On Sin in Fiction

With Pope Francis’s passing, I sometimes considered writing a Saturday Note about the Pope and his legacy, because I have a lot of mixed, complicated feelings on it, especially since there are so many really bad takes out there–so many of them are like, “He fixed the Church!” and, uh… no, he didn’t.

Anyhow, that’s all I’ll say for now. If you want that essay or discussion, let me know.

I finished the episodes of Brooklyn 99 that are on Netflix, and am starting Jurassic World: Chaos Theory. I have another Scott Pilgrim comic for the weekend, and this afternoon, for the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith, I’m seeing the movie in the theater.

Also! Today in 1478, the Pazzi family tried to murder the Medicis at Mass (this is depicted in Assassin’s Creed II) and in 1865, John Wilkes Booth was shot.

On Sin in Fiction

I’ve noticed that a lot of writers seem to have issues with talking about sin, especially when it comes to the Seven Deadly Sins.

Alright, let me clarify; I’m not saying that writers, ever mentioning sin in fiction, should write tracts or sermons about what is and isn’t a sin. But it’s like they’re really, really bad at talking about the concept of sin. Which is partially a culture thing; ‘sin’ in a lot of people’s eyes means ‘a bad thing’ or ‘thing the Church doesn’t like’ which isn’t… I mean, it’s not wrong, but it’s also missing a lot.

Alright, so, to start with: ‘sin’ is, for the most part, a fairly Abrahamic concept that means ‘act that separates us from God’. Because God is the Supreme Good, this is Bad. Bad for our souls, and also a generally bad thing that we have done. It’s not irreversible, to Christians at least, but it leaves a mark. It’s not the same as crime, obviously–there are crimes that are sins (murder and theft come to mind as the obvious examples), but there are plenty that aren’t crimes, and given circumstances there are crimes that are not sins. If the country you live in says it’s illegal to be a Christian, in Christian worldview, it’s obviously not a sin to be a Christian in that country, duh.

Part of the problem with depictions of sin in pop culture is that as culture gets less religious, there’s less belief in sin, as a concept. I remember back in college, I watched the television show Reaper on Hulu, in which the main character is tasked with catching souls that escaped from Hell and sending them back. The problem was in pretty much every case, the soul in question was a killer–apparently nothing else was actually damnable (except for gambling in this one guy’s case, I think?). There’s an episode where the escaped soul is a smooth-talking con man that repeatedly steals and seduces, breaking up relationships and marriages, getting people framed, making people’s lives worse, but the main character is like, “Look, he’s just having fun, he’s not a problem! No one’s getting hurt!” and we’re meant to agree with him, until it turns out that the escaped soul is also a serial killer. Again, the only real sin in that universe is murder, apparently. 

There’s a Father Brown story where the priest points out to a group of people that they were all willing to overlook a sin because they think it happened to someone they didn’t like, perpetrated by someone that they did. When they found out the opposite was true (someone they did like was harmed, by someone they didn’t), they turned on it. Basically, the same action was seen as a sin because of who it happened to and who did it. In short, they didn’t actually believe in sin at all–and as a priest, he points out that it also means that they can’t understand forgiveness of a sin, because to them, if it happens to the correct person, there’s nothing to forgive.

Terry Pratchett wasn’t religious, but in Carpe Jugulum, through Granny Weatherwax, he hits on something great: the idea that sin is when you see other people as objects. When you lust after someone, you see that person only as an object, a means to satisfy your sexual desire. When you hurt someone, you see that person as an object in your way to be dealt with. When you steal from someone, you don’t see that individual as someone with boundaries or really possessions of their own worth respecting.

[I’m kind of reminded of the bit from Kite Runner where the main character’s father talks about sin, but that’s a different topic.]

Pratchett’s actually pretty good about going against the idea of, “Well, if he didn’t kill anyone, then it’s not really a problem.” It comes up in Going Postal, where Mr. Pump points out that no, Lipwig didn’t actually attack people, but he did rob from them, and that harmed them and made them vulnerable to people who would do harm to them, which he didn’t care about because he was a criminal for fun.

And people are especially weird when it comes to the Deadly Sin of Lust? Writers are okay with the other ones, generally, it’s just that one (in part because a lot of modern people don’t consider it actually a sin but that’s another conversation). Darksiders tried making the personification of Lust as this androgynous figure who is just… desire, really, for things like accomplishing goals, because I suppose they couldn’t figure out how to make a boss fight out of sexual desire? Which I suppose would be awkward all-around, but it’s still not really about the thing it’s named after.

A lot of depictions of ‘Lust’ as a sin (and I’m looking at you, Fullmetal Alchemist) depict it as a target of lust rather than a lustful character, in the same way Wrath and Greed are often portrayed; that is, a beautiful, usually scantily-clad woman. Remember, in classical Christian thought, the demon of lust was Asmodeus, a generally male figure who was made famous in the Book of Tobit by harassing a woman (and killing her husbands whenever she tried to get married).

It also bears mentioning that there are circumstances that mitigate the factors of what is and isn’t sin, and admittedly it’s fair that not everyone is up to speed on that. Suicide is a sin, yes, but if you’re not in your right mind, ie, clearly mentally ill due to extreme depression, that means you’re not entirely responsible for what you did. Heck, the bishop in the director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven understood this, though the priest he tells it to doesn’t. Likewise, I’m kind of weirded out that in the Onyx Court series by Marie Brennan, there’s a character planning to sacrifice himself to save his friends, and he thinks this is the same as suicide and damns him to Hell, which it’s not and it doesn’t, because… self-sacrifice for one’s friends is not the same as actually killing yourself. “No greater love, says the Lord,” and all of that. You’d think a deeply religious character would get that.

This isn’t tricky, is it? I mean, I don’t expect people to know all the ins and outs, and there are some ambiguities in cases. And it’s okay if characters in fiction don’t understand how sin works in all its forms! I’m not expecting them to. If you’re writing from a non-Abrahamic point of view, you don’t need to get into it at all. But I do feel like writers keep getting tripped up in things that they shouldn’t, things that should be pretty obvious to get right. And it’s a little silly sometimes.

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