What is Sin, what actions can be considered sinful? Could it be anything that goes against the Ten Commandments?
Let us for a moment analyse the sin of lying - telling of false tales, speaking untruths, etc.
Is lying wrong?
There are various forms of lies;
Exaggeration - Someone with good intentions relays a story making the characters appear larger, faster and stronger in order to make the telling of the story more interesting, funny or appealing to his audience.
Similes and Metaphors - e.g. Someone says "The water is as cold as ice". If the water were that cold it would be ice, that person merely wanted to indicate that the water was extremely cold as ice is extremely cold.
A fictional story or novel - An author makes up a story intended to amuse, entertain or teach others - a story having no factual basis of any kind whether it be a film, book or a verbal story.
Unwitting errors - Someone asks you the direction to somewhere and you, for whatever reason, point them in the wrong direction in all innocence. Perhaps you have been told yourself it lay in that direction and you now believe it to be so. Your intention is not to deceive them, on the contrary you have sincerely intended to help them - yet you have lied.
Approximations and Guestimations - If someone asks you how fast you are travelling. You may well answer them 100km/h when you are in fact travelling 97km/h. The same being true for time, you may well tell someone it is half past ten when it is actually twenty-eight minutes past ten. In both instances you approximated the time to the nearest rounded-off figure, a perfectly acceptable thing to do, yet in actual fact being a lie.
All of these instances above are actually used every day by virtually everyone and are quite acceptable. No one was injtentionally deceived, yet each of them lied. Does this mean they have all sinned?
The person exaggerating lied about the exact facts of the story, the person using the simile lied about the exact status of the comparison. The author, film-maker or story-teller blatantly lies to his audience, unwittingly the incorrect directions were given and although the question was satisfied as to the speed of the car, it was not 100% accurate consituting a lie.
Does this mean that a sin was committed in each of these instances?
After all the person exaggerating merely wanted to make it more interesting; the person using the simile just wanted to find a comparison the listener would be able to understand more clearly; the story-tellers only intention was to innocently entertain; an honest mistake was made in the incorrect direction and rounding-off was done in order to simplify. In none of the examples were anyone intentionally misled. If the intentions were good, how could they possibly be wrong? The same holds true for cheating, stealing and all the other 'sins'.
This is the definition of sin, and if applied as follows, there can be no misunderstanding the difference between right and wrong -
"If you think, say, or do anything that knowingly harms anyone, including yourself, in any way; either emotionally, physically, intellectually or spiritually - you are sinning!"
Anything done with good intent and not harming anyone can never be wrong. This does however raise another important issue.
Very often people do harm with good intentions, also many people do not realize that they are doing something harmful to others. How is it possible to know if you are harming someone unwittingly?
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!
When saying or doing something to someone. Stop for a moment and open-mindedly put yourself in their position. Imagine that person doing or saying it to you and honestly assess how you would feel.
