What Are The Worst Sins

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Sunday, 27 February 2011 21:07

February 27, 2011 2856

“WHAT ARE THE WORST SINS?”

Proverbs 6:16-19

By Ole Lillestolen

People are always wondering what the worst sins are that people commit. In evangelical circles there isn’t much talk about this because all sins are supposed to be equal. Yet we tend to either want to believe that we are not sinning as badly as others, or that we are not committing such bad sins that Christ won’t forgive us!

However we may want to think about sin, the Bible teaches us that there is actually a difference between sins. Our problem is that we very often rank sins differently than God ranks them; and as a result we and others, including those we love, can suffer greatly from our poor judgment about sin. When we look at sin on the temptation side, all we may see is the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of its devastating consequences. Once we choose and commit that sin, though, we may spend the rest of our lives struggling with the rest of that relentless iceberg of consequences. “The wages of sin is death” in many different forms.

Take for example the ‘little sin’ of talking on a cell phone while driving. You are driving down a street when the phone rings and you dig in your pocket to find it and look down quick to find the answer button; so you don’t see someone pop out in front of you until it is too late. How terrible to have to carry the burden of an bad accident for the rest of your life! Yet, would you have been thinking about all of that when you glanced down to look at the phone, even though you might have known it’s even illegal?

There’s a law of economics which expresses this problem called the “Law of unintended consequences”. One economist puts it this way: “The law of unintended consequences, , , is that actions of people - and especially of governments - always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended.”

This works both ways. In capitalism you let people act on their instincts for greed, yet those instincts will generally guide them to make choices which end up being in the common good, because the true capitalist recognizes that: “It takes a community to make things go well for me.” On the other hand, while economic regulation tends to be born out of the desire to spare people from hardship, in the long run it rarely does this because greed always finds ways to circumvent regulation. Regulations and interference with banks and corporations are making money scarce for small businesses and are creating a whole new batch of onerous fees for bank accounts. I’ve often said that there has never been a bad program that the government can’t make worse!

You’d think with all the wisdom in Washington they’d be able to create Utopia! My point is, we need God’s help here and God spoke through King Solomon to tell us that there are seven sins we should especially beware of in life.

First, Solomon said that God actually hates, “Haughty eyes,” or pride. Isn’t it interesting that this is the top of this list? If you were going to make up a list of the worst sins, what would you put at the top?

I think this sin boils down to the great American problem of ‘Me first!’ A haughty eye, or a proud look, is a look which expresses the inner thought that, “I’m what matters most.” If God had His way we wouldn’t have either capitalism or socialism. We would have no regulation but our society would be built on people wanting others to have it good too, not just so we can have it good, but because we truly care about them!
On the other hand, let’s remember that this is what Satan’s sin boiled down to. Pride! He wanted to be more than he was, and his sin of pride has devastated the world ever since! It is no surprise that this would be the top of the list! Yet how pervasive is this sin in our makeup! How easy is it for us to think about our ‘rights’ and what we ‘deserve’.     I see this ugly tendency in myself and it scares me to think how easy it is to allow this attitude to take over in my choices. Watch out! The moment you put others second, you are treading on thin ice, even though you may have no clue how thin it is! Do not let pride drive your response to anyone! Hold that tiger on a short chain! God will help you if you try!

The next deadly sin is, “a lying tongue”.   I believe this is the sin of shaping what other people believe to your own advantage. This tendency flows right out of pride, so it is a natural tendency as well. You might remember the TV series Dragnet, where these two detectives solved crimes the old way, before CSI. Sargent Joe Friday had this saying when he interviewed people with pad in hand. He’d say, “Just the facts, ma’am.” And, what we need to acknowledge to ourselves is that there is a difference between facts and ‘spin’, and when we are moving toward the ‘spin’ side we need to know we are walking on thin ice again!

We have to interpret facts to make sense of them. But, there is a difference between interpretation and spin, and I think we all know that difference. Spin is devastating, because it not only means that we are being self deceived about something, but that we are dragging others with us out on that thin ice! One of my greatest fears is that I may give you spin instead of truth and lead you astray. I would be devastated if I brought ruin to you! Don’t spin!

The next deadly sins are fairly obvious: “Hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, and a false witness who utters lies.” These are the traditional no-nos. Don’t murder, don’t plot how to rip off other peoples’ money, don’t mess up other peoples’ lives with your fun, and don’t give a false witness during a trial so as to thwart justice.

We are always amazed at the way people get into this kind of stuff. Why would anyone, for example, scam old people to rip off their money. Why should the elderly have to mistrust everyone who comes to their door, so to speak? And, the internet today is the happy hunting ground of all kinds of scammers. More than ever we need to be on the alert to this threat, but of course these are areas of sin that are not a problem for most of us in church, right?

We should take heed of Jesus’ warning that we can be guilty of these sins without even recognizing it when we are not doing the bold, physical act, like that of murdering. In God’s eyes, for example, hatred is just as bad as murder. In fact murder is born in the heart of hatred. And, what is hatred but rejection?   When I reject someone, I don’t care what happens to that person. When I reject and step out of the way I open the way for evil to attack.

Vaclav Havel, the playwriter who helped Czechoslovakia gain its freedom and became its first freely elected president, wrote about the tendency of people to become silent partners in evil, which in the Czech case was totalitarianism. He wrote: “Each person is capable, to a greater or lesser degree, of coming to terms with living within the lie.” In other words, I wonder how much of these deadly sins we have become silent partners in. Jesus said in Matthew 12:30, “He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters.”

I struggle, for example, with the idea of a Christian voting for a candidate who favors abortion, no matter what other things he or she may stand for. Would Christ put economic policy ahead of protecting innocents? Are we complicit in murder when we do not vote against such politicians? There are all kinds of areas we need to be careful that our silence is not the promotion of evil. An English philosopher Edmund Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.”

Finally, Solomon warns us that God also hates it when, “one . . . spreads strife among brothers.” Jesus, in His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemene prayed, (John 17:11) “I am no more in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name, the name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are.”

This does not mean that we need to agree on everything and act like robotic fish in schools that move like a drill team. Differing viewpoints and impressions on questions are the doors to testing conclusions. Christ’s desire for unity is not for blind unity around a majority opinion. It is for a unity based on the commitment to rise above our biased opinions in order to hear Christ speak clearly. Unity in Christ is possible only when our opinions are up for grabs when we are shown to be wrong! Unity in Christ is impossible when our minds are made up, even if we all agree!

Strife is not born of disagreement. Strife is born of taking our eyes off of Christ. Disagreement, and even offense, are opportunities to hear Christ speak and to watch Him work through us. Strife is the product of our rejection of Christ’s response to our disagreement or hurt.

Jesus, in John 13:34,35 said: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Let us just understand that this love has nothing to do with feelings. It has everything to do with choice. You may not feel love, or feel like loving, but you can choose to respond in love!

So, it turns out that the worst sins may not be sins that others commit, but sins that we struggle with even daily! 1 John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Yet the very next verse also says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Let us recognize that gaining victory over our sins begins with recognizing them and confessing them. Beware that one of those seven worst sins might be in your life and when you see them, bring them to Christ! He alone can truly help you rise above them!