I just thought that this entire line of thought connects very nicely with my ideas about sin and error.

Now that I think of it, I think it’s even more complicated. It’s sin, error, flaw and lack of ability.

Sin is when you have fundamental misalignment between your soul and God. Sin is when God would do one thing, and it’s the thing you would hate and despise, and you would do differently, or even opposite. For instance, if we take the “Salvos” series, the horned demon is sinful. He’s more strategic about killing others and recruiting minions than the wild demons, who are like beasts that just attack everything that moves, but he’s on a path that would have resulted in him becoming a supervillain like Belzu, Jofis or Regnorex had Salvos not interfered and killed him. If you’re sinful, evil is normal and desirable, while goodness is contemptible. Evil is a spiritual orientation of the soul relative to God.

Error, on the other hand, is when you’re trying to do something, and it ends up being the opposite of what you wanted. Essentially, a good person in error will do bad things, and I guess an evil person in error will do good things. Error is a difference between a desired and actual outcome. Error is how you learn that your understanding, methods and practices need to be improved.

A flaw is something different; it’s a difference between what your soul, your mind, emotions, thoughts and actions should be based on your spiritual orientation and choices, and what they actually are in reality. A flaw is something you have, something you then recognize, understand and correct. A flaw is something you don’t tolerate, as a rule. It’s the difference between where you want to be and where you are.

Lack of ability is something that might be important, in which case you need to work on acquiring the desired ability, but it can also be irrelevant. For instance, if you have multiple major talents, but you suck at music, you can shrug it off and say it’s not your thing to do in this life. However, if you’re a musician, and you can’t do a particular thing related to music, this is a problem that needs to be handled the way flaws are handled in the context of spiritual growth: learn, correct, acquire, practice, get better. In the example of Salvos, her life depends on getting better at fighting enemies, so she practices tirelessly and grows stronger. Her social skills suck, it interferes with her ability to integrate into society and so she learns and gets better at it. She first looks like a demon, then like a brat, then like an eccentric adventurer, and then like an eccentric super-Mage. She always appears quirky, but her quirks are accepted as something typical for extremely talented people. Weird, but good weird. On the other hand, her handwriting is terrible, and remains terrible, because it never stood in her way enough for her to spend time practicing. She doesn’t just automatically get good at something. Also, she needs to prioritise. She only has so many hours in a day. Either she’ll practice alchemy, space magic, creation magic and combat skills, or she’ll practice shopping and handwriting. Something has to go, and often her friends and companions fill in the gaps for her; she’s only one person, she’s young, extremely busy and just can’t get to everything. So, that’s a good approach to the lack of ability. If it matters, you need to deal with it seriously. If it doesn’t matter, you need to make choices and prioritise; you’re always going to suck at most things. You just need to take care not to suck at things that matter to you in this life.