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Polemics

Are all sins equally bad? Or are there degrees of severity for different sins?

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Bible study that hits the spot
Bible study that hits the spot

This question came up recently so I did some digging on theology web sites to find what Bible verses applied to the question.

Here’s what Ligonier said:

It’s clear that we have different degrees of sin when we consider the warnings of Scripture. There are at least twenty-two references in the New Testament to degrees of rewards that are given to the saints in heaven. There are different levels, different rewards, and different roles in heaven. The Bible warns us against adding to the severity of our judgment. Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, “He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin” (John 19:11). Jesus measures and evaluates guilt, and with the greater guilt and greater responsibility comes the greater judgment. It’s a motif that permeates the New Testament.

The idea of gradation of sin and reward is based upon God’s justice. If I commit twice as many sins as another person, justice demands that the punishment fits the crime. If I’ve been twice as virtuous as another person, justice demands that I get more of a reward. God tells us that entrance into heaven will be only on the basis of the merit of Christ, but once we get to heaven, rewards will be dispensed according to works. Those who have been abundant in good works will receive an abundant reward. Those who have been derelict and negligent in good works will have a small reward in heaven. By the same token, those who have been grievous enemies of God will have severe torments in hell. Those who have been less hostile will have a lesser punishment at the hands of God. He is perfectly just, and when He judges, He will take into account all of the extenuating circumstances. Jesus said, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matt. 12:36).

A while back, my friend Dina sent me a sermon where that exact passage (John 19) was brought up by the pastor.

I think the correct position is that any sin is enough to separate you from God, but some sins are more severe than others in God’s objective standard of right and wrong.

OK, that was fine and good, but then I noticed a few days later that Michael Krueger had also blogged about this “all sin are equal” view, too.

Krueger says this:

First, to say all sins are the same is to confuse the effect of sin with the heinousness of sin.  While all sins are equal in their effect (they separate us from God), they are not all equally heinous.

Second, the Bible differentiates between sins. Some sins are more severe in terms of impact (1 Cor 6:18), in terms of culpability (Rom 1:21-32), and in terms of the judgment warranted (2 Pet 2:17;  Mark 9:42; James 3:1).

Even more Bible references, so we’re not on the wrong track.

So then why do some people insist that all sins are equal? It turns out that it is coming from the secular ideal of non-judgmentalism.

Krueger explains:

We should begin by observing that this phrase does not come from Scripture.  People do not use it because it appears in the Bible. Why then do they use it?

One reason, as noted above, is that some Christians use this phrase to uphold the seriousness of sin. It is viewed as a way to remind people not to be dismissive about their sin or regard it is a triviality.

Others use this phrase as way to “flatten out” all sins so that they are not distinguishable from each other.  Or, to put it another way, this phrase is used to portray all human beings as precisely the same.  If all sins are equal, and all people sin, then no one is more holy than anyone else.

In a world fascinated with “equality,” this usage of the phrase is particularly attractive to folks. It allows everyone to be lumped together into a single undifferentiated mass.

Such a move is also useful as a way to prevent particular behaviors from being condemned.  If all sins are equal, and everyone is a sinner, then you are not allowed to highlight any particular sin (or sinner).

Needless to say, this usage of the phrase has featured largely in the recent cultural debates over issues like homosexuality.  Yes, homosexuality is a sin, some Christians reluctantly concede.  But, they argue, all sins are equal in God’s sight and therefore it is no different than anything else.  Therefore, Christians ought to stop talking about homosexuality unless they are also willing to talk about impatience, anger, gluttony, and so on.

Krueger also posted this fascinating follow up post, where he looks at how the phrase is being used by people on Twitter.

Look at these tweets:

  • All sins are equal. People tend to forget that. There is no bigger or smaller sin. Being gay and lying, very equal.

  • all sins are equal in God’s eyes. whatever you’re doing, is no better than what someone else is doing.

  • If you have sex before marriage please don’t come on social media preaching about the wrongs of homosexuality. All sins are equal

  • Need people to realize that all sins are equal… don’t try to look down on me or question my faith just cuz you sin differently than I do.

  • Don’t understand why you’re so quick to judge me, when all sins are equal. So much for family..

  • if you think being gay is a sin, let me ask you something, have you not done anything wrong in your life? all sins are equal. we’re sinners

  • Nope no difference at all. All sins are equal no matter what you’re running for. The bible says do not judge lest ye be judged

  • A huge problem I have with religion is the notion that all sins are equal. Like pre-martial sex and murder are the same amount t of bad.

  • people do bad things because they believe that all sins are equal and ~god~ loves y’all equally so he’s going to forgive you naman ha ha ha

  • It a sin to condemn another sinner and their actions. All sins are equal. So what makes you better than the person you’re condemning?

  • I think so b/c having sex before marriage doesn’t make you less of a women then if you waited until marriage.. all sins are equal soo

  • friendly reminder, all sins are equal in gods eyes so you’re not better than I am in any way. please worry about your own sins before mine.

  • People don’t like when I suggest abortion as an option. This is a free country and all sins are equal so mind your business!!!

  • What I do is no worse than wat you do… all sins are equal no matter what it is… a sin is a sin

  • to god all sins are equal so you have no right to compare your sins to someone else’s bc in the end it doesn’t matter

The first thing that I noticed is that premarital sex and homosexuality are the most popular sins. I would think that divorce and abortion would be up there in the rankings, as well.

Something strange has happened in our society such that more and more people want to be led by their feelings, rather than be bounded by rules or standards. When people get caught breaking moral rules, rather than be accountable, they attack the person judging them. They would rather escape the judgment of their peers than admit fault and try to fix the mistake, and do better next time.

It’s so bad now, that the people who have morals and who make moral judgments are seen as the real bad people. The immoral people are on the offense, and even trying to ban people from being able to disagree with them. We’re seeing that with people who are being attacked for defending natural marriage against divorce and redefinition of marriage. In France, they want to make speech critical of abortion a criminal offense. And in Canada, they’ve now made speech critical of the gay agenda a criminal offense. (It’s already a human rights tribunal offense)

What is even more interesting is when the people who push the “don’t judge me” line try to justify it from the Bible. Very strange, but we seem to have forgotten the value of setting moral boundaries. Now moral boundaries are “evil”. Instead, having compassion for people who break the moral boundaries and harm themselves and others is “good”.

News

Large-scale UK study confirms the importance of fathers to children

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A family praying and reading the Bible
A family praying and reading the Bible

Dina sent me this article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

A father’s love is as important to a child’s emotional development as a mother’s, a large-scale study has confirmed.

Examining the cases of more than 10,000 sons and daughters revealed how a cold or distant father can damage a child’s life, sometimes for decades to come.

The review of 36 studies from around the world concluded that his love is at least as important to youngsters as that of their mothers.

Researcher Professor Ronald Rohner said that fatherly love is key to  development and hopes his findings will motivate more men to become involved in caring for their offspring.

‘In the US, Great Britain and Europe, we have assumed for the past 300 years that all children need for normal healthy development is a loving relationship with their mother,’ he said.

‘And that dads are there as support for the mother and to support the  family financially but are not required for the healthy development of the children.

‘But that belief is fundamentally wrong. We have to start getting away from that idea and realise the dad’s influence is as great, and sometimes greater, than the mother’s.’

His conclusions came after he examined data from studies in which  children and adults were asked how loving their parents were.

Questions included if they were made to feel wanted or needed, if their  parents went out of their way to hurt their feelings and if they felt loved.

Those taking part also answered questions about their personality. These ranged from ‘I think about fighting or being mean’ to ‘I think the world is a good, happy place’.

Tallying the results showed that those rejected in childhood felt more anxious and insecure as well as hostile and aggressive.

Many of the problems carried over into adulthood, reported the study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.

Crucially, a father’s love was often just as important as a mother’s. In some cases, it was even more so. One reason for this may be that rejection is more painful when it comes from the parent the child regards as more powerful or respected.

You can read more about how fatherlessness damages children here.

I think the first question we should ask the people who want to redefine marriage is this: “which parent to do you think that a child can do without? the mother or the father?”. We must do everything we can as a society to keep both of a child’s natural parents in the home while the child grows up. If we really care about children, then we should prefer to meet their needs, even if the grown-ups have to be a bit more responsible in their decision making. if the conflict is between innocent children and selfish grown-ups, then the children should win.

We need laws and policies that promote traditional marriage, not laws and policies that break it down and destroy it. Repealing no-fault divorce, lowering subsidies for single motherhood, and making shared parenting the default position, would all help solve the problem. Policies like school choice and lower corporate tax rates helps men to be able to perform in their role as provider. We have to be practical and ask: “what makes men capable of marriage and parenting?” If we want strong fathers, then it makes sense to ask how to make fatherhood more reasonable: what do men need in order to do what we want them to do?

Christians should be especially concerned about the presence of fathers, given the evidence I blogged about before showing how the presence of quality fathers is essential for passing Christian beliefs on to children. Churches need to ask themselves tough questions: Are we teaching women how to choose men based on practical concerns and proven abilities in our churches? And are we doing a good job of attracting men to churches by promoting the masculine, practical aspects of Christianity that men like – like science, apologetics debates, economics and foreign policy?

News

Kavanaugh: “I did not have sex in high school or for many years thereafter”

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Brett Kavenaugh, his wife, and his two daughters
Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters

So, Brett Kavanaugh did an interview where he and his wife answered questions about the vague and unsupported charges being made against him by registered Democrat women. In the interview, he explained that he did not have sex in high school or for many years thereafter, which is what you would expect from a Christian conservative.

Here’s part of the transcript from Daily Wire:

Brett Kavanaugh: […]When I was in high school – and I went to an all boys catholic high school, a judgment (ph) high school, where I was focused on academics and athletics, going to church every Sunday at Little Flower, working on my service projects, and friendship, friendship with my fellow classmates and friendship with girls from the local all girls Catholic schools.

And yes, there were parties. And the drinking age was 18, and yes, the seniors were legal and had beer there. And yes, people might have had too many beers on occasion and people generally in high school – I think all of us have probably done things we look back on in high school and regret or cringe a bit, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about an allegation of sexual assault. I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone. I did not have sexual intercourse or anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years there after. And the girls from the schools I went to and I were friends —

Martha MacCallum: So you’re saying that through all these years that are in question, you were a virgin?

Brett Kavanaugh: That’s correct.

Martha MacCallum: Never had sexual intercourse with anyone in high school –

Brett Kavanaugh: Correct.

I know this is going to be hard to believe for the average Democrat, since they seem to be incapable of understanding how seriously religious people take the moral demands of their religion. But take it from me, there are Christians who take the Bible’s teaching on sobriety and chastity seriously. I’m in my early 40s and still a virgin, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Sex is for marriage. Period. People who are serious about their faith order their lives in a way such that they maintain their sobriety and chastity. Real Christians do.

Anyway, here’s a short clip showing his response above:

The full video is here.

But there’s something else I want to say about this, and about my alias.

Clarence Thomas

You see, I have known that women on the secular left made false charges for some time. My first exposure to the idea that women lied against innocent men for their own reasons was in Harper Lee’s book “To Kill a Mockingbird”, which I read in my freshman year of high school. The victim of the lies was a colored man, like me. I understood the message of the book very clearly.

This story came to life during the nomination of my favorite Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas looks a bit like me – we’re both non-white males. When I saw the Democrats put forward a woman who made unverifiable claims to try to stop a pro-life man from reaching the Supreme Court, I learned a valuable lesson. Secular leftists women will lie and ruin a man’s career in order to protect their right to have sex with hot bad boys, and escape the consequences. That’s what this is all about – promiscuity and abortion.

Take a look at Clarence Thomas’ response to the Democrat lies, and think about how this would have affected a young non-white male watching this, and thinking about his future, and wanting to have an influence as a Christian:

Sometimes, I look back on this testimony and think whether what happened to Clarence Thomas made me distrust women. Once I realized that women – that any woman – was capable of lying like this to punish a good man, I stopped believing that women were trustworthy by default. Certainly, what happened to Clarence Thomas pushed me towards becoming a software engineer – a high-earning, male-dominated field where I would have limited exposure to false accusations.

Later on, I would read the exit polls of elections. I experienced shock and disbelief about how many young, unmarried women wanted to identify as Democrats and support Democrat policies. It really became clear to me that I had to make decisions about education, career and finance that would avoid the risk of secular leftist women finding out what I really believed, and making false accusations at me to hold me back in my career, and in my life plan. I wasn’t quick enough at this, because once a woman who found out that I was a virgin and believed in chastity before marriage spread it all over a company I was interning with. Fortunately, this was just a contract job. But I was not offered a full-time job with them afterwards. I learned my lesson from that. Most good men can probably tell you a story like that – when they learned that being a good person would draw a hostile response from women who were interested in pursuing fun and thrills against the moral law, then escaping judgment and consequences afterwards.

I think women who imagine that they want to get married some day should really think about what message their silence in the face of injustices to people like Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh sends to young, successful conservative Christian men. Women, we are watching you. And we are evaluating you to see whether you are on the side of the radical feminists, or on the side of Christianity and conservative pro-family policies. So far, most women I’ve met seem to have a lot more allegiance for feminism than they do for morality, marriage and family.

Defending good men is not something that you can cram for at the last minute after wasting your life having fun with the wrong people and pushing policies that promoted selfishness. Good men will ask you questions, and if you’ve been on the secular left most of your life, you won’t know how to respond, and you won’t have any demonstrated actions to show that your allegiance is with us, instead of with the liars.

Don’t cry to good men later that you want marriage when you didn’t do anything to defend the honor and reputation of good men when we were under attack.