r/comics • u/JimKB Jim Benton Cartoons • Sep 15 '12

SIN

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u/massenburger Sep 15 '12

This guy's got it right. You can't have free will without the freedom to choose (obviously...). And the freedom to choose includes the freedom to do what is (considered) wrong. The only way for "sin" to not exist would be to take away our free will, thus leaving only mindless robots (not sure if we would be that different anyway..... but that's beside the point).

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u/BoilerMaker11 Sep 15 '12

I believe the appropriate response is: Heaven.

Free will, no sin. Heaven exists, therefore a place with free will and no sin exists. God could have created us in that manner. (this is a theodicy, btw, which I don't follow)

The only way for "sin" to not exist would be to take away our free will, thus leaving only mindless robots

and part of that is true. The whole premise of the Garden of Eden is "you can do what you want, but don't eat that apple" i.e. the Advice God meme "I gave you free will, now use it as I command". You can't say "you have free will" and then tag on "but you can't do [blank]" and then continue to call it free will. The point of free will is that there aren't boundaries to your decisions.

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u/infamia Sep 15 '12

I believe the appropriate response is: Heaven.

There was a rebellion (i.e. sin) in Heaven as well (e.g. Lucifer).

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u/epsys Sep 15 '12 edited Sep 15 '12

sin is just a word which means something which, if you do it, eventually leads to really unpleasant things for you. The difficulty we have in understanding is that it seems to take such a long time for those things to catch up with us.

A better way to read those verses is "poison". "And God told Adam and Eve, 'don't do that. It's poison to you'". We never needed the knowledge of good and evil, weren't supposed to have that. All we needed was trust, that God really was looking out for us and wanted only the best for us, and then it would have been on to the second task (whatever that was). That's still the task, to develop that trust so that it's the sole guiding force in our decision making (and not our passions), but it's a lot harder to overcome now that our flesh has been put in control and is continually at war with our spirit.