Sin versus Error

Chapter 19 – 2. Sin versus Error

It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction
that makes salvation possible. For error can be corrected, and the wrong
made right. But sin, were it possible, would be irreversible. The belief in sin
is necessarily based on the firm conviction that minds, not bodies, can
attack. And thus the mind is guilty, and will forever so remain unless a
mind not part of it can give it absolution. Sin calls for punishment as error
for correction, and the belief that punishment is correction is clearly insane.
 
Sin is not an error, for sin entails an arrogance which the idea of error lacks.
 
To sin would be to violate reality, and to succeed. Sin is the proclamation
that attack is real and guilt is justified. It assumes the Son of God is guilty,
and has thus succeeded in losing his innocence and making himself what
God created not. Thus is creation seen as not eternal, and the Will of God
open to opposition and defeat. Sin is the grand illusion underlying all the
ego’s grandiosity. For by it God himself is changed, and rendered
incomplete.
 
The Son of God can be mistaken; he can deceive himself; he can even turn
the power of his mind against himself. But he cannot sin. There is nothing
he can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him
really guilty. That is what sin would do, for such is its purpose. Yet for all
the wild insanity inherent in the whole idea of sin, it is impossible. For the
wages of sin is death, and how can the immortal die?
 
A major tenet in the ego’s insane religion is that sin is not error but truth,
and it is innocence that would deceive. Purity is seen as arrogance, and the
acceptance of the self as sinful is perceived as holiness. And it is this
doctrine that replaces the reality of the Son of God as his Father created
him, and willed that he be forever. Is this humility? Or is it, rather, an
attempt to wrest creation away from truth, and keep it separate?
 
Any attempt to reinterpret sin as error is always indefensible to the ego. The
idea of sin is wholly sacrosanct to its thought system, and quite
unapproachable except with reverence and awe. It is the most “holy”
concept in the ego’s system; lovely and powerful, wholly true, and
necessarily protected with every defense at its disposal. For here lies its
“best” defense, which all the others serve. Here is its armor, its protection,
and the fundamental purpose of the special relationship in its interpretation.
 
It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin. Only in such a world
could everything be upside down. This is the strange illusion that makes the
clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness that this world’s
foundation seems to have is found in this. For sin has changed creation from
an idea of God to an ideal the ego wants; a world it rules, made up of
bodies, mindless and capable of complete corruption and decay. If this is a
mistake, it can be undone easily by truth. Any mistake can be corrected, if
truth be left to judge it. But if the mistake is given the status of truth, to
what can it be brought? The “holiness” of sin is kept in place by just this
strange device. As truth it is inviolate, and everything is brought to it for
judgment. As a mistake, it must be brought to truth. It is impossible to have
faith in sin, for sin is faithlessness. Yet it is possible to have faith that a
mistake can be corrected.
 
There is no stone in all the ego’s embattled citadel that is more heavily
defended than the idea that sin is real; the natural expression of what the
Son of God has made himself to be, and what he is. To the ego, this is no
mistake. For this is its reality; this is the “truth” from which escape will
always be impossible. This is his past, his present and his future. For he has
somehow managed to corrupt his Father, and change His Mind completely.
 
Mourn, then, the death of God, Whom sin has killed! And this would be the
ego’s wish, which in its madness it believes it has accomplished.
 
Would you not rather that all this be nothing more than a mistake, entirely
correctable, and so easily escaped from that its whole correction is like
walking through a mist into the sun? For that is all it is. Perhaps you would
be tempted to agree with the ego that it is far better to be sinful than
mistaken. Yet think you carefully before you allow yourself to make this
choice. Approach it not lightly, for it is the choice of hell or Heaven.