The Difference Between Sin and Evil This is sin. Carving away the full body of God. Whittling down love into an arrow fit for use only at a distance, filed away in its quiver, one among many, making a fine bouquet. “Pierce me,” I cry, baring my chest like a bull’s eye. As if pain is the way to self. Not knowing that fear, the Great Diminisher, has made me into his archer. (Losing its rhythm, my punctured heart taps its S.O.S., “Love, where have you bled to?”) Sin enacts an inner atrophy. A mitochondrial disorder. Programmed cell death. Yellow spikes inside the soul tearing it to shreds, disabling the metabolism of spiritual reproduction. Evil, however, is not this. Not an accumulation of sin. Evil is the space left after empathy has fled. The totem shadow that creates the illusion of distance. The lie that clothes the soul. Sometimes warming it. Making it too comfortable. The excuses we tend with perfumed hands, like cut flowers held, greeting us at the threshold.