Can all sin be categorized as selfishness? [closed]

Question

Is all sin selfishness? From the structure of the 10 commandments it can be determined that there is only 1 commandment: Have no other god before him. Each commandment after that seems to be expanding on the previous one. If you keep asking "why would someone commit this sin", it seems to end up with some form of selfishness; which would indicate that a person is putting themselves before god: A Self Idol.

Edit: Therefore, is there a passage in scripture or some understanding that can be drawn from scripture which classifies the root of sin as selfishness?

I'm trying to determine the scale of man's sinfulness; if even the things which we consider selfless are also sinful.

Answer 1

The first sin committed (by Satan) was him trying to exalt himself to God's position.

The sin that led to the fall of man was also in trying to exalt ourselves into God's position (Genesis 3:6).

The second human sin recorded was of Cain attempting to take God's role in determining the duration of life given to his brother (Genesis 4:8)*.

So, yes: I believe it is a more than accurate statement to say that all sin has as its root selfishness, pride, self-exaltedness, etc.

*_{^{Arguably, Cain's anger at God's acceptance of Abel's offering would be the second recorded sin - but since anger is not inherently sinful, I stand by the statement that the murder was the second recorded sin.}}

Answer 2

I believe there can be sins that are not inherently selfish, but are born of a selfish nature.

An example would be a sin that is committed in an attempt to not sin. I think a common example would be when people neglect to care for their family because they are too busy with church. While some people may be truly and overtly selfish by spending time in church ministry instead of caring for their family, I'm sure most people who neglect their families in these cases are not doing it out of a selfish motive.

The fact that a person neglects their family while trying to do good, however, does come out of a selfish and imperfect nature. A perfectly selfless person would be more aware of their family situation and be able to balance their time better.

Answer 3

There are a great many ways to classify sin, and explain its nature and causes. One classification, used by Dante in the Purgatorio (explained in Canto 17, lines 91-139), describes all sin in terms of love gone wrong. Such "disordered love" (amor inordinatus) goes against the pattern of love that we should follow (love God, love our neighbour); this doctrine is based on the idea (going back at least to Augustine) that evil cannot create anything, but only pervert things already created. Dante's scheme draws from that of William Perault's Summa de vitiis et virtutibus ¹.

There are three possibilities:

1. Loving something that you shouldn't (pride, envy, wrath)
2. Not loving enough (sloth)
3. Loving something good, but to excess (avarice, gluttony, lust)

The point of the final category is that it's fine to enjoy food, say, but you shouldn't love it more than God and your neighbours. On the other hand, loving the infliction of harm on others is under the first heading, because that's always wrong.

Under this point of view, some sins involve selfishness (love of self) explicitly; others may be helped along by selfishness (sloth, perhaps). But selfishness is not necessarily the root cause of the problem, in all cases.

Your diagnosis that sin comes from putting something else before God would cover point 3, at least. But the thing that you love too much doesn't have to be yourself.

That said, this is only one of many possible schemes for understanding sin, and has no claim to being definitive.

¹ According to The Dante encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing (2010), p870

Answer 4

I think the fourth commandment (keeping the Sabbath day holy by not working) can offer us a clue to a counterexample.

A particular action performed on a Thursday may be counted sinful if performed on a Sabbath - even if the actor's motivations are exactly the same and in themselves pure and honest.

Is, then, a man selfish if he sins by breaking the fourth commandment when he has merely lost track of what day of the week it is? (Perhaps he has been unconscious and unaware of the passage of time.)

Similar could be said for the first commandment; if one has never heard of Jesus Christ, it is not selfishness that causes his failure to worship, but ignorance. (Perhaps he lives in pre-Columbian America. Whether ignorance in this or any case is excusable is a separate matter.)

So we see that a man may also sin from ignorance, not merely from selfishness. Indeed, some of the Greek philosophers believed, not that all sin was selfishness, but that all sin was ignorance. Socrates, for example, is quoted as saying "The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." This is in fact more plausible than the selfishness hypothesis: if sin really is worse for you than obedience, who would sin if they really knew and understood all the consequences of it? If obedience is truly preferable to sin, then even a selfish person who knew this would choose obedience because of the greater benefits he would receive from obedience than from sinfulness.

Pure selfishness would seek the greater gain for itself, not the lesser, or it would not be pure selfishness -- it would be mixed with some other failure of judgment that causes it to think the lesser good to be better than the good that truly is greater, and in that case it would be the ignorance representing this failure of judgment that causes the sin, not the selfishness itself.

Answer 5

I will attempt to give you an argument from counterexample.

In some traditions, there are sins of commission and sins of omission. While many of the sins of commission might be characterized as selfish, some of the sins of omission might not. For example, not taking proper care of your body (say, lack of exercise or not eating enough fruits and vegetables) could be considered a sin of omission. However, not exercising or not eating enough veggies are not often considered "selfish."

Answer 6

This may just be a comment mainly because it's not long, but there's one topic other answers haven't covered.

If all sin could be categorized as selfishness then the phrase, 'the ends do not justify the means' would not hold true. There are plenty of things man can do which is selfless, directed towards good ends, but inherently evil.

If that wasn't true, then everything you do would be selfish. Since it is true, not all sins are borne out of selfishness. Pride maybe, but not selfishness.

Answer 7

(revised)

In my view, the premise of the question is itself incorrect. Let us look first at the meaning of selfishness

1. devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one's own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others.
2. characterized by or manifesting concern or care only for oneself: selfish motives.

(source)

The supposition of the question, and the explicit statement from the comments, is that anything that does not relate to God is therefore selfish. However, this does not fit the definition.

To take Just a few limited examples. Is a Bhikkhu being selfish? I submit: not. They fail the first commandment, and undeniably this is considered sinful by Christianity, but this is not something born of selfishness. Simply: they have a different view, and are acting accordingly. Disagreeing with Christianity may be classified as sinful, but it cannot be labelled as selfishness. Is a non-Christian aid worker, risking life and injury, a selfish person simply for not following commandment 1?

I accept that many misdeeds are the result of selfishness and/or greed, but the question singles out the first commandment. This, perhaps, is the easiest of the commandments to knock down as being unrelated to selfishness. Let's assume an individual has a working knowledge of Christianity, but was raised in another religion or chooses no religion - this has nothing to do with selfishness as per the word's definition. It is not sufficient to say simply (comments):

One is not saved unless they accept that Jesus is the son of God and that he died for their sins. Not accepting that is also a act of selfishness.

without explaining how non-acceptance is "selfish". I therefore submit that yes: there are things considered sinful that are not selfish in nature. And the question itself provides a prime example.

If we really must add another example - again from the commandments; if I give up a weekend working for someone else's good, without expectation of reward (earthly or divine) - I have violated the sabbath. But no selfish act has been committed.

The commandments around theft, murder, lust, etc do indeed seem likely to have selfish motivation, and so are likely to relate to selfishness. But that then becomes a more circular argument "are selfish actions caused by selfishness?" - to which the answer is : probably! But this does not mean that by extension all sins are selfish. It might be more interesting to ask:

Are all selfish deeds sinful?

I suspect the answer is yes, but I have not considered it comprehensively. But that reversed question is not the same.