If there are no negative consequences for particular sins, why are they sins? For example, sex before marriage. I understand adultery and promiscuity. People can have sex with their girlfriend/boyfriend, then later marry them. I do not understand how thoughts are sins either. At least you have enough self-control to NOT act on them? What about thinking you are better than others? What if you honestly are better than they are? Some people are more beautiful, more intelligent, more athletic, more personable than average. …] Some people truly believe in God, yet they sin. I understand sin is a choice. At the same time, I do not fully understand free-will.
Sorry for the long post, but I would like to try to explain some of your points.
While in most sins (yes, MOST) we do not immediately see the negative effect, they are there. They might only show up 10-20, or maybe 50 years in the future, but they are there.
Sex before marriage, even if the involved people end up married, is a bad thing by the same reason that contraception in-marriage and homosexual sex is condemned. The moment you consider sex for pleasure only, you devalue sex to just a carnal (for fun) act - even between wife and husband. While this is not something observable, couples end up creating a distorted belief of what is marriage, sex and love - for example, people have great difficulty in understanding that love between man and wife does not depend on sex (which is why, when you mention ‘live as brother and sister’ to remarried couples, they get defensive).
There are studies that show that, when a relationship starts early with sex the couple has trouble relating to each other in other aspects, have poor communication, and less relationship satisfaction. (look for: ‘Compatibility or restraint? The effects of sexual timing on marriage relationships’ - it is difficult to find the full text online, but just the results already show that ‘waiting is better’).
STDs… people think that sex can be inoffensive, and still are surprised when Chlamydia says hi. When one believes that sex does not hurt anyone, this happens. Because, EVENTUALLY, they will be careless. “I’ve known her for months”, “We’ve been dating for years”. Think: if people only had sex with their spouse, and adultery didn’t exist, STDs wouldn’t be so widespread.
Sex is not a sin. But it can place a person in a risky situation, and anything that can hurt us can become sin. Just like our…
Thoughts. These are specially harmful to the soul. I’ll use myself as an example: I have a high IQ (higher than most, 135), and used to think myself better than my peers. I knew another language by age 11 (english, with portuguese as my native language), self-taught, while kids my age were still learning the basics with help from a language school. I had straight A’s. I didn’t need to study and still went better than everyone else. I was good at sports. Had many friends, and my peers liked me well enough. Never had problems in any aspect (social, academic, physical). I was the teacher’s favourite. I was even pretty. I was, for all intents and purposes, ‘better’ than my peers at academic situations.
I also was nice to them, never rubbed my grades on their faces, never laughed at their poor grades. I never bullied anyone, and usually helped the other kids to study to exams.
Still, I thought I was better. I held a firm belief that I was better than them. I felt that I was ‘specially special’ in this life, and was destined to great things.
It didn’t hurt anyone back then… but it did hurt someone later in my life: me.
As I knew I was smart, I studied to get into the best university my country has to offer. The problem? There are smarter people in the world. This was a strong punch to my ego, a roundhouse kick to my pride. I tried for three years, with help from a school dedicated to passing these exams, but all for naught. I had depression, 3 years. It was really bad for me, this fall.
It was humbling, as well.
Case in point: our thoughts, as harmless as they might seem, CAN be harmful. They either will make a bad person out of you (if you act on them), or they will slap you in the face later (as they did for me).
Feeding your Pride through thoughts is as bad as feeding your Gluttony with cake, or your Sloth with Netflix. You may not feel it at the time, but you will recognize the harm your sin caused when you get diabetes or depression. (a study has shown association with binge-watching Netflix and depression).
(note: I eventually got accepted to my dream University
but only after suffering a lot, and giving up my pride
)
Free will. See, God wanted to create a being in His image, which is, capable of Love. But love is
an action - what people feel is affection, passion, but never love. To love is to act - I love when I give food to others, when I make my parents happier, when I suffer through a friend’s bitter rantings without complaining, and when I punch a friend in the face for thinking of doing something bad. (like we do when ‘condemning’ some public ‘sins’)
To Love, you need to have the option NOT to Love. If you only had the choice of doing good, there wouldn’t be the option of loving. For example (and this is a silly one): taxes. The moment that you pay taxes to provide for national health, you are ‘giving to the poor’, but there is no Charity (Love) in this action. Since you are FORCED to pay taxes, you don’t get to do it for love, for you have no other option. So, if you don’t have a choice, you can’t love.
God gave us free will because He wanted us to Love him. To choose him. And to choose, we need to have choices: Him or Sin.
