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Drx
Guest
Is briefly having an intention, even planning to commit a sin, but ultimately banishing the intention and resolving not to sin, a sin?
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ganonscrub
Guest
If you have harmed nobody then you have not committed a sin.
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Newbie2
Guest
Define “harmed”.
If I plot to blow up a school full of kids and then back out for whatever reason, yeah, it’s a sin.
Does the “harm” to one’s own self count?
If I plot to blow up a school full of kids and then back out for whatever reason, yeah, it’s a sin.
Does the “harm” to one’s own self count?
C
Catholic90
Guest
I would think no, it is not a sin.
Take for example those who struggle with masturbation. If someone thinks to himself, “I should masturbate when I get home,” but then counters that thought with, “No, I choose not to,” and does not, remaining chaste, he has not committed a sin at that point, because he banished the idea from his head and remained pure.
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fhansen
Guest
Just a general thought. Jesus tells us that sin issues from the heart, so intentions reveal something about the status of our capacity to love, i.e. the greater our love for God and neighbor, the less tendency we’ll have to sin-or even intend to sin-and the closer our heart is to being in the right place. And God, Scripture tells us, judges by the heart.
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TimothyH
Guest
This is very important and an outstanding response. I think the issue is one of willfulness or not.Just a general thought. Jesus tells us that sin issues from the heart, so intentions reveal something about the status of our capacity to love, i.e. the greater our love for God and neighbor, the less tendency we’ll have to sin-or even intend to sin-and the closer our heart is to being in the right place. And God, Scripture tells us, judges by the heart.
Was the intention willful? Did you relish the thought? Did you entertain it in your mind, feed it and enjoy the thought of it? Did you go further and plan how you would carry it out, turning it over and over in your mind, and recieved pleasure from the thought? In short, as fhansen states, what is the condition of your heart?
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. (1 Corinthains 10:13)
We all have tempation in our minds. Scripture tells us that the temptation we have is nothing to be surpised at and that it is nothing exceptional just to us, that the temptations we have are common to all men. If Jesus was fully man, then he experienced all the temptations we experience. And if Jesus is without sin, then temptation is not sin. This is a great trap we fall into - thinking temptation is sin. It is not.
What we do with that temptation defines whether it is sinful or not. God does not look at our outward actions but the intention with which we do those actions. St. Augustine used the example of the holy virgins raped by the barbarians who sacked Rome in 410. Augustine states that if their intentions were to remain pure but they could not resist rape because of the strength of the rapist, they had retained their purity, even though they were physically violated and even though they may have experienced unavoidable physical pleasure from it.
Do you resist? Do you pray the Jesus prayer that the temptation will go away? Or do you relish the thought. Temptation is not sin, until we do something with it. We either fight the sin immediately or we allow it to gain entry to our mind as a indea, then our heart as a desire and pleasure, then our actions and death to our spirit. That is how sin enters us. James was very good with teaching about temptation and how sin enters us…
Rather, each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin reaches maturity it gives birth to death. (James 1: 14)
James says that desire is the conception of sin. Desire is where sin starts. Do we really want to go around desiring sin but not doing it? “I’d punch that guy in the face if it wasn’t a sin!” NO! God didn’t become man and die on the cross to give us coping mechanisms. He came to take away our sins - to remove our desire for them in the first place.
-Tim-
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fred_conty
Guest
Sin is commited interiorly only. When the person executes the sin exteriorly, it is an
extension of the interior sin, and intensifies the sin. Sin exists so to speak only in the
soul.
Sin is not private. And sin always harmful. Either to the person commiting the sin or to
another person. And of course every sin offends Jesus.
Sometimes one will hear “It’s only a small sin.”
CCC#1863 Venial sin weakens charity; it manifests a disordered afection for created goods; it impedes the soul’s progres in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment. Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin.
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Rkdajr
Guest
Had this question rolling around in my head - What if a person was about to commit a sin but is then interrupted somehow, and in that split second they realize they didn’t really want to commit it even though they would have if they hadn’t been interrupted? ‘About to’ meaning, not to the point where it’s unstoppable, but *right *before that point. Is it still a sin or could this interruption be considered a kind of small miracle?
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Bookcat
Guest
Such would not be the criteria of sin or not sin.
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Bookcat
Guest
An intention? You mean a choice that was later changed? (that can be thus a sin…depending on if one knew what one was intending etc)
Or are you really thinking of just a tempting thought that occurs to one with out the person consenting?
One can sin without any exterior action.
But one can also be tempted to sin without committing any sin.
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fhansen
Guest
I’d still just keep in mind that God judges by our hearts-He knows us better than we do and He’s interested in who we* are*-not merely in what we do. Sin proceeds from the heart.
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