Ever since I was invited to church by my friend, I struggled with the question of the existence of God and the question of whether the God in the Bible was the Creator, if the Creator truly existed. I thought about these questions a lot during those days when I was alone and was not occupied by schoolwork.
Very soon I found that there was another big question that I needed to address if I was to take the God in the bible seriously. It was a problem that was not directly related to the existence of God. It was the problem of sin. According to the bible, Sin was the reason that a person needed to be “saved”.
Was I a sinner?
I did not believe that anyone knew me would think that I was a bad person. I was always polite to friends, teachers, and neighbors. I rarely lied. I never said any bad words or curse words. I was always nice to people, and I was nice even to animals like dogs and cats.
I discussed sin with my father, and he said confidently that he was definitely not a sinner. He said he could stand before men and heaven with an absolutely clear conscious. I thought he probably was not alone with such confidence.
However, the Bible said everyone was a sinner. The Bible raised the standard of morality to an unreasonably high level, wasn’t it? Jesus said if you thought about adultery, then you committed adultery. Therefore, I sinned if I just thought about committing a sin, even though I did not commit it in real life. Was it reasonable?
I pondered on the question of sin for possibly a few weeks and did not make much progress. Then I began to ask myself a slightly different question to see if I could find something new. The question was: if I was not a sinner, then who was?
I thought a reasonable answer should not be too difficult to find. A “sinner” would be someone who was convicted of a crime like killing, raping, stealing, or some other crimes that hurt and brought suffering to other people.
I was never convicted of any crimes. Therefore, I was not a “sinner”. Did it sound right?
