The Worst Sin?

As I have reflected on the 9/11 attacks this third anniversary, right off the heels of the slaughter of over 200 schoolchildren in Russia, my belief that there is one sin that may be worse than all other sins has been reinforced. Most Christians maintain that one cannot declare any sin worse than any other -- that a person who takes an office pen is committing as grievous a sin in God's eyes as a murderer. But most people intuitively, as well as biblically, understand that there are gradations of sin. However, I would like to offer evidence that one particular sin is far worse than all others. That sin is committing evil in the name of God. The Commandment translated as "Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain," is imprecisely translated. The Hebrew literally reads, "Do not carry the name of the Lord thy God in vain." And, the Commandment continues, "for God will not hold guiltless whoever carries His name in vain."

When a secular person commits evil, it is surely evil, but it doesn't bring God and religion in disrepute. When a person commits evil in God's name, however, he destroys the greatest hope for goodness to prevail on earth - widespread belief in a God who demands goodness. There is nothing as evil as religious evil. The chanting of "Allah akbar" ("Allah is the greatest") by militant Muslims as they commit barbaric acts against innocents around the world is the greatest sin a human can commit. The Nazis were as cruel, and so were the Communists. But they only sullied their own names, not the name of God. But the immense amount of evil being caused by those Muslims murdering and slaughtering innocents in the name of God is hurting God's reputation. One can only pray that Muslim institutions will realize the immensity of damage done to the name of Allah and to Islam by those Muslims who preach or practice evil in the name of Allah and Islam - and the even greater damage done by the rest of the Islamic world's failure to protest against this evil. If only they realized that they could go a long way in mitigating this damage by publicly announcing over and over that evil preached or committed in the name of Allah and Islam is the greatest sin and its practitioners will go to hell, not to Paradise to be serviced by multiple virgins! For if there is a hell, those who murder and torture the innocent while praising God are surely the first to go there.