“Sin” is a word seldom mentioned, rarely heard now-a-days.  The emotion of shame though is all too prevalent.  Is it universal to have hidden anxiety that one fails to be “good enough?”  No matter the surface appearance due to education, social status, etc., it’s not unusual to wonder if one is a failure.  Why must many live day to day with a ground-tone of self-negativity, that something is wrong with us?  This evaluation is learned, carried forward day by day, year to year.

“Sin” is judgment: that one has a failing grade by comparison to the universe.  It is a tawdry, vulgar, demeaning, idiosyncratic, unwarranted evaluation.  That is my point of view of the matter. 

The notion that one’s basic humanity is flawed, that my selfhood has a design flaw is a mistake that I’ve taken pains to dispense with, to replace with another concept of what it means to be here as a homo sapiens.

These lines by Nietzsche concur, and add that the Greeks had a more natural, a manifestly more healthful sense of themselves.

Why is this important?

The learned patterns which we deeply feel, predispose us, to create a world to fashion external reality as we see ourselves.

Origin of sin—

Sin, …is now experienced wherever
Christianity holds sway…

The fact that Greek antiquity—
a world without feelings of sin–still
seems so very strange to our sensibility,
although whole generations
as well as many excellent individuals
have expended so much good will
on attempts to approach and incorporate this world.

“Only if you repent will God show you grace,
–that would strike a Greek as ridiculous and annoying.
He would say: “Maybe slaves feel that way.”

The Christian presupposes
a powerful, overpowering being who enjoys revenge.
His power is so great that
nobody could possibly harm him,
except for his honor.

Every sin is a slight to his honor,
a crimen laesae maiestatis divinae — and no more.

Contrition, degradation, rolling in the dust—
all this is the first and last condition of his grace:
in sum, the restoration of his divine honor.

Whether the sin has done any other harm,
whether it has set in motion
some profound calamity that will grow
and seize one person after another
like a disease and strangle them—

this honor-craving Oriental in heaven
could not care less!
Sin is an offense against him,
not against humanity.

Those who are granted his grace
are also granted this carelessness
regarding the natural consequences of sin.

God and humanity are separated so completely
that a sin against humanity is really unthinkable:
every deed is to be considered solely
with respect to its supernatural consequences,
without regard for its natural consequence…

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 135 by Friedrich Nietzsche