Can someone explain to me WHAT a SIN is??

Question

What are somethings that are sinful??

Answer 1

There are seven deadly sins and seven heavenly virtues.

Sins:
Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.

Envy is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.

Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.

Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.

Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.

Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.

Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.

Virtues -

The Cardinal Virtues:
prudence, temperance, courage, justice

Classical Greek philosophers considered the foremost virtues to be prudence, temperance, courage, and justice. Early Christian Church theologians adopted these virtues and considered them to be equally important to all people, whether they were Christian or not.

The Theological Virtues:
love, hope, faith

St. Paul defined the three chief virtues as love, which was the essential nature of God, hope, and faith. Christian Church authorities called them the three theological virtues because they believed the virtues were not natural to man in his fallen state, but were conferred at Baptism.

The Seven Contrary Virtues:
humility, kindness, abstinence, chastity, patience, liberality, diligence

The Contrary Virtues were derived from the Psychomachia ("Battle for the Soul"), an epic poem written by Prudentius (c. 410). Practicing these virtues is alledged to protect one against temptation toward the Seven Deadly Sins: humility against pride, kindness against envy, abstinence against gluttony, chastity against lust, patience against anger, liberality against greed, and diligence against sloth.

The Seven Heavenly Virtues:
faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, temperance, prudence

The Heavenly Virtues combine the four Cardinal Virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude -- or courage, and justice, with a variation of the theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. I'm still researching the origins and popular usage of this formulation.

The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy

Continuing the numerological mysticism of Seven, the Christian Church assembled a list of seven good works that was included in medieval catechisms. They are: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, give shelter to strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick, minister to prisoners, and bury the dead.

Answer 2

Pick me! Sin means doing something that you know is wrong. The laws of humans can be broken with or without knowledge of those laws, but the law of God supposes knowing right from wrong. Many sinful acts are listed in the scriptures, but the list is not fully complete nor does a statute about social behavior stand for all time. If you think that a thing is wrong to do and you do it anyway, you sinned. A sin is something that will make you tell a lie later to cover for your bad behavior. Telling lies has not been specifically categorized as a sin in Jewish and Christian thought, but the rest of the world knows that lying is very much part of a wrong way of life. If you can be honest about what you do, you are moving away from sin.
The classic sins are:
Killing
Stealing
Worshipping Idols (calling things that are not God, God)\
Coveting (wanting things that don't belong to you)
Dishonoring your parents
Breaking the vows of marriage- either your own vows or someone else's
Forgetting the holy day of God
Making anything in life more sacred than God
Framing someone for a crime they did not commit (false witness)
There's one other one in the Ten Commandments, but I don't remember it at the moment. In addition, Jesus gave a couple of other rules. We are to treat other people with as much respect and love as we would want for ourselves and we are not to speak badly about God.
There are many other things that you could do nowadays that people in biblical times never thought of, but might be sinful all the same. Putting a virus on someone's computer so that you can sell them anti-virus programs is a sin because it's dishonest and a kind of stealing.
Maybe you will understand this, maybe not, but it's the best answer. Pick me!

Answer 3

A sin cannot hurt God.

God, supposedly omniscient and omnipotent (read all-Knowing and all-Powerful), cannot get hurt, get angry, feel offended, be violated, like a human being does.

Sins are so defined for human understanding, and, as we know, human understanding evolves over time.

A latest definition of sin would be something which is detrimental or harmful to the human being who commits it or something which harms other human beings or other forms of life or a social order or system to which the human being is related.

Sins do not hurt God. It is the human being who is hurt by sin.

Examples of sins vary for different religions, but certain universal sins include the murdering of innocent lives, and it is obvious, because, it not only harms the person being murdered, it also harms the murderer as well as the people related to the murdered; i.e. their loved ones.

Answer 4

Sin is disobedience to God. We all know the biggies, lying, stealing, cheating, murder, etc. There is long list in the Bible of things you shouldn't do. But sin is also personal as well.... if God tells you not to do something, or you feel you shouldn't do something, and you do it anyway, then it is sin. Example: My Grandmother who is a devout Christian woman feels like she shouldn't go to the movies.. when she was young it was all about making out, etc, etc. She feels like for her it would be a sin. But she knows it isn't a sin for other people.

Answer 5

Sin: Made up guidelines devised so that the church could control the population hundreds of years ago through fear and ignorance. Outdated beliefs, however make a sin 'subjective'.
For example, killing is a sin, but a president ( ANY one) has declared a war - therefore he gave the order to kill. since a soldier follows orders, and kills someone... who really sinned here? it's all subjective. Just live life not being a dick, and you should be ok...

Answer 6

The Greek word used for "sin" in the New Testament is the same word used to describe what happens when an archer misses the target. In that sense, I believe that Jesus wanted to change the understanding of sin so that instead of equating it to a moral offense against God, people would regard sin as a misunderstanding, - an area where they missed the mark in their understanding of truth.

Unfortunately, once the church in Rome declared itself the "official" Christian church, sin as a moral affront to God became the centerpiece of Christianity. What better way to control people than to convince them that God is mad at them and you (the church) are the only avenue they have to avoid burning for eternity in hell.

Anyway, - I advise all Christians to substitue "misunderstanding" ever time they see the word "sin" in the New Testament. Jesus message takes on a whole new meaning. God becomes a figure of Love and understanding, rather than one of Judgement and vengeance.

Answer 7

A sin is an act in opposition to what God has stated is acceptable. Some sins are listed, but mostly principles are listed. For example, adultery is a sin, as is murder. The Bible also tells us that looking at a woman so as to have desire for her is as much as committing adultery, so that is sin as well.

Answer 8

Sin, the idea that God could ever be displeased with you because of something you had done, did not exist when Jesus died, nor does it exist now.

This is a fictitious idea dreamed up to induce guilt and control people.

The moment you start to actually think about this impossible definition of sin the whole concept falls apart and you wonder how you could had ever believed it at all.

Let me assist you a little. Let’s start with the word itself. Where did this word sin come from? In England when archery was practiced as a sport the goal was to try to hit the center of a target. When you actually try to do this you quickly realize just how difficult it is to consistently hit the exact center of the target, or the mark as it was called then. This mark in the center of the target is an elusive goal for even the best archers due to the many variables like, Wind, distance, angle, etc. So they often miss the mark they were hoping to hit. They had a term for this missing the mark; it was called a syn or sin as it is spelled these days. Often the wind would blow an arrow that had been shot with the best of intentions, so far off course that it completely missed the mark it was aimed for. Seeing this a companion might look at the archer with a smile and say that was a syn. Meaning, you missed the mark, you had better try again. At this point he would simply string another arrow, make the necessary corrections to compensate for the wind and try again. This process would continue until he eventually got it right and hit the mark.

What does this have to do with the reality of sin you ask? Remember that you are reading an English bible, a bible that was translated from some other language. When this translation was done English words needed to be found that had a meaning as close as possible to the meaning of the words the bible had used in the other language. Remember the goal of any good translation is to be as faithful as is possible in transferring the original meaning of the work. The English term syn was the word that most completely did this job of transferring the original idea of sin from the original text. In the original biblical intent, sin was not something that God was displeased with you about. It meant that you had tried but your choice was not the best you could have made, you needed to make the necessary corrections and try over.

This is what life is about. Situations confront us on a daily basis, each requiring some response from us. We may chose to respond in one of two ways. We assess the situation and respond from either a basis of love or from a basis of fear. When we respond from our fears we invariably respond in an unloving manner. This unloving response always creates even more negativity. On the other hand if we respond from a basis of love to the situation, it has a calming effect for all who are involved. It may not completely resolve the situation but it never makes things any worse. Through out life each of us alternately chooses both loving and unloving responses as our responses to the situations we are confronted with. The hope being that at some point we will start to notice that one of these strategies creates more chaos, while the other causes chaos to dissipate. This was Gods intent in allowing us to have this experience we call our life. This is why the endless variety of situations and possible responses to these situations confront us on a daily basis. We are expected to experiment with the numerous possible ways to respond and come to our own conclusions about which types of responses best serve our goals.

Most of us quickly realize that we prefer a peaceful calm existence to one of constant turmoil. If we are paying attention to the responses we have been making to the situations we have been confronted with we will notice that some of them, the ones made from a basis of fear intensify chaotic situations. Much like throwing gasoline on a fire would do. While the responses we make from a basis of love have an opposite quelling or calming effect.

Answer 9

Sin is knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway.... An example of sin is : not following the law, because Jesus said that he didn't come to break the law, but to show love and against love, there is no law.

Answer 10

sin is anything that hinders you from flourishing as a human being among human beings

sin = hamartia (gk) = an archery term, missing the mark of God's own glory inspite of the best aim and attempts to hit it.

Don't get discouraged from the trial and errors. Just keep trying. It's hard to be 100% human all the time.