Attachment to worldly things

[ohyah007]

i am a person who enjoys making secular music, playing video games, and playing sports.

i’m sure that if i make it to my elderly years, i will outgrow most of these things and lose my desire for these worldly activities.

if i were to die, and i was still attached to these activities and items, would i be denied from heaven?

or do the scriptures only speak of it being wrong if these things become idols??

 

[Pug]

if i were to die, and i was still attached to these activities and items, would i be denied from heaven?

There is nothing wrong with enjoying a simple pleasure. To play a flute, for example, either a religious song, a melody from childhood, an impromptu melody, whatever, there is nothing wrong with this. It does not matter if the melody has something to do with religion or not. Music is fine. All things that are good, pursue these. Abstain from evil.

If you are overly attached to these things, though, this will cause troubles for you. What I mean is if you are so attached to music that you choose it over things that are your duty to do that day, like go to mass, work, pray, watch your kids, visit your sick mother, whatever, then this will lead you to sin by omission. A sin by omission can be mortal, if the right conditions are met.

However, you could be trying to say you are sinning with your list of activities, say by playing a particular sport that you know is unethical in itself. If it is a mortal sin, then playing it will land you in hell if you don’t repent. If it is only on the venial or light level, then it will not land you in hell. In Purgatory, we will be purified so that these types of attachments are gone by the time we get to Heaven. Even if it is only venial, though, I would try to rid myself of any desire to play it. Venial sin has a way of leading us further away from God and eventually getting us into mortal sin. It is not like sin of any type is harmless.

 

[ohyah007]

i play:
saxophone (classical music)
guitar (hard rock, classical)
drums (hard driving rock)

i play rpgs like WoW, Final Fantasy (violent yes but not like GTA)

i am on a swim team

and i always leave time to pray and go to mass

 

[Pug]

ohyah007,

I wouldn’t worry. With your songs/music, as you continue to pray and love God, you will develop a sense of if there is somehow something wrong with a particular song. Just because it is a rock song does not mean it is bad. Look at what the song encourages, and how it impacts a person’s soul. It is cool that you play three instruments!

You will need to rely on your own prudence to pick a game. I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with fantasy or with games or with picking dialogue choices from a menu or managing your inventory or slaying monsters. It is like movies. You need to pick them well. If it seems bad, stop watching/playing it.

Swimming, I hope you do keep it up as you get older. Pug <>

 

[Crumpy]

Hey, we have to be careful not to judge each other.

I was reading something that presses on my heart about life and sinning. We should be especially careful about avoiding intentional sin. The Old Testament doesn’t make such distinctions about sin, as venial and mortal, but it does make a distinction about sins being sort of accidental or unintentional, versus being intentional.

So, whatever we do, we want to avoid temptations and especially intentional sins. As it says in the epistles of James, sin comes along when ’ desire is beguiled by temptation."

And, whatever we do, we must remember the great commandment:

Mt 22:37 He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
22:38 This is the greatest and the first commandment.
22:39 The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
22:40 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

In Luke someplace, the verse adds “with all your strength.”

LIke they always say, whatever we do we should do for the Lord.

 

[Pug]

Hey, we have to be careful not to judge each other.

I was reading something that presses on my heart about life and sinning. We should be especially careful about avoiding intentional sin. The Old Testament doesn’t make such distinctions about sin, as venial and mortal, but it does make a distinction about sins being sort of accidental or unintentional, versus being intentional.

Crumpy, your first comment made me wonder if my last post was unclear. I meant my waistline, not ohyah007’s. It is mine that is expanding at an alarming rate. I was trying to insert a joke, since sin is such a serious topic and people often get very worried about it. My goal was to be reassuring, not judging.

You said you were reading something that was pressing on your heart? Would you like to expand on that? Are you referring to the passage about sinning with a high hand or about the day of atonement (with the goat that runs away into the wilderness) or do you just mean that in Leviticus there is a type of offering for the inadvertent/unintentional violation, like in chapter 4? Why does it press on your heart?