The Nature of Sin

I have long been interested in quantum physics. Please don’t read that to say that I understand quantum physics; I have only a rudimentary knowledge of the basics. It’s just that since I was a little boy who loved A Wrinkle in Time, 2001, and The Martian Chronicles, I hoped for and sought something to prove, or at least explain, seeming mysteries. As an avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy, I never needed the scientific the scientific explanations for things I couldn’t grasp. However, I find those a-ha moments very satisfying, when some theory or proof emerges that supports something that I felt in my gut.

Sad to say, on the other hand, many with fundamentalist worldviews don’t have much time for the scientific explanations of things. They have their traditions, their scriptures, their holy leaders – and science be damned. No wonder that there has been a longstanding and contentious rift between religion and science.

There have always been some, however, who see their compatibility. In the days of the Inquisition and the Counter-Reformation, this would have been a dangerous philosophy to embrace. But I think we have happily been seeing an increase in this outlook. Rob Bell posits that “science and religion are long lost dance partners.” And scientists from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking have written about the spiritual or mystical qualities of theoretical physics. Case in point: the recently identified Higgs boson particle, which is elemental in quantum theory, is often called “the God Particle.”

So what does all this have to do with sin? Glad you asked! Sin has long been a focus point in most religions. (That’s one of the sticking points for many of us!) The definition of sin, though, is not always agreed upon. We have the Pillars of Islam, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, Hinduism’s purusharthas, the Path of Enlightenment, and a host of codes of ethics. It’s enough to make one’s head spin! Looked at objectively, there is at the root of all of them a separation. In fact, some religious teaching hints at this commonality. Murder, to cite one example, cannot happen if the killer feels any connection to the victim. I think the eastern religions (and some of the ancient indigenous spirituality) have done a better job with this concept of oneness than the Big Three monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). There is this overarching idea of otherness that seems to pervade them – both between the divine and creation and among people and things.

Here’s where the quantum theory stuff is so interesting. According to theoretical physics, there is a sub-atomic connection among everything. Obviously, two warthogs born in the same litter in the Kenyan desert are related. They share DNA. But how about these two warthogs and a Wall Street trader? Are they related? They certainly don’t seem to be. But some quantum theory suggests that they are. So what’s happening on the trading floor on Wall Street can affect the desert in Kenya? Maybe. Ilia Delio of the Center for Action and Contemplation says, “If reality is nonlocal, that is, if things can affect one another despite distance or space-time coordinates, then nature is not composed of material substances but deeply entangled fields of energy; the nature of the universe is undivided wholeness.” Perhaps this hints at the nature of prayer, or to the sending out of good thoughts into the universe.

If we can tap into this interconnectedness, this unity of being, then we can move others – for better or for worse. Prayer, good thoughts, an altruistic attitude – these could all have beneficial effects on people that we may never see. On the other hand, hatred, ill will, and a generally foul attitude may negatively affect others. So maybe that’s where sin is rooted: the interruption or resistance of this intangible, quantum communion. Etty Hillesum, a young imprisoned Jew in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, says it pretty straightforwardly: “Each of us moves things along in the direction of war every time we fail to love.”

So we have a choice: we can move things along the direction of love or along the direction of war. And the world has seen more than enough movement in the direction of war.