Love Consciousness and Sin Consciousness

We do not talk about 'sin' in polite conversation. It is a topic most people have avoided. It is a dark word and somewhat sinister (no pun intended). Who has taught us what sin is? Hellfire and damnation are the tracks along which sin seems to travel in religious circles. Lack of understanding of what meant by sin leads to apathy towards God which is what sin really is. Staying on the sin track of fear will drive people deeper into sin.

There is a lot in the Old Testament about what is sin and what is not. We can read about the ten commandments and the law, which pretty well spells out the no-nos of God. Jesus Christ in the New Testament narrows this down and sums it up by two simple laws: love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

God is love and there is no darkness or ill-will in him. Sin should be defined with that in mind. God doesn't want to instill fear to get us to love him. There is nothing created by God on this earth that indicates that. The Bible does not teach us that.

There are a multiple number of things in this world that are evil, but they don't originate with God. If  the fear definition of sin prevails, apathy sometimes results and people make no effort to know God at all which is the goal of evil. God teaches us otherwise through his creation with sunrise and sunset.  Light gives us the ability to see what is going on, darkness involves groping. Just as we can grope in darkness in the physical world, the same can be said of the spiritual world.

In I John it says 'we love God because he first loved us'. Well, if you don't know God, how are you going love him and realize what he wants for you? To know him is to love him. That is the first pre-requisite for prayer. People tell me that they have trouble with getting their prayers answered and that God is very quiet. It may seem like that but there are reasons why it seems like that at times. The world is very noisy and busy. People just don't take the time to get to know the creator of the universe or how much he loves us. It is too easy to take someone else's word for it. We need to tap into God's word for understanding. Understanding comes with knowledge and application of that knowledge. That's how we find out how much God loves us.

'Sin' in the word of God is translated from the Greek word that means 'missing the mark'. If you can miss something, you can also decide to find it. I often think of this as an archery target where the target is the word of God. The field behind it is the world and all of its flaws, enticements, dangers and imperfections. When we miss the target, the arrows fall into the field and are subject to all that lies there. When focused, we can hit the target and get all the benefits of being above all of that.

We have been given free-will to do what we want. We aren't robots!  If a person wants to just mess around, that's his right.  It is not his right then  to say God landed him in the dirt or that God doesn't listen. God is love, he wants the best for us.