“What then did wretched I so love in thee, thou theft of mine… Fair were the pears we stole, because they were Thy creation… but not them did my wretched soul desire… For, when gathered, I flung them away, my only feast therein being my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy. For if aught of those pears came within my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin.”
—The Confessions of St Augustine, Book II
St. Augustine’s famous “pear story” is one of those stories that will make a lasting impression to whoever reads it. The benefits of having that story at hand when you’re at a party notwithstanding, the exploration into sin as the perversion of God’s will is a concept that intrigues both secular and non-secular readers alike. The nature of sin is something that comes up fairly frequently in debates regarding morality and ethics, though those debates usually end without a definite conclusion on the (extremely frustrating) grounds that everything is subjective.
But what I personally find even more interesting is the doing wrong for the sake of wrongdoing. The intentions behind sin, subjectivity aside, can primarily be grouped into two categories:
- Sin as a means to an end
- Sin as an end to itself
There is another intriguing third category that Dr. Dennis F. Kinlaw brought up in his devotional, "This Day With The Master: 365 Daily Meditations". On October 4, the passage read as follows: “Some of us need to realize that we possess hurtful patterns of behaviour that are deeply seared upon our souls and our psyches… Many times we can in our own self-interest without being aware that we are doing so.” This passage is based on Psalm 19: 13-14. By my own understanding, the controlling idea of this entire passage is that we are so rooted in sin that sometimes sin comes more or less as a reflex, as opposed to a choice. Another more specific qualification I need to make here is that the “self-interest” reflected here refers to self-interest at the expense of another, not self-interest of survival (or survival instinct) when you are, say, stranded on a deserted island much like how MMA fighters are trained to knock your teeth out when you try to scare them from around a corner, we are hardwired to sin by virtue of daily practice.
But this kind of assertion is not without its dangers, because sin is qualified as sin through the active choice that allows its occurrence. You need to choose to sin for it to be sin. In St. Augustine’s case, he chose to steal the pears because it was fun to steal. That makes him a mild kleptomaniac, but still, his choice here is what makes the theft a sin. Human nature is often used to defend wrongdoing for the same reasons that criminals who plead insane aren’t sent to prison, they get sent into an institution.
In that same way, the psalmist pleads innocence to God until he could remedy the reflexive sins. However, if it’s not clear enough yet, the main issue I have is the idea that sin can be reflexive. It isn’t sin if you can’t control it, if you act by instinct; it’s called a mental disorder. Liars who lie reflexively are called pathological liars, and while they are not well-regarded by society, at least we recognize that to an extent, they don’t do what they do by choice.
This is why people like to swear “with God as their witness”. A man can be condemned as objectively sinful when both the Lord and his own self knows that the choice he made was made for the purpose evil (the definition of evil doesn’t matter here). In this religion of intentions, wrongdoing and ethics are subjective but universally held to the standard of intention. We can ask for mercy, but there cannot be any ambiguity when we look upon the sins we commit. If you can't even be honest to God, at least be honest to yourself. Let your sins be sins, and your psychological predispositions be something that you eventually resolve by therapy/ treatment, amen.
