“The answer is yes,” stated the doctor who is an instructor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, “you are innocent of all sins (except the one you have committed yourself).” I like the way this sentence starts off with a question about us being ‘innocent’ of the sins that we have committed. We are innocent of the sins we have committed, but we are also innocent of the sins we did not commit.
The difference between being innocent of a crime and being innocent of an action or omission is that we can be forgiven of the crime but not the action or omission. This is true for our sins and our actions and our omissions. We can be forgiven of the sins we have committed, but not the actions or omissions we have not committed.
When it comes to our actions, there is an innocence that you can attain if you are not so self-aware. Someone who has no idea they have been charged with a crime knows they are guilty and this makes them innocent of the crime. They know they did not do it. They can be forgiven of the crime, but not the action or omission.
The innocence that comes with not knowing you’re a criminal is not innocence. It is lack of knowledge, or the lack of having an awareness of your culpability.
What makes people innocent is knowledge. If you are aware of your actions you are not innocent. The term ‘innocence’ is a very broad thing to use, I think. I’d like to see the definition of ‘knowledge’ or ‘innocence’ used in the context of this, so that we can get a better understanding of the difference between guilt and innocence.
I believe am innocent is the question of how you can know that you have done something wrong. To say am I accused of wrongdoing is to say it is an accusation. You cannot be accused of wrongdoing if you do not know you are accused. I believe am innocent is when the accused does not know they are accused, but when the accuser knows they are accused.
The concept that innocence is the state of being innocent is not new in the English language and I’ve actually used it for quite a while to try to explain some aspects of our legal system, especially the “innocent until proven guilty” part of it. But I think that what I’ve always taken to be the most important part of the “innocent until proven guilty” is what I call “innocence until proven guilty until proven innocent.
The idea is that most of us are innocent until proven guilty until proven innocent and that is because we have no idea that we’re innocent. And this is just as true for the guilty as for the innocent. If you give someone something of value, and they take it because of the circumstances and not for the value they possess, then you will never know you were wrong. You may be accused of stealing something but you had no idea you were even stealing it.
How could I know this? When I was in school, I got to know most of the students for a few years, until I found out that the principal was actually going to give me more of the students’ grade papers and let me know what I needed. After I learned more about the students, I became a little more selective about the grades.
The only thing that’s ever been proven is that you can’t prove you didn’t steal anything. But sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes it’s better to be accused of something and get it, than to be accused of something and not get it.