Sin vs. Imperfection

I must confess that I just can't make any sense of the notion of (Christian) sin as a general concept applied to humanity any more. I would thus like to lay out in a dialectical format just what the problem is.

I imagine that there is already a chorus of voices saying, "Just look at the world! Look at the wars, at the poverty, at the injustice. How can you not believe in sin?" And if that were all that sin was, then sure; I can accept that. Sin is really messing things up. But then, it is hardly obvious that everyone is sinful. Some people, presumably unregenerate non-Christians in the eyes of some of my readers, seem to live perfectly upright, just, noble, loving lives. How are they sinful, if we pick out sin primarily by looking at the horrible events of the world?

"But even they aren't perfect. I bet they've told lies and cheated people at some point in their lives." But here is where I fundamentally disagree with the standpoint of sin. Sin assumes that people should start off perfect, and then they are penalized for not being such. It is not merely a comment on how people go wrong, but an expectation that it is perfectly reasonable that they should never have gone wrong in the first place. Rubbish. People start off with nothing and have to work their way up. When you learn math, you don't start by knowing math. Errors are a necessary part of the learning process; I bet that Jesus didn't start off by making perfect masterpiece cabinets. So why is it that suddenly in matters of character and social living, in the excruciatingly difficult process of bringing our desires into harmony with the world around us, errors are suddenly unforgivable, when they are taken for granted in calculus? People are imperfect; that is, incomplete, finite, continuing to grow, and given desires (perfectly natural ones) that conflict with the world around them; and this is often (if not always) all that is needed for explanation.

"Some people do what is right, even when it is difficult; therefore, we are all expected to do the same, even if it is hard." But how are we comparing people? If person A was given a good upbringing with a solid foundation of virtues and guidance, and person B had to make do in a horrible family environment where she had to put forward inhuman effort to not become total scum, then they are not comparable. You cannot, say, place both in the same temptation of cheating on their spouses, and then hold up A as a model for what B should have done. The present objection assumes an awful lot about what the power of human free will, which is not empirically borne out (and requires a ton of metaphysical work even for the dissidents). We are tremendously influenced (maybe even constituted) by our circumstances and even by pure moral luck, whether or not we are perfectly determined. It may be that no two cases of action are actually comparable, and so moral role models are merely models and not standards of judgment.

"But we still blame people for doing wrong, and this applies to everybody. That's what systems of justice are all about; everyone agrees that this is what justice is." That is what systems of law do, and how law may need to operate to practically govern society. Why should God be driven by the practical concerns of the polis? As for the assertion that "this is what everyone considers to be justice," I really have nothing to say other than this: get educated.

"But there is still some metaphysical principle of goodness in the world; those who follow it are rewarded, and those who don't are damned, regardless of anything else you want to consider." What is this metaphysical principle? Why is this the way things necessarily are, rather than some just-so story? Why can't God continue working on "sinful" souls until they do pursue the good? Why can't God annihilate those who are incorrigible?

"How about the Holocaust? Is that merely an 'imperfection'? How can you explain that?" At least as well as any Christian who takes the Old Testament literally. God commanded genocide, therefore genocide in itself is not evil. Hitler simply lacked the divine command, but there was nothing intrinsically evil about his actions. And whether or not one interprets the OT literally, God still knew that the Holocaust would happen and let it happen. Even that, then, cannot be an absolute evil (assuming such would make sense), but merely a relative evil for us petty human beings who can't realize our greater place in the universe. As a relative evil, it is an imperfection of some human beings, both the perpetrators and the victims. Any account of "sin" would be secondary to this and subject to the points above.