Crime vs Sin

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Don't worry, I'm not a christer or preacher.  I just want to examine something a little off the main track for crime writing. Or maybe it's not.

I was impressed recently reading something about this.  It said the difference is that a crime is something you do to other people, a sin is something you do to yourself.

Obviously some behavior fits both categories.   But with sin, it's really all about you, isn't it.  You're the one who committed it, you're the one who will pay for it.    You can go to a priest and fix the ticket without the victim having anything to say in the matter.

A crime might not hurt you at all.  Especially if you get away with it.

Obviously murder is like the worst crime and the worst sin.  That's why they're all murder mysteries instead of having jaywalking mysteries or indecent exposure mysteries.

Stealing from people, hurting people...these are so obviously and instinctively wrong that they fit both categories.  Fucking around makes a lot of sin lists, and few crime lists.  Have the Ten Commandments aren't even crimes.  Coveting?  Our economy is based on it.  Honoring your parents?  Our culture seems to based on breaking that one.

Jaywalking doesn't make a lot of sin lists because it doesn't harm anybody, and certainly not the perp.

Can you cheat on your taxes without feeling guilty?    Well, if you think tax is theft, how can it hurt you to not pay it?

Actually, I don't know quite where I'm going with this.  I'd been thinking of it in terms of crime fiction characters, mainly.   I think the sociopath who does things with no inner reverb at all is too easy.  I think it's more masterful to see the criminal damaging herself and aware of it.  Not as dramatically as "The Telltale Heart", maybe, but something there about the inner and outer ramifications of rotten acts.

I think dragging the church into it also makes it too facile.  If "sin" is a real thing, it shouldn't need any trappings or titles to make it stick.  It will be working its way into the sinner/criminal's being without any help from Father ORiely.

I trust you all to have some directions here, and that will be where it's going.  It's just something that I've been mulling and I wonder what you think.

[John McFetridge]

I also find it interesting how crimes and sins change over time - what was illegal years ago may be legal now and what was once considered a sin may not be anymore (like the George Carlin routine about the guy doing eternity for eating meat on Friday).

But this is kind of why I find cozy mysteries so creepy - someone gets killed in a small town and everyone accepts the fact that anyone in town could have done it and be going on with their life as though nothing has happened. Everyone's a viable suspect.

 

 

[Eric Christopherson]

I wonder what percentage of people are capable of murder under the right (wrong) circumstances.

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

According to a recent poll...

Just kidding, Eric.  I guess you could say "right circumstances" would mean that anybody would.

In a novel I just edited a call girl tells an investigator,  "And you don't look like the kind of cop who's for sale, either.  And unless you get an offer that co-incides with your needs, I guess we'll never know." 

[Benjamin Sobieck]

Murder in the right circumstances isn't called murder. It's called survival.

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Or "civic duty".

Actually that right there drives to the heart at what I'm groping for here.  The bible says it's a sin to kill.  The law says it's a sin to murder.

[Benjamin Sobieck]

Right. I guess the only difference a consensus of the electorate. If a majority of people agree killing someone is acceptable, it's not murder. Capital punishment, for example.

I suppose you could make the same argument about sin. Interpretations of religious texts change with the times.

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Really true, huh?

I kind of agree with Brian that there's some sort of gold standard there, but so far I haven't run into any reliable authority on what it is.

I think you just know.

I remember once I threw a sweet potato on the floor when I was little. My Daddy picked it up and kissed it and set it on my plate. He said, "Wasting food is a sin."

I ate it.  Because I just knew it was true.  

And maybe there's stuff like pollution and terrorism and such that are sort of super sins because they hurt everybody alive and to come.

So maybe you can ship toxic waste to Fiji or Haiti or some where and drop it in the ocean and it's not a crime, but it sure as hell is a sin.  In my stained book, anyway.

I seem to recall a Wambaugh book where that was the issue: offshoring waste. Also in Kem Nunn's  "Tijuana Straits", come to think of it.  Maybe there are things that aren't murders, or even crimes, that would be compelling enough to drive a mystery?

I think I'm going this way with the character I'm developing.  She ends up doing rotten things that violate the law and her trust in order to set right some wrong she sees going on.

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Interesting, John.  I knew you guys could take this in directions I hadn't anticipated. 

Why do people throw dinner parties where the lights go out and every single guest is a potential killer?  (Actually, I had my eye on Colonel Mustard from the get-go)

"I suspect everyone, I suspect no one."  Inspector Clousseau

I wonder if there is a Christian element in that.  I have no idea if you see the same universal suspicion in novels from other culture.  An element of Christian thought is that every single person is a sinner, so how hard to assume that everybody is a murderer in their heart?  

[Brian Hoffman]

When I was in school, I was taught that the law was the minimum standard, the minimum acceptable behavior in our society.  That ethics imposed a higher standard, and god imposed the highest standard.  Breaking god's law is a sin.  So just because your behavior doesn't break man's law, a crime, it might still be a sin.  Coveting thy neighbors wife for instance, may not be against the law, but it is a sin.

If you don't believe in a higher power, then this is all gobble-dee-gook.  Personally, I believe in living to a higher standard, even if there isn't a higher power.

Maybe your character believes as I do. I guarantee it puts a lot of tension in your life.  It certainly does for my characters.

[Jude Hardin]

I remember once I threw a sweet potato on the floor when I was little. My Daddy picked it up and kissed it and set it on my plate. He said, "Wasting food is a sin."

He should have pulled out his .45 and shot your laptop!

Or not...

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

You knew my Daddy???!!!   

Actually that was my other Daddy the guys down at the bars knew.  He'd have gut shot a laptop, field-dressed it and mounted its head over the garage door.

But back to home, he was mostly a sweet soul with a curious relationship to the Almighty.

[Susan]

Okay, Cammy May, here's my question. If God doesn't exist, is there any such thing as sin? What defines sin? Ten Commandments? Prohibitions in the Koran? Some religious fanatics are more evil than non-believers. Was it a "sin" for the U.S. to drop bombs in Iraq that murdered tens of thousands of innocent women and children?

I write a blog on serial killers and others who commit heinous crimes. Here's one example Bloodbath in Atlanta

But when it comes to fiction, all bets are off as far as I'm concerned. The evil-doers in both my crime novels are as bad as I can make them. And there's no shortage of evil examples in the news. How about the man that burned his two sons to death?