Is All Sin Equal?

"Sin" means estrangement from God and from ourselves, our own humanity. We are all equally estranged and need to come to a stae of wholeness.

Wrongful acts certainly differ. Crossing my neighbor's lawn (trespassing) is certainly less important than committing murder. Some people would refer to thsese acts as "sins." I perfer to think of them as wrongful acts.

But does the Bible support the distinction that crossing my neighbor's lawn is less important that committing murder? I thnk the answer is yes.

All humans are bound by original sin. One statement of faith states the following: “Originally created to have fellowship with God, man defied God, choosing to go his independent way, and was thus alienated from God and suffered the corruption of his nature, rendering him unable to please God. The fall took place at the beginning of human history and all individuals since have suffered these consequences and thus in need of the saving grace of God.” But "that all have sinned" relates more to this condition of existence rather than to specific acts of immorality, as others on this thread have noted.

Romans 7:15ff refers to strife of the two natures, or what some refer to as the sins of the flesh versus the sins of the spirit, contrasting the natural to the supernatural man. “The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins,” C.S. Lewis points out in Christian Behavior. “All the worst pleasure are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and backbiting, and the pleasure of power, of hatred.” The flesh is the total human personality that is reborn through Christ. Thus, the sins of the flesh were primarily those attitudes that contrasted most sharply with supernatural virtues, such as hardness of heart, greed, envy, cruelty, injustice, and pride.

According to Mark 3:28-29, there is but one unforgivable sin, suggesting that there must be a hierarchy of sins. “Verify I say unto you,” Jesus says, “All sins shall be forgiven unto the sins of men, and blasphemies with which they blaspheme; but he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.”

Jesus says in Matthew 5:17 that He did not come the destroy the law. The moral principles, the implication is, that reside in the Ten Commandments and elsewhere, still obtain.

Finally, in Revelations 20:13, "the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their (good or bad) works."

What constitutes loving they neighbor as thyself?

I have asked this question a number of times. I have never received an answer.

... as far as I know there's no prohibition against rape or slavery, to pick two items at random. That doesn't strike me as much of a moral code.

Your statement-- what is loving thy neighbor as thyself-- and there is no Bibical prohibition against rape or slavery-- is contradictory, unless you can show that rape and enslavement is a manifestion of love for others.

Could it be that the Bible is less a compilation of injunctions and prohibitions than principles that need to be interpreted and applied as times and circumstances change, not unlike our Constitution?

Loving thy neighbor as thyself is basically extending empathy and esteem towards others in the same measure that we apply esteem or self-regard to ourself.

Not if you believe that it was written or inspired by a god as a seamless, inerrant whole. (I don't know whether you personally believe that, but an awful lot of Christians seem to.)

I'm not even sure the Bible itself claims that it is seamlessly inerrant or that it is even a reliable or the only spiritual guide . I'm as skeptical as you are of self-validating documents.

If, OTOH, it's a compendium of different writings compiled over the course of a thousand years or so, it can be used to seek wisdom and rules and all sorts of other things. There's a danger in that, though: what if I read a passage and interpret it as A, while you read the same passage and think, Non-A. Of what use is it then?

Well, then, you must be wrong. (Kidding.)

Thanks for the explanation. I strongly suspect that vanishingly few people esteem their neighbors as much as they do themselves and their family.

I know that I don't, but that doesn't diminish its moral power any more than Ted Bundy's knowledge of law voids the constiitution or Adolf Eichman's knowledge of categorical imperative nullify Kant's moral philosophy. It is surely a radical change from the lex talonus that prevailed then and prevails now in the Middle East.

I believe the Bible in its entirety is the Word of the Lord. I don't believe in cherry picking verses.

I too believe the Bible in its entirety is the Word of the Lord. However, I believe in cherry picking verses so I don't end up stoning my kids, owning slaves, and having concubines.