Sin and Crime

(1 Corinthians 6:9-11) Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men,  (6:10) nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (6:11) And such were some of you: but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.  

You might have been too busy to notice, but sin is not so bad anymore. At the most it is just an illness, usually brought on by bad parenting. We know this now not necessarily because what used to be sin is celebrated as “lifestyle” but because those who ought to know what sin is (and is not) keep us informed and up to date so that we don’t have to bother with it. Our time is, after all, better spent than studying such erudite concepts.

Alexander Boot shares this revelation in his blog - God Save Us From Such Priests

Stepping outside his immediate brief, Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, the Catholic Archbishop of Durban, saw fit to share penetrating psychiatric insights with his BBC audience.

According to His Grace, paedophilia is an ‘illness, not a criminal condition’. People become paedophiles, he explained, because they themselves were abused as children. So when a pervert presses his attentions on a little tot, both are victims and neither is a wrongdoer.

The Archbishop then vouchsafed the information that he personally knows at least two priests who abuse children because they themselves were abused. (What does ‘at least two’ mean? Three? Thirty? Or does it just mean two?)

‘Now don't tell me,’ thundered the prelate, ‘that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that. I don’t think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished. He was himself damaged.’ In other words the criminal act hurts the priest as much as it hurts the child he’s brutalising.

So, pardon me while I try to figure this out. I have a couple questions. 

It’s okay for a priest to molest children if, let’s say, he was himself molested as a child. Correct? No, that doesn’t sound right. 

Let’s start over. 

A priest should not be held accountable or punished for molesting a child if he was molested. Ah, that’s it then, no accountability is the key. Does this apply across the board? Does this mean any old garden variety child molester should never be put in jail for molesting a child because he was molested as a child? Or is the pass given only to priests, who are, by the way, supposed to be disciples and holy representatives of Christ? 

Is it not reasonable to conclude, by this logic, that therefore all sin should be qualified and subject to re-evaluation based on the sinner’s childhood history? Did you have a bad childhood? Well, then, whatever you do is not really your fault. Jesus loves you anyway. Go right ahead and do whatever. Ignore those mean-spirited folk who declare that surrendering to and following Christ means you have to give up certain behaviors. Poor you! And, good news, if you wear robes and hear confessions from other sinners, you are especially exempt because...okay, let’s move on, I have run out of sarcasm. 

What is the difference between sin and crime? Well, while the definition of sin is left to the mandates of religion, crime, the enforcement of law and application of justice is a societal matter. If a priest were to brutally murder someone, would he be arrested and forced to stand trial? If found guilty would he go to jail? Murder is a crime as well as a sin as delineated by number six of the Ten Commandments. Granted child-molestation is not specifically mentioned in the Commandments but still even as bad as society is today, child-molestation, for the moment, continues to be deemed as unconscionable and therefore is on the books as a crime in most jurisdictions of first world countries. 

This is how it is supposed to work: Do the crime–do the time. 

This is where the topic gets all vague and convoluted. The elite, whether in religious, wealthy or political realms, who seem to reside above the law also seem to be bullet-proof in regards to sin. Crime is one thing, sin is another. We obey the laws of the land to stay out of jail but we obey the commandments of God to stay out of perdition. Is that all God wants from us? Toe the line, look good, obey the rules, stay clean, sin not and if you do repent when you get caught so you can hang onto your ticket to Heaven. What about earnestly desiring to be made new, no excuses? And what if you don’t get caught, is it still a sin or a crime? Do you still get to go?

My conclusion is that those who think they can escape punishment from committing sin and crime don’t really know how dangerous it is to tempt the Almighty Sovereign God. Cheaters, users and those who take advantage of the poor, liars, fornicators, molesters, murderers beware! There is a day of reckoning coming.  There is no such thing as a little sin, no small omission, no choice based strictly on profit of the moment, that God does not see and record. 

One day, there will be a final accounting when sin will be deemed a crime against Christ. No excuses, no defense. 

(Matthew 25:30-34) And cast ye out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.   (25:31) But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory:  (25:32) and before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats;  (25:33) and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.  (25:34) Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:  

For Christ,

Meema