I’ve been doing some naughty thinking recently. Naughty on two fronts: first, I have naughty thoughts and second, I am wondering about what makes them naughty? If your concerned about what my naughty thoughts are, mind your own business. Check out your own instead!
What does the “naughty” mean? According to etymologists the original word was “naught - y” from middle old English. It meant being filled with “nothing”, or having no inner moral maps or virtues. So I guess to be naughty was to be incapable of modifying thoughts or actions because there was nothing to modify them with.
The sense has changed these days, being naughty is simply disobedience. In a child it’s merely annoying and in adults naughtiness tends to be celebrated as non-conformity as there is something in all of us that wants to break the rules.
So what’s the difference between being naughty and sin?
In the minds of many people sin doesn’t actually exist, it’s merely a name given to certain actions by those who have a particular moral framework and is therefore relative. I’ve often wondered about this because I don’t see this to be entirely true. Certainly there are cultural differences between people groups where ceremonial and civil expectations are different, but ethical or moral expectations are very similar. Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and so on have similar ethics, right along side the secular atheist. Sin exists for all of them. We just don’t like the word.
Being naughty is to bend societies ceremonial and civil regulations. Sin is a different thing as it is crosses ethical boundaries that traverse cultures. And we all do it. Still, we don’t like the idea of being sinners. Why?
I wonder if “sin” is not the problem, but rather “shame”. I’m not convinced that people no longer believe in sin, they just don’t support the condemnation that comes with it - unless it’s toward someone else of course (inconsistency is a mark of humanity). Shame is a problem!
Guilt is good for us because it can lead us to healthy and valid change. Guilt can be very motivating. But guilt that turns into shame is destructive. We move for believing we have “done” something wrong, to believing we have “become” something wrong. One is merely behaviour, the other is a state of mind; one is good, the other is evil.
In my role as a minister and priest I meet people in our society who carry shame. Initially this caught me as strange because these same people said they did no believe in sin. So where did the shame come from?
It comes from deep inherent knowledge of wrong done and not attended to. Yet we needn’t live like this. Christianity ought not offer more shame, but rather restoration before God and others. The hard part is acknowledgment, contrition and restitution - without any of them shame erupts.
God does not keep record of our sins, we do. We do so by ignoring it.
Acknowledge it, clean up the mess, move on and live.
© Digby Wilkinson 2008