I’ve been thinking about something yesterday.

There’s a fundamental difference between how I define sin, and how the religions do it. They define sin as an absolute category, and they usually have a list of things that are sinful.

I, however, define sin as everything that removes your soul from alignment with God. This means that, for me, sin is a relative category.

Since people usually have a poor understanding of scientific and technical terminology, the fact that something is relative means it’s anchored to something else, and varies accordingly. It’s not an independent, absolute parameter.

What does that mean in practice?

It means that I can’t tell you what sin is for you. I can make a general statement about things that are usually sinful – murder, theft, deception and so on – but I can imagine circumstances where each would be justified. For instance, deceiving Nazis who ask where a Jew is hidden is virtuous. Stealing bread to feed a hungry child if you have no other options is virtuous. Murdering an armed criminal who broke into your house in order to defend your family is virtuous. All kinds of things that are sinful in general can be virtuous or at least excused in another set of circumstances. Like Krishna said, “there is nothing better than truth, in either this world or any other, but truth is sometimes not a good thing to say, and a lie sometimes is”. Basically, if the Nazis ask you where Anne Frank is hidden, truth is definitely not a good thing to say in these circumstances, but whether you outright lie or say something evasive, that might depend on what’s more expedient in the circumstances. This makes the correct action both very clear and also relative. It’s clear in the sense that the Nazis are evil, Anne Frank is innocent, and you should protect the innocent from the evil. How you do it depends on the circumstances, in a sense that you need to improvise something that is most likely to work. This makes sin a very clear thing, but it also makes a correct course of action a relative matter, in a sense that “it depends”. Sometimes you are in a position to outright murder the evil people, and if it’s possible, that might be the best option. If force is not a realistic option, you can resort to deception or evasion. You can even decide to sacrifice yourself in order to save someone else. But, as I said, it depends. There’s no clear instruction manual for stupid people who don’t like to use their brains.

Also, I assume that you have alignment with God, so that you can see what keeps you there, and what removes you from that alignment. If you don’t have alignment with God, or don’t even know what that would be, it means you’re in a pickle. You are either completely ignorant and immature, or you are already influenced by sin to the point of complete spiritual misalignment. Here, we can speak of consequences of past sinful actions that condition your present state. You can also be intentionally deluding yourself in order to justify your past sinful choices. That happens more often than not. An aspect of this is that the worst sinners will tell you that they are fine, that they feel justified before God, they have nothing to confess or change, nothing that worries them. Those people are usually the kind that ends up on the wrong side of divine justice, in a sense that the Judge flicks them into hell without much thought or consideration. People who are pure usually have all sorts of things that trouble them, and the number increases as they are closer to God. They are never sure about all kinds of things they did, and how God will see them, and they can find all kinds of faults and problems with the things they did. I know I had quite a list, and I did go through it with God. For the most part, I got explanations why it’s fine. When it wasn’t fine, I found some way to fix it. That’s the difference between being sinless and being a sinner. If you’re sinless, it doesn’t mean you didn’t do anything wrong; it means you’re not holding on to your mistakes. To be a sinner is to make your mistakes a part of your worldview, to the point where you would outright reject God if he told you to change it.

There is also a big difference between being sinless and being perfect. Being sinless means you’re not holding on to sin and making it into a worldview. You can, however, be both sinless and immature or ignorant. It’s not like being sinless gives you an automatic entrance into Heaven. A rock is sinless. The goal is not to be merely free of sin, in a sense where you make mistakes, acknowledge that they were mistakes, correct them and move on. It is to manifest the will and nature of God in your life and choices. This makes the whole thing much more complicated than the religions make it seem, but in practice, it’s quite simple. There’s a scale of goodness, in a sense that a wide range of souls can be in alignment with God, but more or less sophisticated and developed. There’s also a scale of purity, where someone can be more or less pure, but it’s fine – you work on it. But there is also a clear point where one is obviously sinful and evil and such souls are discarded and destroyed. It’s not an exact science, which is why there are Judges, instead of some automatic algorithm that would measure you up and decide. It’s not that such a thing couldn’t be made. However, the reason why the Judges are entrusted to the task instead is because they can tell whether someone is just messed up, or he’s just wrong. Their “nose” is trusted by God more than any law, rule or algorithm could possibly be, because the Judges are of God. Their judgment is therefore also of God. They are allowed to do whatever they feel is appropriate, and there is no recourse, no higher court for complaints. In practice, it means they can help you go through things, explain, show how things actually work, show what you’re doing wrong and why, or even teach you sadhana that will correct your spiritual faults. Or they can crush you like a bug and throw what’s left of you to the compost heap. They are there because God trusts them. Whatever they decide, is the Will of God. Translated: don’t fuck with the Judges. You don’t get to talk to their manager. They are the ultimate authority on you. Even the other Gods who leave human existence are always very respectful with the Judges, because they are family; they are not feared, they are missed.

So, when I say that something is relative, hard to tell and it depends on the circumstances, it’s not some moral relativism of mine that’s causing me to say this. In fact, it’s how God sees this, and it’s the reason why the Judges exist and do a job that would otherwise be entrusted to a piece of code. It’s actually so hard to tell that you need to be either a highly qualified Angel or a Person of God to be entrusted with the task. Considering that, you can imagine that some list of rules that earthly religions love so much isn’t going to cut it, either.