Top Ten Sins?

 

"List of the Top 10 Presidents," the caption read.  "Number 5 will shock you!"  I didn't bother clicking on the link.  The only thing shocking to me would have been if turned out that "Number 5" was Manuel Noriega.

I am often amazed at humans need to rank things.  They seem to ask themselves constantly what basketball player was the greatest of all time or, (if their interests lie in a more cerebral direction) what chess player was the greatest grandmaster of them all?  I'm not sure what purpose these questions and arguments serve.  It may be an interesting argument to rank Gary Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen ahead of Bobby Fischer, but since they never played each other in their primes, it is meaningless.  The same if you rank Kareem Abdul Jabber ahead of some more recent players.  Your answer to these questions says more about you than it does about the players.

These sorts of list aren't something new.  We know that a couple of hundred years before the time of Christ guidebooks had listed the Seven Wonders of the World.  They listed things that travelers of the ancient world couldn't miss -- things like the pyramids of Egypt, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

I have seen a concerning trend among American Christians to rank sins.  I'm not what the impetus behind this is, but often they seem to identify serious immorality or abortion as some of the worst offenses against God.

I think it makes sense.  First of all, these sins just seem really bad.  Even better, they are activities that most Evangelicals are pretty safe condemning.  They fall solidly in the "Someone Else's Sin" category.

Jesus never said what the greatest sin was, but He did say what the greatest commandment was.  He said, when asked, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment." (Matthew 22:37,38).  The second commandment doesn't even come into the Ten Commandments, but is to "Love your neighbor as yourself."

It follows from this that the greatest sin is a violation of the command to love God.  Pure and simple, the one thing that God despises above all else is idolatry.

Of course, Christians today do not make idols of wood and stone and bow down to them.  They do put many things in the place of God -- political figures, money, work, entertainment, and even themselves are all things that I have seen Christians vault above God in their pantheons.  They would never say that they value these things more than their relationship with God, but their actions tell a different story.

The Bible is clear that even if we worship God more than other things in our lives, that is not enough.  Not only is God not willing to be in second place, He is not willing to be the greatest God among many gods.  If we have any other things in our lives that we serve, even a little bit, this is sin.  God will either be our only God, or He will not be our God at all.

This is a challenge.  We live in a real world.  We have to work.  We need money to eat and to do many basic functions.  We need times of rest and enjoyment.  These things must never slip into the category of a god.

I don't think it is helpful to rank the Commandments.  They should all be done, but done because we love and worship the God of the Universe.

If we never kill, never covet, and never commit adultery, but do not love God with all that we are and our neighbors as ourselves, I am afraid it is all meaningless.

This world has lost its love for the important things (if it ever had it in the first place) and it is not surprising as a result that there is darkness upon the face of the deep.

Rather than focusing on behaviors, the church needs to start at the beginning.  We need to recapture a love for God within our own hearts.  Then we can teach this world to love.  Nothing else will change the church.  Nothing else will heal this world.