Right now my wife is watching a TV documentary about Auschwitz and it's got me thinking about collective sin, as opposed to individual sin. It's certainly right and proper to bring individuals involved in things like Auschwitz to justice but I can't help but think that this does not address the collective sin. To me it is quite conceivable that if Nazi Germany had set it's conquering sites lower that they may have taken over just a chunk of Europe and then continued to be as evil as they were and this evil could conceivably outlasted Hitler. We tend to remember evil empires or acts purely by the people. In Nazi Germany it's Hitler and those working at Auschwitz etc..., in Islamic fundamentalism it's Osama Bin Laden, in Australia it's the police officers who took children away from their indigenous parents and the church institutions who housed them. But it is more than just these people.
These people are just the focal point of a whole culture in motion, a whole culture were almost everyone in that culture is not necessarily guilty of the associated crimes in a legal sense, as they are not directly involved in committing the crimes themselves, they are often just glad that someone else is doing the dirty work for them. Or, perhaps just not brave enough to ask at what cost is there society functioning in the way it is. I am sure many of these people would not have felt responsible for the horrors that were happening around them but perhaps they should have. I worry that they did not feel personally responsible in the same way that I don't feel personally responsible for global warming, third world poverty and the state of indigenous Australia, to name but a few.
Perhaps as Xns we have to often framed sin in terms of personal sin. It is much easier to deal with, one person in complete control of their own actions with complete ability to admit fault and seek reconciliation. Collective sin is something we rarely talk about but need to. Primarily so that we can have a Xn response. If we got this sorted perhaps we'd be leaders in areas of social justice and the environment, rather than just things like sexual ethics (which is primarily treated as an individual sin).
These people are just the focal point of a whole culture in motion, a whole culture were almost everyone in that culture is not necessarily guilty of the associated crimes in a legal sense, as they are not directly involved in committing the crimes themselves, they are often just glad that someone else is doing the dirty work for them. Or, perhaps just not brave enough to ask at what cost is there society functioning in the way it is. I am sure many of these people would not have felt responsible for the horrors that were happening around them but perhaps they should have. I worry that they did not feel personally responsible in the same way that I don't feel personally responsible for global warming, third world poverty and the state of indigenous Australia, to name but a few.
Perhaps as Xns we have to often framed sin in terms of personal sin. It is much easier to deal with, one person in complete control of their own actions with complete ability to admit fault and seek reconciliation. Collective sin is something we rarely talk about but need to. Primarily so that we can have a Xn response. If we got this sorted perhaps we'd be leaders in areas of social justice and the environment, rather than just things like sexual ethics (which is primarily treated as an individual sin).
3 comments:
Hi Chris, good questions and interesting thoughts - reminded me of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn saying 'that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart'....i wonder if we have choice as to how we draw the line and what we put on either side of it???
Perhaps as Xns we have to often framed sin in terms of personal sin. It is much easier to deal with, one person in complete control of their own actions with complete ability to admit fault and seek reconciliation. Collective sin is something we rarely talk about but need to. Primarily so that we can have a Xn response.
The notion of collective sin can have its drawbacks, though. Wasn't a lot of historical anti-Semitism a product of the idea that the Jews were "collectively guilty" of killing Jesus?
As an atheist I am forced to ask: why need this be framed as "sin" at all? A sin is a transgression against a deity, but surely the more pressing issue is the injustice towards other people.
Hey Arthur thanks, for commenting (great last post by the way). I guess collective sin can have it's draw backs but I'd think that Jewish people (anybody) can't be guilty of something that happened before they were born. So I wouldn't be guilty of the stolen generation but could be collectively guilty (with others) for the ongoing health of indigenous people.
I like your question of why need this be framed as sin? If only because my initial reaction was to think I frame it as sin because I saw it as an injustice towards other people, then I read the rest of your comment. In fact injustice towards other people may actually be my definition of sin (perhaps I'll expand it to injustice against other creatures). Personally (i know this is probably not the orthodox) I'm not sure if I can think of anything that I would consider a sin purely on the basis that is a transgression against a deity.
Post a Comment