Vandalism of Shalom

Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin
Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

Introduction
Walker Percy: Boredom is “the self being stuffed with itself.”
The main human trouble is desperately difficult to fix; sin is the longest-running of human emergencies.

1. Vandalism of Shalom
Jonathan Dimbleby filmed a documentary about the hunger in Ethiopia and found that the government required the aid workers to pay a tariff on the emergency food relief they were bringing in for the starving people.
Shalom
The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight.
A universal flourishing, wholeness and delight.
Sin: A Definition
Sin is both a religious and a moral concept.
It is a breaking of the Law as well as the breaking of the Covenant
Sin is first and foremost a Godward force; any thought, desire, emotion, word, or deed that displeases God and deserves blame.
Includes both acts and dispositions.
Sin is a culpable and personal affront to God.
Sin violates Shalom and interferes with the way things are supposed to be.
Sin is unoriginal in that it disrupts the good and harmonious like an intruder.
Sin offends God because it bereaves or assaults God directly or what God has made.
If there is no God, then there is no violation of God’s Law or an affront to Him.
Interscholastic and Intramural Distinctions
Crime is statute-relative while sin is not.
The relationship between sin and immorality is knotty and complex.
We need grace for our sin but mercy and healing for our diseases.
Do not confuse sin with mere error.
Sin is both objective and subjective; objective sin breaks the peace while subjective sin is when we feel we have broken the peace, whether we have or not.
All sin is equally wrong, but not all sin is equally bad. The badness of a sin depends partly on what kind and how much damage it has done.
There may be mitigating circumstances that need to be taken into account, but involuntariness may mitigate but it doesn’t necessarily excuse. If the sin was acquired in some way through some fault of our own, then we are culpable.
Evil social structures and habits may contribute to a sin, making it more difficult to assess the culpability of a sin.