the sinner refuses love to his fellowmen; when man sins he makes his contribution to the "sin of the world.”³ He thus adds to that huge, negative weight, nourished by the sins of the centuries, a weight which is always trying to draw man away from his God-given destiny. This mass of sinful ugliness, this "sin of the world," always has its considerable influence, but at times its hideousness makes itself especially manifest. The great race riots which have tragically risen up recently in various parts of the United States are examples of these special manifestations of the "sin of the world." Such events are not isolated instances of sins connected with race. In back of such tragedies there is a long history of grave social and racial sins, of seething hatred of white for black, and black for white. Such accumulated sinfulness in regard to race is part of the "sin of the world." 

There are many other examples of these special manifestations of the "sin of the world." There are the world wars and the lesser wars, with their share of unbelievable accounts of the hatred which man can impose upon his fellowman. There are the histories of the various crime syndicates throughout the world with all their blatant categories of human degradation – narcotics, prostitution, terrorization and the rest. There are the sins of colonialism and the sins of communism. 

The "sin of the world" with its stark and bold manifestations is a sickening reality. But a reality it is. And each man's sinfulness adds a little to this universal world sin. Each man's sinfulness contributes to sin's divisiveness. Man is intended to help Christ progressively unify all creation more and more into Himself. When man sins, he contributes to the disruptive and disunifying force of the "sin of the world." 

Sin, then, because it is a failure to love God, man and the world, is selfishness. Sin seems to offer some sort of happiness, or advantage, or fulfillment. But this is a delusion. Sin can accomplish none of these things, because man's only real happiness and fulfillment comes from his authentic relationship in love with God, his fellowman and the rest of creation. Sin works against all these relationships. 

Sin is so hard to understand because it is an absurdity. But if we are to grow properly in the Christian life, we must have some basic realization of what sin is, and of God's attitude towards sin and the sinner. Our best source for such a mature realization is given to us in the crucified Christ. In this figure we can know all the Father wants us to comprehend concerning sin. First of all, Christ crucified tells us very starkly of the overwhelming heinousness of sin. We know that sin is overwhelmingly evil because it alone could nail Incarnate Goodness to the cross. Secondly, Christ crucified speaks to us concerning the justice of God. God's justice does ask satisfaction for sin – yes, even that satisfaction which is the death of His Son. Thirdly, and very importantly for us poor sinners, the crucified Christ speaks to us unmistakably and overwhelmingly of the Father's great love and mercy towards us. Because of this love and mercy we can be so positive about human existence, for great as is the power of sin, the love and mercy of the Father, incarnated in His Son, is infinitely greater. This is our peace and consolation. 

God's love and mercy moves the sinner toward repentance, and when the sinner repents, God's love changes him. In Isaiah the prophet we read: " 'Come now, let us talk this over, says Yahweh. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.' " (Is 1:18). 

Included in our sorrow for sin is a resolve to take the proper means and precautions to avoid sin in the future. One of the reasons we fall into the same sins with the same frequency is that we tend often enough not to go to the root causes of our failures, and, consequently, we often fail to apply the more efficacious remedies. All this not to say that we should become morbidly introspective in looking at sinfulness. However, without succumbing to this type of introspection, we all must allow for appropriate self-examination and self-knowledge. 

Part of this self-examination and self-knowledge includes the manner in which I handle temptation in my life. The proper attitude toward temptation lies between two extremes. The person at one extreme is overly fearful of temptation, concentrates too much on avoiding it, and can even tend to equate temptation with sin. Such an attitude toward temptation breeds a negative mentality toward the Christian life, and detracts from the peace, joy and happiness which Christ wants us to experience. 

The opposite attitude is that which is careless towards temptation. To take reasonable and grace-inspired precautions against temptation is not to be negativistic, but realistic. It is to realize that I am a sinner, and that there are various ways by which I can be led to sin. I cannot avoid all temptations, but out of loyalty to Christ, man and the world, I should not recklessly bring temptation upon myself. 

Despite our best efforts there will always be some sin in our lives, unless God were to give extraordinary graces. There is only one human person, as far as our certain knowledge goes, who has been preserved from all sin. This person is Christ's mother, Mary. Let us remember this very important point, however. The Church's teaching that we cannot avoid all venial sin without a very special assistance from God refers to semi-deliberate venial sin. With God's ordinary graces we can avoid all fully deliberate sin, both serious and venial. It is this fully deliberate sin which is such an obstacle to our proper growth in the Christian life. Finally, let us remember that as we grow in Christ, even the number of semi-deliberate sins become fewer.

    1. P. Schoonenberg, Man and Sin (Notre Dame, Indiana: Fides, 1965), p. 8.
            2. St. Augustine, The Trinity, Bk. 12, Ch. 14 (Washington: Fathers of the Church, 1963), p. 356.
            3. For one description of the "sin of the world", see Schoonenberg, Op. cit., pp. 98-123.

 

Excerpt from Response to God's Love by Fr. Edward Carter, S.J.

    ... In reference to Christianity, God himself is the ultimate mystery. Radically, God is completely other and transcendent, hidden from man in his inner life, unless he chooses to reveal himself. Let us briefly look at this inner life of God.

    The Father, in a perfect act of self-expression, in a perfect act of knowing, generates his son. The Son, the Word, is, then, the immanent expression of God's fullness, the reflection of the Father. Likewise, from all eternity, the Father and the Son bring forth the Holy Spirit in a perfect act of loving.

    At the destined moment in human history, God's self-expression, the Word, immersed himself into man's world. God's inner self-expression now had also become God's outer self-expression. Consequently, the mystery of God becomes the mystery of Christ. In Christ, God tells us about himself, about his inner life, about his plan of creation and redemption. He tells us how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit desire to dwell within us in the most intimate fashion, how they wish to share with us their own life through grace. All this he has accomplished and does accomplish through Christ. St. Paul tells us: "I became a minister of this Church through the commission God gave me to preach among you his word in its fullness, that mystery hidden from ages and generations past but now revealed to his holy ones. God has willed to make known to them the glory beyond price which this mystery brings to the Gentiles—the mystery of Christ in you, your hope of glory. This is the Christ we proclaim while we admonish all men and teach them in the full measure of wisdom, hoping to make every man complete in Christ" (Col 1:25-28).

From The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, 
    by Louis J. Puhl, S.J. p. 12