A few years ago I came across the first addendum of sins that the Roman Catholic church added to its official list of sins compiled at the Council of Trent in 1545. Some of the new offenses?
- Failing to vote.
- Drunken driving.
- Forging checks.
- Charging unjust rents.
- Paying unfair salaries.
- Wasting resources (like pampering pets).
- Discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, age, religion, national origin, or handicap.
- Tax evasion.
- Doing shoddy work.
- Artificial manipulation of markets to inflate prices.
Now I’m not disputing that most of those acts are sinful (though I’m not sure I want to put voting in that category, and certainly not first on the list). However, do they address the heart of a man, or are they simply a means by which a man can attempt to justify himself when he calls a cab and pays his employees decently while ignoring the weightier issues of the Scriptures?
However we define sin will also determine how we understand salvation. So if sin addresses only the trivialities of life instead of examining the heart to determine whether we love the Lord with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and if our conception of sin fails to ask whether everything we have done glorifies God, then we will only need a trivial salvation as well. We will throw away the provision of God so that we might see and enjoy and delight in Him — as we were created to do — and we will seek Him only as a means of self-justification and as a mild cleanser for our consciences.
As C. S. Lewis noted,
He is that Object to admire which…is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience, and in the end to have lost all.
That is, we have been created to know and admire and be enraptured with Him above all else — that is the very reality of life. And to not know, admire, delight in and be satisfied with Him is to miss all of life. And when we trivialize sin (and the list above is by no means the only example of such a minimization), we invite just such a loss.
John Piper offers a helpful conclusion to my thoughts regarding sin and salvation:
If we believe all these things have happened to us [propitiation, redemption, forgiveness, imputation, sanctification, liberation, healing, heaven], but do not embrace them for the sake of getting to God, they have not happened to us. Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It’s a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don’t want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.
Words of Grace 
Thanks for the intriguing post. It has caused me to begin to assess what my heart truly is seeking. Is it God, or my own selfish desires? Which one is the greater sin, seeking selfish gain or not seeking after God? I think the latter. Anyway, it is again time to assess what my heart is after. Thank God there is forgiveness and restoration. There is only one way to address the heart of man. It is not by taking an inventory of sins, but taking an inventory of how our relationship with God is doing. Thanks again for this post. Blessings!