Svět, tělo a ďábel – Rohr Richard (2021)

I am convinced that the idea of sin has ceased to be useful for many of us because we have had to turn elsewhere to regain an understanding of the deadly nature of true evil. No one can deny that evil is entirely real. But what many of us now perceive as the real evils destroying the world clearly differs greatly from what most people call sin – that is, from personal mistakes or guilt or alleged private offenses against God. This does not capture the truly terrible nature of evil at all. Therefore, we have lost interest in sin. We have also lost interest because we have usually heard the word sin used to judge, exclude, or control others, or to shame and control oneself, but rarely to bring distinction or deeper understanding to the human situation, let alone to express compassion or forgiveness. I perceive that the more a religion or culture is obsessed with sin, the more unloving and cognitively rigid its members are. Think of cultures based on shaming in many purely Islamic countries, narrow-minded and culturally uncritical forms of Judaism, the absence of humor in Calvinist Geneva, the cruelty of much of Puritan New England, the merciless religion of many Lutherans...