Sin is a Dominion

Sin is not just a verb.  It isn't merely something people act out or do.  This would imply that we could merely stop doing so much of it and it would be fine.  Episcopalian priest Fleming Rutledge seeks to demonstrate in her book The Crucifixion that sin is a verb and also a dominion under which humanity exists.  Sin is "all-inclusive."  It is an "alien power" and "there is nowhere to look within this world order for deliverance." (Rutledge, 189).


To illustrate this, she quotes a 1996 response letter to a New York magazine article about cosmetic surgery: "While reading your cover article I began to wonder what our society would be like if kind hearts and strong minds were respected, revered, and a turn-on.  Obsessing about beauty and thinness is a luxury that only wealthy countries can afford.  We worship the media and the false idols they provide us while in our own cities and elsewhere in the world people are starving.  Yet we are the slaves.  Vanity is a disease, and we Americans are infected." (Rutledge, 190).  The reader's point seems to be that this sort of thing must be stopped, but to stop it, we must understand it.  How do you tell someone to stop obsessing over beauty and thinness, particularly if it is more like a disease.  How do you tell a disease to stop?


Rutledge's point is that sin is more than naughty actions.  Sin is "an infectious disease." (190)  In other words, it is a dominion that we are all under.