Today many churches and evangelists spend a great deal of time delving into the psychology of sinners. The reason for this is to rehabilitate 'ex-sinners' and strengthen them in their newfound faith, and to also better understand the thought processes of non-believers, so that evangelists may speak meaningfully to them during their attempts at conversion. Christianity is not the only faith with a concept like sin either; Judaism, Islam, and several other religions have ideas comparable to sin. Numerous videos have sprung up on YouTube, wherein Scientologists recite a familiar tactical question of, "What are your crimes?" to people enquiring about the practices of the religion. Identifying and recalling the sins or crimes of an individual is a technique intended to stress that the person is missing something from their life - something that would help them to be a better person or help them to be happier.

This article will contrast two approaches to the subjects of sin and psychology: one dealing with the religious believer's emphasis on the psychology of sinners, and the other will be dealing with the psychological effects of the very concept of sin itself.

I. What is Sin?

Sin is, generally speaking, any violation of God's law or the practices of a particular church. Some sins are modeled after actions which are widely considered immoral, such as murder, rape, and theft. Other sins are less agreeable and often tend to vary from religion to religion, like blasphemy, idolatry, and so on. To a Christian, Jews and Muslims are in sin for refusing to accept Jesus as their saviour. To a Muslim, Christians and Jews are in sin for refusing to recognize Muhammad as a true prophet of God. To a Jew, Muslims and Christians are in sin for following false prophets who have led them astray from God. This is just one single illustration of how relative sin actually is.

The symptoms of sin, according to many religions, are guilt, pride and self-interest, to name a few. These are only signs that a person may be in sin, but notice how vague and ambiguous they are. Some religions, like Christianity, use those ambiguities to their advantage, so that they can reinforce a doctrine like original sin and make sure that no one can claim to be as good as their mascot. If the standard for a sinless life is not set at a high and unachievable level, then many people will question why they need a saviour or why they need religion. By making the sin and the symptoms very commonplace, believers are more capable of injecting doubt into a person's mind and making them wonder, 'am I really a good person? - do I need to be forgiven?'

Different religions do have slightly different views on the consequences of sin, but most of them do believe punishment will come to those who sin. Christianity teaches that everyone is guilty of sin, even young children, because God holds us accountable for the disobedience of Adam and Eve. God has promised to burn all impenitent sinners for eternity after death. In the Jewish world-view, only a sin committed in deliberate defiance of God calls for damnation, yet punishment is more immediate and there is no everlasting torture in the afterlife. Judaism also does not confer a responsibility for sin on people who are unfamiliar with Jewish law. The Islamic faith states that sin drives one away from Allah and can condemn a person to Hell, where they will burn and suffer. Muslims do believe that everyone sins, but there is not apparently a doctrine analogous to original sin in Islam.

If sins were merely actions like murder, rape, theft, or other violations of human rights that most of humanity consent to label as immoral - I would have no problem with religions attempting to enforce feelings of guilt and repentance. However, there are many suspicious additions to the definition of sin in each religion. We do not need faith in God to keep us moral, and sin is not only an unnecessary and unhelpful concept, but it can be a harmful one as well.

II. Who Does Sin Really Affect?

You don't need a degree in psychology to understand how sin can scar a person with unhealthy amounts of guilt. Every religion emphasizes that to sin is to do wrong against God. The faithful believer wishes to please his/her god, not to sadden or anger it. They have come to think of God as a relative, a best friend, maybe even a lover in some ways. If you have grown to care for a person so much, offending them can break your heart, and the problem is that the definition of sin is often so broad in any religion that a believer cannot help but disappoint their deity quite frequently. Unhealthy guilt is produced when a person accepts blame for inadvertently hurting the feelings of another or for natural inclinations which are really outside of their responsibility. There is perhaps no greater example of the latter than the 'thoughtcrime' Jesus and Paul taught in the New Testament:

In these verses, we learn of the severity of our sin and discover that there is indeed an unavoidable form of it which applies to us all. We will be held accountable for our thoughts, not merely our actions, and even a thought of desire or attraction to another person can be sinful. This sets the standard for purity at an impossible height, so that men and women will look to Christ for their salvation from sin and not try to improve themselves. The message is that you alone are not good enough for your god, nor will you ever be. The Christians who want to please God will still find fault in themselves, knowing that their sins still disappoint God, even after he has forgiven them and they have accepted Christ to supposedly bear the burden of their sins. The worst kind of guilt is seen in popular Christian sentiments like, 'our sins held Jesus to the cross' or 'each sin I commit helped to hammer the nails in deeper'. Such things are perfect and tragic examples of the neuroses at work among many religious followers.

Unhealthy feelings of guilt also arise from lying to ourselves, like when we choose to bear the responsibility of offending someone when our intentions were nothing but good. We are not responsible for the way that others feel about us if we have done them no wrong. Yet many religions give intentions no weight and instead stress the value of accepting their god more than the value of living a moral life. Under Christianity, Islam and Mormonism, good deeds will get you nowhere good in the afterlife unless you believe the right things. To put it even more simply, God demands that you admit you do wrong against him by disbelieving, even if you have lived a greatly humanitarian lifestyle and have never blasphemed or done anything openly opposing God. Is this fair? Should we bear responsibility if a god is offended that we don't recognize him as the one true god out of all the other frauds? When we give in to someone and admit fault in spite of never having directly or consciously done wrong to them, we lie to ourselves and take the blame and the guilt for reasons we don't actually understand (though some pretend to).

Obviously sin affects the believer more than it affects the non-believer. There is no compulsion or motivation to bear the guilt for something you don't believe in. Realizing this, many preachers and evangelists will attempt to train a person to feel that sense of guilt, leading them to feel inadequate so that they will be more susceptible to the gospel message. Inevitably, the question is asked: are you a good person? No matter what the non-believer says, the evangelist can point out areas of disobedience, such as those little white lies, envy and pride, or if nothing else they can bring up the fact that the unbeliever does not acknowledge the god of whatever religion he/she is hearing about. Then to top it all off, Christians will rarely fail to mention that all sin is equally detestable to God. In the eyes of God, your little white lie is just as horrific as the rape and murder of a child. As I said before, it doesn't take a Ph.D. to estimate the psychological implications of an idea like sin.

III. Studying the Sinners

It's been said that misery loves company, and I often wonder if religious believers aren't at least a little envious of non-believers who seem genuinely unconcerned with sin, while the faithful may obsess over it quite often. Sin is fairly prominent in a believer's thoughts because they wish to avoid it, they might fear for their sinful and unforgiven friends, they might force themselves to think about it to make their witnessing relate more to sinners, etc. They are surrounded by sin, from their perspective. Recollecting my years as a Christian, I can say that it was not a very pleasant or healthy way to view the world. You feel like an outcast at times, and your own religion even encourages you to 'be in the world, but not of the world'.

There is no shortage of 'rehabilitation clinics' hosted specifically for certain kinds of sinners, with the goal of reeling them in and converting them as a means of eliminating their sin. Alcoholics Anonymous endorses submission to God in a few of its 12 steps. XXXChurch.com is a mock pornography enterprise designed to lure porn 'addicts' into acceptance of Jesus and rejection of their lustful ways. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality is the religious right's attempt to 'cure' gays and lesbians. Apparently these groups not only want to gain new converts, but they also want to resolve people of their sins, although they themselves usually admit that no one is ever free of sin. Why do they try so hard to convince us that things like alcohol, porn, and homosexuality are bad enough that they must be treated as an addiction or disease? Because those common yet controversial issues provide great opportunity for them to minister to you about the importance and effects of sin.

The Christian website SoulWin.org gives some interesting advice on witnessing to non-believers: