Someone asked me recently, “Is it a sin to divorce my husband?” I sensed that her main concern was whether God would be angry with her if she did that. I think that’s the wrong way of understanding ‘sin’.

People often, mistakenly, associate sin with religion and God’s wrath and denying yourself some pleasure. But sin, put simply, is anything you do that hurts yourself, others, or God. In other words, to commit sin is to make a mistake.

In the Bible, the word ‘sin’ comes from the same root word in Hebrew that is used to express the verb ‘to miss the target’. If you think about that for a moment, it will completely change your concept of sin. You’ll understand that every time you sin, you’re missing a target.

So, in the above example, what if that lady rephrased her question and asked instead: “Will I miss the target if I divorce my husband?” Asking the question this way would immediately force her to ask herself, ‘What is my target? What am I trying to accomplish?” She’d then realize that the target in a marriage is not divorce. Rather, it’s to find happiness and purpose in sharing your life with someone else. So that lady’s target, in fact, was to solve her marriage problems and regain the happiness and purpose they had when they first got married.

But she mistakenly thought of divorce as a way out of her marriage problems. If she did that, she might have ‘solved’ one set of problems but immediately run into another one — being alone, disputes over the custody of her children, a financial mess, scarring the children for life, etc. In other words, she’d have missed the target BIG TIME.

Never again think of sin as a burden God has put upon you just to kill your joy and freedom. Remember that when you sin, or miss the target, you are the first victim. Yes, God may be sad you did it, others may also get hurt, but you’re the one who’ll pay the highest price. Nobody else.

Be smart. Hit your targets.