Is Your “Little” Sin God’s Biggest Problem?
Is Your “Little” Sin God’s Biggest Problem?
Significance can be theological and psychological quicksand. And our own apparent insignificance can be a moral minefield.
God is said to be infinite, omnipotent, and eternal. Meanwhile, we know ourselves to be tiny and weak. In the scope of eternity, our lifetimes seem almost irrelevant. The Bible even goes so far as to say that our lives are little more than fleeting vapors — just wisps in the winds of time and creation:
“For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away.” (James 4:14b)
The Bible likens us to children, but that’s likely an unmerited, aspirational description of our greatest potential status. Compared to the holiness of God, humanity is little more than a pile of disgusting maggots. Sure, we serve a purpose, but our individual significance is nominal at best. In describing humanity’s greatest accomplishments on earth, our collective acts of righteousness, Scripture uses the comparative metaphor of used menstrual pads (euphemized to “filthy rags” in most English translations). Relative to God, we are miserable and insignificant.
This realization poses a threat to some people’s theology and ego. Consequently, their religion, morality, and behavior are often skewed in light of their perceived relative insignificance. And it cuts in a few different directions. People often excuse sinful or faithless behavior due to their assessments of their own relative insignificance. You’ve likely heard lines such as:
“The world has bigger problems than what I’m doing.“
“God is too big to be bothered by my behavior.”
“In the grand scheme of things, what I’ve done can’t matter that much.”
“There’s no way I’m important enough to offend God.”
“Surely the God of the universe doesn’t care about something as insignificant as what I eat.”
“Compared to others, I’m a pretty good person, despite my flaws.”
“My issue is so small that it’s stupid to ask God to intervene.”
While such thoughts are applied to a wide range of situations, they may share a common flaw: They assume God has priorities.
I’m going to come back to this, but to set the stage I have questions: What if God doesn’t have priorities? What if He doesn’t assign importance to one thing over another?
Prioritization only exists within finite environments. As humans, we weigh the merits and consequences of specific things and then prioritize their significance accordingly. We do this because our time, resources, influence, agency, energy, and attention are finite. We cannot, for instance, simultaneously wage war, feed the hungry, and make music. We can’t romantically love multiple people equally at the same time. Multi-tasking isn’t real, as we are not able to work on diverse projects in a singular moment. We can’t be at several work locations simultaneously. And we can’t spend one-on-one time with our family members all at once. In such examples, we prioritize.
Prioritization is exactly what we — humans — are supposed to do. Christ even scolded the religious leaders of His time for failing to properly prioritize their acts of obedience to God. We have to prioritize. It’s because we are finite. We run out of energy. We get emotionally drained. We get decision fatigue. Prioritization is what gives us the ability to ignore our own headaches when it’s necessary to save someone’s life. Right or wrong, it’s why we go to work instead of spending every moment with our children. It’s why we feed the baby instead of sleeping. It’s why we don’t think twice about the health of our waitress but we become hypochondriacs when a member of household has symptoms listed in a WebMD cancer article. It’s also why Christ pointed out people ought to give more fastidious attention to justice, mercy, and faith than micro-tithing.
But God isn’t finite. There is no limit to His time, resources, influence, agency, energy, or attention. So maybe there’s no reason to assume that God prioritizes anything. Or perhaps, better asked: Is it plausible that God prioritizes everything equally? If the answer is yes, the consequences are enormous.
On the positive side, this would mean that God is fully capable of being 100% invested in every moment of your life. He would care about you. Completely. Because He would care about everything completely. God wouldn’t need to prioritize between your fleeting sadness and the suffering of children in war-torn villages. A God without limits is a God without disparate priorities, and He would be capable of fully caring and being fully present in both situations. It then stands to reason that God would have absolute awareness, concern, and interest in every cell of your body, every thought in your mind, every behavior you perform, and everything you experience. Meanwhile, God would also be able to put that same passion into literally everything else in the universe (and beyond), without ever diverting an iota of focus away from every part of you.
This understanding of God’s values and ability seems consistent with Scripture. For example:
“And He said to His disciples, ‘For this reason I tell you, do not worry about your life, as to what you are to eat; nor for your body, as to what you are to wear. For life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. Consider the ravens, that they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds! And which of you by worrying can add a day to his life’s span? Therefore if you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about the other things? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither labor nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For all these things are what the nations of the world eagerly seek; and your Father knows that you need these things. But seek His kingdom, and these things will be provided to you.’” (Luke 12: 22-31 )
But if God doesn’t have to prioritize, that would also mean that God is capable of being as bothered by your “little” sins as He is by those committing crimes against humanity. Your perceived insignificance would be relegated to only the human perspective. God would be as obsessed with you as He is with everything else. Consequently, He would be as bothered by your “tiniest” infraction as He would be by the greatest sin. Maybe He doesn’t simply overlook your blasphemy simply because cartels are trafficking children. Maybe God doesn’t focus on genocidal maniacs in lieu of attending to your ungrateful attitude. Maybe He doesn’t discount the times you broke the Sabbath just because other people have done it more often. If anything, all sins likely bother Him equally, as they’re all deviations from the order God prescribed.
“If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the Law as violators. For whoever keeps the whole Law, yet stumbles in one point, has become guilty of all. For He who said, ‘DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY,’ also said, ‘DO NOT MURDER.’ Now if you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a violator of the Law. So speak, and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom. For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James: 2:8-13)
A God that doesn’t prioritize is a God that is fully invested in everything. This means that even the most minor (from our perspective) sin is still just as egregious as the worst deeds one could imagine. That “little” sin of yours carries the same level of importance as the “biggest” problem under God’s purview. This is why the Gospel is necessary. Because “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), we’re all worthy of damnation on our own merits. The good news of Christ, however, is that God doesn’t esteem us on our merits. Instead, He sees in us the value placed by Christ. Christ’s supremacy and righteousness is bestowed upon us, and that alone is the source of whatever goodness we may posses.
— John Diff