I’ve been thinking lately of how it is when we sin and commit crimes. We don’t feel like gossip is a big sin, except when we’ve been on the receiving end of it and it really hurts. Not only that but it changes our relationships and harms them in big ways as people believe the gossip. We don’t think of other things such as slander or unforgiveness as big sins either. But they are.
The nature of sin is that those who are committing the crime don’t feel like it’s a big deal, because they don’t feel the pain of the crime. Even someone who murders someone else doesn’t feel the full effect of the murder, or someone who steals feel the painful effect of the theft. It’s the “crimed against” who feel it. Perhaps that is why it is hard for us to feel the weight of sin and want to turn from it. Or feel it’s enormity and want to turn to God and find forgiveness from it.
The truth is until we feel the consequence of the pain of our actions, we do not turn from it.
With these thoughts in mind I was reading the geneology of 1 Chron 3. There’s a short snippet in there about the children of David born to Bathsheba — Shammua, Shobab, Nathan and Solomon (1 Chr 3:5). If you don’t remember Bathsheba is the one whom David committed adultery with when her husband was away at war. To hide the ensuing pregnancy he had Uriah, her husband, killed in battle.
What struck me reading this was that Bathsheba already had 3 children with her legitimate husband. When David slept with her, he was not just bringing harm to her and her husband, but also to these 3 children. And then their lives too were deeply disrupted and wounded at the loss of their father and the abrupt move into the care of David. That and the public shame of knowing their mother had played a part, albeit unwillingly, in an adulterous affair of political fame.
Our sin spreads wider and deeper than we realize. We never know the breadth and depth of the pain we cause others. We would do well to remember this when being enticed to go down roads that our conscience is telling us “no.”