An atheist on the thing of sin

From Elizabeth Scalia at First Things:

Terry Pratchett and the Thing of Sin

Sep 6, 2011

Elizabeth Scalia

Having announced several years ago that he is dealing with early-onset dementia, Terry Pratchett, the celebrated author of scores of fantasy titles, most notably the marvelously wise and entertaining Disc World series, has—despite rumors to the contrary—staunchly maintained his atheist’s stance. Last year he declared that, having compared Genesis to Darwin, he found the latter to be by far the more interesting story and, taken all-in-all, he would “rather be a rising ape than a fallen angel.”

That betrays what is probably a willful misunderstanding on Pratchett’s part; Genesis tells us we are the broken consequences of Original Sin, not supernatural beings of prideful darkness (although in our brokenness we can easily trip into those shadows and seem their equal).

For all of Patchett’s puckish posturing, though, his characters have a knack for plumbing surprising depths. His book, Carpe Jugulum, gives us an excellent definition of sin in this exchange between the Omnian priest, Mightily Oats, and the rather contemplative witch, Granny Weatherwax:

There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats.

“And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.

“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”

“Nope.”

“Pardon?”

“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.

“It’s a lot more complicated than that –”

“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes –”

“But they starts with thinking about people as things …”

A very deep insight.  The essence of interpersonal sin is treating people as things. We are by nature reluctant to harm people who we recognize as like ourselves. The prerequisite for most serious interpersonal sin is the denial that we are dealing with a full person. We objectify-- thing-ify-- those we would harm. Abortion, murder, racism, fraud, population control, genocide all are predicated on the assertion of inhumanity of the victim.

... Weatherwax is certainly right—the impetus of our sins so often begins with converting humanness into thing-ness, and this is true in the macro and the micro: I once received an email from a woman of progressive instincts that contained the subject header, “you are not human to me”; that’s the big picture, the macro—the wholesale dehumanization of entire swaths of people who hold opinions different from one’s own, and who are therefore “dangerous” and ultimately either imprisonable or expendable. We saw the macro played out on a grand scale in the twentieth century, as both Communists and National Socialists first imprisoned and then slaughtered humans who had been thing-nified because of their race, their mental capacities, their lack of vigor, their faiths and, eventually, their simple refusals to conform.

For that correspondent, my extendability was rooted in my belief that life is better than death—that allowed to flourish, new life brings new love into the world, which (since God is love) instructs and enlarges us, particularly if the life, and the love, is embraced in its fullness, despite our fears.

In a sense, that is the micro: thing-nifying the very bud of new life within oneself, or its culmination in those who nurtured your own budded-ness, so you can more easily kill it, while maintaining an illusion of compassion and control.

Thing-nification plays out in other ways, of course. In the objectification of porn, the dismissal or exploitation of youth, the every day swindles and politicizations, large and small, perpetrated against trusting others.

Pratchett's deep insight is, ironically, a Christian insight. All men are created in God's image. We are spiritual, as well as material, beings. The acknowledgement of that fact about man is essential in the battle for human dignity and human rights.  The lie that man is just an evolved animal or a sentient meat machine is at the root of the heinous rise of interpersonal sin-- from Auschwitz to the Gulag to the Killing Fields-- in our era.