What colours do you see (assuming you are not colour blind)? I see green, red and blue, as well as some mixing of some of them. Likewise, I have come to see that sin might be of (at least) two types. Think (metaphorically) of the green as Good, what God intended right from the Creation. Then red sin comes in, then blue sin comes in. Sometimes they mix with goodness and with themselves. I find it useful to understand two (or more) basic types of sin, sin of the human heart.
One is the type of sin that tends to occur among those who represent God (God's people, if you like). The other is the type of sin that tends to grow in those who are not (yet) God's representatives, in humanity 'in the raw'. God finds both obnoxious and will bring an end to both.
The Jews (and people of Israel) were God's people, people who should have been representing God. Their sin, as recorded in Amos 2, was to ignore God's law and to lust after other gods. Their sin was to want to be like the other peoples and, after centuries of patience, God scattered and exiled them. Then they returned, having learned their lesson and became extreme in their trying to follow God's law and to avoid idolatry. They were like this when Jesus, Messiah, arrived, and he judged them for hypocrisy and because they "lay heavy burdens on people and lift not a finger to help." The basis type of sin of those who represent God is (a) misrepresenting God by idolatry and wanting to escape God's law, and, when trying to obey God's law, (b) superiority and hypocrisy and (c) harsh legalism. The latter two actually misrepresent God, who is True and transparent, and who is loving and "has compassion on all God made" [Paslsm 145].
The sin of the world is what I have elsewhere called "Canaanism". It is the sin of mindset and attitude that is opposed to the mindset and attitude God wants humanity to adopt. God wants humanity to fulfil the role of 'shepherding' Creation, with justice (tsedeq and peace (shalom). These are deep attitudes of heart. The heart opposed to God refuses God's mandate and wants to live for itself and treats the rest of Creation (including people) as mere resources to exploit, and ends up idolizing them and entrapped by them, is self-centred rather than responsible towards the rest of people and Creation, tending to elitism rather than justice, with an attitude of 'againstness', of competitiveness, violence and warfare. This was the attitude and culture of the Canaanite people around the people of Israel when they entered the promised land.
Of course, the two types of sin are manifestations of the deep original sin. For example the superiority of those who think they are God's people is similar to the elitism of the people opposed to God, just taking a different form and flavour. The different form might be explained by the late Jonathan Sacks' observation.
Jonathan commented on two acts of God's judgment in Genesis: the Flood and the tower of Babel. The judgment of the Flood was against violence and extreme arrogance and againstness, for example exemplified in Lamech's killing of a man who struck him and believing himself to be worth 77 lives of other men. Their thoughts were "evil all the time" and so there was not chance of reform, and the only solution was to get rid of them. The judgment against those who plotted together to build the tower of Babel was less severe, it was to mix up their languages, so they could no longer co-operate, and they spread over the Earth, as God intended them to do. Jonathan Sacks suggests that the first evil was that of individualism, every person against everyone else, while the second evil was that of arrogant state control, the group of people wanting to make a name for themselves. The people of Israel were God's representatives at the societal or national level, a nation among nations.
===== To be completed
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Created: 7 September 2025 Last updated: