Peter Farrington
18-01-2007, 05:16 PM
I am a big fan of Terry Pratchett, the UK fantasy-satire writer. In fact there was a pretty good two part adaptation of one of his books on TV over Christmas.
I am re-reading one of his books and in it there is a character who is from a rather fundamentalist country and is a minor cleric who can't resist giving out tracts. Anyhow, in a brief discussion about sin another character says something to the effect...
Sin is when you treat someone as a thing, and that includes yourself.
Now Terry Pratchett has never struck me as a Christian writer, not anti-Christian either, sometimes anti-religiosity.
But I have been thinking about this and it seems rather a profound insight. I am wondering now who universal a working description of sin this is. Certainly I could describe much of my own sin in this way. It seems to me to make sin a personal matter. I am sinning against a person, even myself, and God and others.
What do others think? I am quite sure it does not say all that can be said about sin, I know quite a lot of what the Fathers say. But it seemed a good insight, especially for a non-believer. I wonder if others have to hand some quotes from the Fathers speaking of the personal nature of sin.
I wonder now how such a thought could be used evangelistically, and if it is a more widely held understanding among the agnostic masses around us.
Peter
I am re-reading one of his books and in it there is a character who is from a rather fundamentalist country and is a minor cleric who can't resist giving out tracts. Anyhow, in a brief discussion about sin another character says something to the effect...
Sin is when you treat someone as a thing, and that includes yourself.
Now Terry Pratchett has never struck me as a Christian writer, not anti-Christian either, sometimes anti-religiosity.
But I have been thinking about this and it seems rather a profound insight. I am wondering now who universal a working description of sin this is. Certainly I could describe much of my own sin in this way. It seems to me to make sin a personal matter. I am sinning against a person, even myself, and God and others.
What do others think? I am quite sure it does not say all that can be said about sin, I know quite a lot of what the Fathers say. But it seemed a good insight, especially for a non-believer. I wonder if others have to hand some quotes from the Fathers speaking of the personal nature of sin.
I wonder now how such a thought could be used evangelistically, and if it is a more widely held understanding among the agnostic masses around us.
Peter