The sin is the lie, or intent to mislead - unaffected by the justification that it was just about a small matter...
The sin is the spite: the wanting to harm another for one's own gratification - not in the magnitude of that which is wished upon them.
The sin is in the resentment - it does not matter whether criticism is 'deserved'.
Evil is in the believed and argued inversion of virtue - not in whatever harmful consequences of this inversion.
1 comment:
Comment edited from Dividualist:
There was a very powerful article somewhere arguing with St. Thomas that no one can will the bad, therefore, evil always implies a kind of willful self-delusion or lying to oneself. And that is something you can smell.
I am still not religious but figured out long ago that practically all bad behavior would be impossible if we were somehow unable to lie to both others and ourselves.
...
Every time you smell anxiety, neurosis or similar stuff on others (or know you feel it yourself), there is some kind of a self-delusion going on, there is some difficult truth not being faced. And it always has a moral dimension.
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So anxiety, neurotic behavior and all that implies both self-deception and deceiving others, and if you want to be very strict about morality, it is immoral. And from this angle, this stuff about "sin" is making more and more sense to me. Perhaps if one day I manage to kill all my deceptions I will convert to religion very hard.
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