Sin and Archery
If your aim is off, is it a sin or a mistake?
It’s really interesting that the root of the word “sin” is from Greek “hamartia,” which means missing the mark. The Early Christians used this common term, probably as a way to indicate that hitting the mark may not be easy. In our attempts to be perfect, we more often than not miss the mark. This isn’t a deliberate attempt to miss the target, and can rather be seen as a mistake.
Think about this for a moment. You are aiming at the target and your arrow has to hit the center to win a competition, let’s say. You want to win this competition, and you are using all your practicing and everything you have learned about archery into this one moment. You think your aim is perfect, and at the moment you release your fingers and the arrow flies away from you in the direction you think will hit that mark. But it misses by a few inches, and the other competitor wins the competition.
Did you do something wrong? It sure feels like you did, but it wasn’t done on purpose. Was that a sin or a mistake?
Now, consider the same situation, and as you are ready to fire your arrow a duck flies by. You decide to shoot that duck instead and the arrow you were to shoot to win the competition is misused. You don’t get another chance. You get a nice dinner that night, if you like duck, but you have clearly lost the competition through your willful action.
Obviously this was not a mistake, it was a calculated action. Though you can have a nice dinner that will soon be forgotten, you gave up on a chance of winning the competition, and the memory of that win would have lasted your whole life. You showed that you had little regard for the competition and more regard for filling your belly.
In archery, I imagine (I’m not an archer), you would spend a lot of time practicing your aim. I remember seeing videos of people shooting arrows while riding a horse and hitting their marks over and over again. There are archers who are incredibly skilled.
So, missing the mark because you are trying to hit it is a mistake that can be forgiven, but aiming for the duck instead of the target is something that cannot be forgiven, especially when that arrow was only to be used for hitting the target.
I hear Christians talk over and over again about “sin is sin” and there is no such thing as a mistake. I would like to counter that. Deliberately going out on a Friday night to commit one or more sins is wrong, but going to Church and misquoting a scripture on Sunday is clearly a mistake. In the first example, the action was deliberate and in the second example the action was unintended.
Let’s consider a more subtle example. Let’s say you are out with some friends who are not Christians, and they know you are, you can carouse with them and do all sorts of wrong just to be a part of the group, deliberately denying your faith. Or, you might talk with them about God and lets say you unintentionally misquote a scripture. In the first example you have obviously sinned willingly, but in the second example any reasonable person would have seen that as a mistake.
Just as no archer who is trying to win a competition will purposely miss a target and put that win at risk, no Christian trying to win their salvation will purposely put that salvation in jeopardy.
In fact, if it were a sin (a morally bad thing to do and I could miss my salvation) to miss the mark by accident, I might be too afraid to minister to anyone in case I sinned.
Can you imaging an archery instructor telling a student that they are going to hell because they missed the mark by a couple of inches?
Why is this important?
It’s important because of religiosity. Humans were created, not so that sin and righteousness could exist, but the concepts of right and wrong were developed to help us live good and healthy lives. We avoid sin for the purpose of having a whole and complete and healthy life. The God gave us the commandments was for us to have good lives. It set our minds in the right direction to get along with our neighbors and be a healthy part of society. They were designed to help a nation become strong and mighty.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.
