"Your sin or mine..."

"Your sin or mine..."

"Homosexual practice is a sin, but no worse than other sins such as theft, greed and drunkenness" - Pastor Hong, COOS
.
It is all very simple. If the 2000 year old book says that it is a sin, it has to be a sin. That is afterall the definition of a sin for some people and they live their lives by it. There are plenty of sins to go around given we have so many religions, different beliefs and many books and scriptures to consider. Even people who are not religious like myself consider certain things a sin against men and I'll talk about one of these later.
.
I have a friend who is a vegetarian because of religion and he tells me that eating meat is a sin based on his religion. Think about it - to take another life so that we satisfy our craving for meat can't be all good. Eating meat (especially BBQ meat) is associated with higher incidence of cancer and various health issues. Heck eating meat contributes to significantly to global warming because keeping liveestock is not an energy efficient way to produce food[Link]. The current swine flu that is spreading around the world originated from pigs reared for food. For those who believe, the negative karmic effects of killing so many animals for food is going to be catastropic for mankind. If you think about it scientifically, eating meat causes more harm than what 2 men can do in the privacy of their bed room.
.
Let me move on to another sin before I explain what I'm getting at. For a non-religious person, I find certain activities of our money lenders extremely sinful. They enslave a large part of our population by getting them into debt and encourage bad spending behaviour by encouraging them to spend on credit through advertising and promotions. We can see the great harm that irresponsible consumer lending has brought to families in USA. It definitely hurt families and surveys show that debt is one of the reasons why marriages end in divorce. To me, a person running, say, the consumer lending department of DBS promoting the use of credit card causes more harm than what 2 men do in the privacy of their bed room.
.
We are all sinners in one way or another. Some of you eat meat, some work in banks selling structured products to old ladies and there are people who like to get intoxicated ...etc. With so many sins to go around, it is actually not so productive to stop people from sinning. If vegetarians take over the Poultry Association to discourage the eating of meat, it would be counter productive - people will hate them rather than listen to their message. It would be a lot more productive if they organise talks to convince people that eating vegetables would be good for everyone. My point is this, preventing others from sinning is impossible and counterproductive. Imposing your values on others forcibly can only result in opposition to your values and for your own values to be questioned. The other day some one pass me a convincing brochure on the benefits of being a vegetarian - it is hard but I'll try it for 1-2 meals a week. ...the best thing to do to win support and to spread your values is to tell people why you think you're right and why it is good for them. There is nothing to stop small chapels from becoming mega churches in Singapore...and you're better off spending more energy on your message rather than forcing others to accept it by taking control of their organisations when they don't share your values. If it is a small matter over some teaching material, a few phone calls to the criticism sensitive MOE would have done the job.

http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=27734.216