CHAPTER FOUR
SIN

       God then is Love, and has created a world for those who love. It is easy to imagine what vast possibilities of happiness lay in such a Creation: but we do not need imagination to bring before us the equally vast possibilities of unhappiness which lay in God's scheme. History and personal experience tell us the same tale of man's inhumanity to man, and the consequent groaning of the whole Creation. We are not, however, always ready to put the blame where it lies, nor to acknowledge the simplicity of the cure.

       In one word the whole trouble lies in the selfishness of men and angels. We are perfectly free to love; every baby does it! But we are equally free to hate; every grown up has done that. There is nothing mysterious about the problem or its solution. If we love God and each other our troubles will disappear. A world that will work well with lovers in it, will fail miserably when it is peopled by haters.

       God, who knew this only too well, has therefore laid down a law: "the soul that sinneth it shall die". Sin is every desire of a selfish man, who is determined to seek his own happiness at any cost to others. In the end the selfish man is not contented unless he can push his way to the top, and history is largely the record of men who climbed up on the corpses of their rivals. From Nimrod and Pharaoh to Napoleon and Hitler the same old tale is told and the final chapter of our age will record the rise and fall of the Arch-Tyrant of all, Anti-Christ.

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       God then laid down the moral law, not because He was a tyrant demanding obedience, but because He is a lover longing for our happiness. He hates sin, not because it annoys Him, but because it destroys us! If you will examine, for example, the Ten Commandments, you will find that men were saying them long before God wrote them! It was Abel who exclaimed with his last breath to Cain "Thou shalt do no murder": it was the first husband whose wife betrayed him who cried "thou shalt not commit adultery"!

       In other words, our desire for happiness inevitably leads us to forbid the actions which obviously threaten it. Morality is not an end in itself, but the means to the supreme end of life, happiness. The great condemnation of sin is, not that it breaks a law but that it destroys peace of mind and security. The moral law is the custodian of our happiness, and consequently since God seeks our happiness He stands firmly behind the Law which alone can procure it. Neither God nor man has any particular liking for Law as an end in itself. That sort of attitude produces the self-righteous Pharisee who delights in laying burdens upon men's backs instead of sharing them!

       God also knew, what on the whole men deny, that it makes all the difference to a man's life what he thinks about God. The man who thinks there is no God is faced with the 'unyielding despair' of Bertrand Russell, the philosopher: the man who is a practising Buddhist or Hindu or Roman Catholic is afraid of Death or Purgatory: the man who believes in a spirit world is afraid of life, and spends his days trying to placate his unseen enemies. It is only the man who believes that God is Love who can face life with peace, and death with joy! The fool says that it doesn't matter what a man's religion is; one is as good as another. The man who uses his eyes sees that it makes all the difference

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what a man believes about God, and can contrast the cruelty of Islam, the licentiousness of Hinduism, or the vileness of spiritism with the peace, joy and cleanness of Biblical Christianity.

       The first four commandments of the Bible will spring to the lips of the man who studies the 'gods' of the heathen from Moloch and Baal to Venus and Astarte, from the idols of China to those of Africa. For wherever men have made images of God they have poured into them all the cruelty and lust of Satan and his angels. For it is Satan who is the God of this world, and has inspired the multitudinous religions of this world. It is Jesus of Nazareth, dying on the Cross and raised from the dead, who is the Light of this world. All other 'gods' are children of darkness, and lead their dupes into darkness, and fall into the torment of Hades together.

       The heinousness of Sin, therefore, lies not simply in a single wrong action, but in its inevitable consequences. We recognise this readily when we are dealing with leprosy, or foot and mouth disease, or fowl pest. We dread them, not simply for themselves, but because of their contagious properties. We see, not one sick animal or bird, but a whole country infected; not just one spot but a whole body rotted. Cain's murder filled the whole earth with violence; Ananias and Sapphira brought suspicion into the whole Early Church; one theft in the office brings all the staff under suspicion; one burglary puts a lock on every door, and apprehension in every heart.

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