4. What Is Sin?


Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where the truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all? To sense is not to know. And truth can be but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else.

The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. Its purpose is to strive. Yet can the goal of striving change. And now the body serves a different aim for striving. What it seeks for now is chosen by the aim the mind has taken as replacement for the goal of self-deception. Truth can be its aim as well as lies. The senses then will seek instead for witnesses to what is true.

Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts that are untrue. They are the “proof” that what has no reality is real. Sin “proves” God’s Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; eternal life must die. And God Himself has lost the Son He loves, with but corruption to complete Himself, His Will forever overcome by death, love slain by hate, and peace to be no more.

A madman’s dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game. The Son of God may play he has become a body, prey to evil and to guilt, with but a little life that ends in death. But all the while his Father shines on him, and loves him with an everlasting Love which his pretences cannot change at all.

How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children’s toys? How soon will you be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would you still hold return to Heaven back? How long, O holy Son of God, how long?

Forgiveness is “for giving ourselves peace of mind and healthy bodies”

Forgiveness, according to the dictionary, is to stop feeling anger and resentment. The word for hell in the Aramaic language, that Jesus spoke, is the same as the word for anger. Need there be a greater hell than anger and resentment? This video might help…

Resentment, according to some scientists, physicians and metaphysicians, is at the root of cancer. How very practical to let go of anger and resentment!

According to A Course In Miracles,

  1. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. (Lesson 121)
  2. Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction. (Teacher’s Manual)

Forgiveness, then, is an illusion, but because of its purpose, which is the Holy Spirit’s, it has one difference. Unlike all other illusions it leads away from error and not towards it.

Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the Truth. They cannot go directly from perception to Knowledge because they do not think it is their will to do so. This makes God appear to be an enemy instead of what He really is. And it is just this insane perception that makes them unwilling merely to rise up and to return to Him in peace.

And so they need an illusion of help because they are helpless; a Thought of peace because they are in conflict.

Forgiveness is one form of releasing fear (anger and resentment) so that we can then return to the awareness of Love’s presence.