I ask this in the "Other Religion" category because I don't want it to be solely focused on, say, Christianity, as opposed to any other religion. Just looking for some thoughts on the subject...

When is it okay to sin?

When is sin justifiable for the cause of the "greater good"?

NeedKarma

"Sin" is a christian concept. I don't use that word of course. I do make a discernment between making a mistake (getting drunk, giving the cute secretary a kiss) and doing something consciously wrong (defrauding/robbing someone). I can't imagine what can justify doing the latter.

Wondergirl

Only on Tuesday mornings at 8:42. (just kidding)

Now you're talking about (inChristianity) something called situation ethics -- "My child was starving, so I stole a t-bone steak from the grocery store." There were huge debates over this line of thinking during the 1960s when I was in college. The "hard-line Christians" always believed there is a better way to, for instance, feed your child than by stealing.

from apologeticspress.org --

In the mid-1960s, Joseph Fletcher published the book, Situation Ethics, thereby securing for himself the dubious distinction, “the Father of Situation Ethics” (1966). Of course, Fletcher was by no means the first to advance the ideals of situationism. Men like Emil Brunner (The Divine Imperative), Reinhold Niebuhr (Moral Man and Immoral Society), Harvey Cox (The Secular City), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Ethics), and John A.T. Robinson (Honest to God) promoted ethical relativism before Fletcher’s popular expression of the same. Existentialist philosophers like Sartre, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger promulgated this same subjectivism.... However, we need not think that situation ethics is a twenty-first-century phenomenon that was invented by modern theologians and social scientists. Situationism goes all the way back to Eden when Satan posed to Eve circumstances that he alleged would justify setting aside God’s law (Genesis 3:4-6).

*****
Situation ethics means that there is no ethical standard that can be consistently applied. Each situation demands its own standard of ethics. Under that theory, you may commit adultery (or almost anything else) if it is done in love, and no one is hurt by it. You may lie, if you think it appropriate to spare the feelings of someone. If your host wants to know if you enjoyed the party, but you were bored stiff, you may say, "I had a wonderful time" for you are trying to do good to him. There is no action you cannot perform if, in your judgment, the action is for a good cause and if you have the proper motive when you perform it.

DrJizzle

well true but the concept is what is important.

What if there were millions of lives at risk and the only way to save them was to pretend to be someone you werent so you could sneak in to somewhere and steal whatever was causing the threat?

I dont mean to get all 007 on you but putting it to the extremes... when is it okay?

DrJizzle

Very interesting take, Wondergirl...

What of those that murder in the name of God? There is a lot in history that has happened that we, as the outside eye, see as insane or sinful.... but the doer does feeling they are doing the right thing by God?

I suppose it is relative... so who are we to judge? Should we all just do what we think is situationally okay if we feel it is the right thing to do?

Wondergirl

Jesus' second greatest commandment is to love one another. Situation ethics is ruled by agape (unconditional love) for others. We act out of love, trying to do the best to serve their interests. This means that rules don’t always apply, but depend on the situation. Rules like "Do not steal" become relative to love – so if love demands stealing food for the hungry, you steal. However, it doesn’t mean "anything goes." In situation ethics, there are no rules about what should or shouldn’t be done. In each situation, you decide there and then what the most loving thing to do is.

There only problem is, loving others is the second great commandment. The first great commandment is love God. Loving God means obeying the Ten Commandments, the guidelines for our life as a Christian, to the best of our ability. Situation ethics puts people above rules and puts human judgment ahead of God's orderly plan for our lives as we adhere to the morality that lies in the Ten Commandments.

Can situation ethics lead to complete chaos as each Christian decides for himself how he can show his version of love by deliberately sinning as he feels he needs to ?

Alder

Ok, well, since you said you wanted a broader cross-section than just Christian...

Let's try Goddess-centered spirituality. The Goddess is ultimate Oneness, and the universe is Her living body. We are all connected. Choices and actions that reaffirm that connectedness are good, choices and actions that are from a place where someone denies that connectedness, acting as though he or she were an isolated and independent man in a state of nature, entering into social contracts in which he gives up a minimum amount of his liberty so as to preserve his remaining freedom from other individuals, are evil. Wait, did I just say John Locke's philosophy, which was the basis for the principles the Federalists used to write the U.S. Constitution, is the basis of evil? Huh, imagine that.

Switching gears to Taoism, there is a basic "way" of being in the universe. We keep trying so hard to do things, when if we just let them be and simplified our lives, things would naturally flow into that way of being. Instead of seeking ful-fillment, we recognize that being empty might have value, because we then have room to let something higher inspire us.

Well, 'nuff said. "More words count less."