Are all Sins, in Essence, the Same?

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Hello all. Let’s just say that two men are judging each other to be unworthy of Heaven and of being fit only for Hell. The first man (Man A) is a man who commits “consensual and non-harmful sins” and the second man (Man B) is a man who commits “non-consensual and harmful sins.”

Man A has committed fornication, masturbation, pornography, etc. Man B has committed rape, murder, grand theft, etc. Man A insists that Man B is going to hell and that his sins are extremely evil and unforgivable. Man B replies saying that Man A has also committed crimes against God by his debauch lifestyle. Man A answers back saying that his sins are more forgivable and less evil because they do not involve harming people and are not being done against anyone’s will.

So, are all sins essentially the same? In my opinion, yes. That is because a sin is an offense against God. It does not matter whether you killed someone or consensually fornicated with someone. They are both the same because they are offensive actions against God. Although, the worldy effects and expressions of these sins are different, they are still both just as evil in the eyes of God.

But what do you guys think? I would appreciate your response and I thank you all in advance.
 
All of the sins you listed, both man A and B, are grave matter. If they fully understood this wasn’t mentioned, I don’t think. So I can’t say that all of these sins are mortal because I don’t know if all 3 conditions were met to make them mortal sins.
But them being grave matter kind of puts both of these men in the same boat, so to speak.
 
ScrupulousMonk said:
Hello all. Let’s just say that two men are judging each other to be unworthy of Heaven and of being fit only for Hell. The first man (Man A) is a man who commits “consensual and non-harmful sins” and the second man (Man B) is a man who commits “non-consensual and harmful sins.”

Man A has committed fornication, masturbation, pornography, etc. Man B has committed rape, murder, grand theft, etc. Man A insists that Man B is going to hell and that his sins are extremely evil and unforgivable. Man B replies saying that Man A has also committed crimes against God by his debauch lifestyle. Man A answers back saying that his sins are more forgivable and less evil because they do not involve harming people and are not being done against anyone’s will.

So, are all sins essentially the same? In my opinion, yes. That is because a sin is an offense against God. It does not matter whether you killed someone or consensually fornicated with someone. They are both the same because they are offensive actions against God. Although, the worldy effects and expressions of these sins are different, they are still both just as evil in the eyes of God.

But what do you guys think? I would appreciate your response and I thank you all in advance.
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In essence you are correct, all sins are the same, insofar as they choose a lesser good in place of God. However some sins separate us more fully from God than others, that is why we categorise sins into Mortal and venial sins respectively. All the sins you mention in your example are mortal sins and give the same offence to God and cut us off from him in a definitive way
 
No, they are not the same.

Is it all the same if someone robs you, cheats on you, tries to murder you? Granted, all of them may end the friendship; but they are not the same in their nature, nor equally offensive. Is it the same if someone cheats on you out of weakness, and if someone cheats to humiliate you? Is it the same if someone kills someone in a fit of rage, versus cold, premeditated murder?

Now you may call these “worldly effects and expressions,” but they are analogies to sins against God, all of which may be mortal. True, mortal sin is mortal sin, but there are degrees of gravity. Some sins are worse than others, because they depart further from the objective moral order. Some sins cry out to heaven for vengeance. There’s a reason that saints and poets refer to levels of hell.
 
I thank you all for your replies. I guess I should have made it known that I am well aware of mortal and venial sins. Its just that I see this categorization of sin as applying more to a person’s level of blame.

If I may ask another question: There are venial sins and mortal sins but is it true that, whether or not a sin was committed venially or mortally, that scandal and encouragement of sin may still arise? Lets just say that there are two instances in which I was doing push-ups with an exercise group. I collapsed to the ground due to physical weakness and encouraged others around me to give up or not try as hard. The second time, I voluntarily went to the ground and the same thing happened.
 
Ad_Orientem said:
Now you may call these “worldly effects and expressions,” but they are analogies to sins against God, all of which may be mortal. True, mortal sin is mortal sin, but there are degrees of gravity. Some sins are worse than others, because they depart further from the objective moral order. Some sins cry out to heaven for vengeance. There’s a reason that saints and poets refer to levels of hell.
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I do not proclaim to be an expert on poetry, but I have read the Divine Comedy (along with its many footnotes). According to the Divine Comedy, there are different levels within Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but this is just how Dante’s mortal mind sees it. For example, when he was in Heaven he learned that, although the saints occupy different levels of heaven, they were all just at the same level of joy and occupy the same heavenly plain. Its just that Heaven was too great for Dante’s mortal mind to comprehend it as it truly is and thus his mind had to alter his senses in a way so that his observations are more manageable. I guess the same could be said of Hell and Purgatory. There are different levels in Dante’s eyes, but really everyone is enduring the same level of torture in Hell and the same level of suffering in Purgatory. Thus, no mortal sin is worse than another mortal sin in the eyes of God. No good deed is better than another good deed. Those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.
 
Sure, we can’t fully comprehend eternal realities, but where are you getting this idea that eternal reward is all equal, and eternal punishment is all equal? It’s not consistent with divine justice. Our works merit reward or punishment in proportion to our works.

Not to mention your view seems to be at variance with Church teaching. The Ecumenical Council of Florence, Session VI, defined:

the souls of those who have incurred no stain of sin whatsoever after baptism, as well as souls who after incurring the stain of sin have been cleansed whether in their bodies or outside their bodies, as was stated above, are straightaway received into heaven and clearly behold the triune God as he is, yet one person more perfectly than another according to the difference of their merits. But the souls of those who depart this life in actual mortal sin, or in original sin alone, go down straightaway to hell to be punished, but with unequal pains.

True everyone in heaven is perfectly happy, but to borrow an analogy from St. Therese Lisieux, the cup and the thimble can both be full, but one has greater capacity than the other.
 
To Ad Orientem

Oh my. Now I feel like a heretic. All this time I believed that once you are in Heaven, all its joys are available to you (as it is said in the bible quote Those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last). I also believed the same way as Hell. But, the Church has authority over interpretation of Bible verses so it would be foolish of me to question the Church on this.

May you perhaps help me to better understand this belief that there are different levels of Heaven and Hell? Its just that its hard for me to imagine that Heaven has a caste system where people who are “gooder” than others occupy a higher plain and that, in Hell, people who committed “little evils” occupy a higher level than those who committed “bigger evils.” It just seems to me that good and evil can be quantified like figures in a banking account or some other capitalistic venture.
 
I’m no theologian, but as far as I understand it, the comparison to a bank account is not entirely off the mark, insofar as there is proportion between what is put in and what comes out. Then again, I don’t think it’s so cut-and-dried as that, nor as cold and impersonal as a business transaction.

St. Thomas says (S.T. Supp. Q. 93, a2):

The more one will be united to God the happier will one be. Now the measure of charity is the measure of one’s union with God. Therefore the diversity of beatitude will be according to the difference of charity.

In other words, if you love God more, you will enjoy him more in Heaven. Similarly, the further one removes himself from God the source of our happiness, the more one makes himself suffer. Does that make sense?
 
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