The Nature of Sin (and a Reminder to the World)
Regardless of what your holy books of any variety say, I believe there have been few words that ring more true in this moment regarding evil and sin than what Sir Terry Pratchett himself had to say about it.
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that—”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things…”
-- Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett
What was it that Granny Weatherwax had said once? ‘Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.’ And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family.
-- I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett
I'm putting this out as a reminder to go out and treat people as people (except, of course, in mutual consensual ways), because otherwise you are committing a sin and probably doing evil. Right now, though I don't think the people who need this most are likely to see it or listen to it.
However, even if it can't reach those people, it might reach others who need a reminder like this. It's definitely easy to slip and start down this road of sin described in these passages - I've definitely done it before - but the first part of them is important too. You can step back from those sinful pathways and return to treating people as people, and make good towards those you've treated as things. You don't have to be permanently stained.