defining sin

We toss these words around, discrimination, persecution, i suppose if you are discriminating against someone you are persecuting them, that is if you are the people who have all the money and own all the property, and you won't let another group who has neither buy your property or earn your wages.  Way back when we were lads, an upstanding straight white man was expected to discriminate against nonstraight, nonwhite, nonmen.  When you went to that snooty club for cigars and brandy you certainly didn't want to rub elbows with gays, blacks, or women.  Anymore all those people can smoke and drink together.  I heard they even let a swamp Bohunk in, but the people there were not up to his snuff, and he was sure they would disappoint him somewhere down the line so he he went back to the swamp where he could be disappointed with them from a distance.

You are always going on about how things have changed since we were lads, but you know things have always been changing, time is a river, blah, blah, blah.  Change is kind of like winter, you may like it or you may hate it, but it's always going to be there, and it's perfectly fine to complain about it to your friends and neighbors, but these complaints become a little tiresome in a high class blog such as this one. 

And anyway things were wrong back then, blacks couldn't vote or buy property in the nice parts of town or get those good jobs, gays could go to jail for practicing the love that dare not speak its name, and women had a hard time becoming doctors and lawyers.  Surely you admit that that was wrong.  Now it's better, quit complaining.

What i meant by sin, and this is pretty much my own definition, is knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway.  I was going to trot out some examples. but not many came to mind, not that I am sinless, but I just don't do much of anything anymore.  I used to steal.  Way back in my hippie days I used to shoplift books.  I suppose I had some halfass theory where I was liberating them from the corrupt establishment, but I knew in my heart that what I was doing was wrong, but I wanted the book and so I took it.  Anymore my sins would be something like treating somebody unfair because I didn't want to take the time to treat them right, or not recycling something because it was too much bother.

And there is guilt there when I know I have sinned.  I suppose that keeps me from doing it very often and that makes me a better person, and I suppose when somebody else sins it makes me more tolerant of them, so long as they admit they sinned and vow to try to not do it again, even though we both know we will because we are imperfect vessels. 

Wow, sounds like I have bought into that original sin thing that I am always declaiming about.  In my case I think it is more about putting yourself first, giving yourself a bit of an advantage in an unfair manner over somebody else.  That's what I think of as sin.