UNCOMMITTED SIN
It is easy to understand the model of sin wherein a person’s conscience tells him that doing Action X is a sin, but he is so drawn by some promise of pleasure or gain that he chooses to do it anyway. After a few repetitions, it becomes a habit, so it is no longer the same kind of clear-cut act of the will. The habit constitutes a kind of ‘weakness’. What about weaknesses? Some individuals may have such weaknesses as being highly sexed, stressed by poverty, prone to anger, or of a phlegmatic constitution tending to sloth.
Beyond weakness, I wonder if there isn’t such a thing as a generalized distaste for “the way things are,” acquired at an early age. A parent might say “That’s the way life is” but the child may have become what we call ’spoiled,’ so that nothing seems to measure up to some imaginary realm where all is pure bliss. While not sin as such, it seems that this sort of mentality would lead to and underlie sin, as an outgrowth of an inchoate sense of alienation and disaffection from the strictures of everyday life.
