Il termine greco utilizzato nei Vangeli per designare il peccato deriva dal verbo amartano, che significa letteralmente «fallire il bersaglio» ed è un termine tecnico usato dagli arcieri. […] Gli impulsi passionali, la freccia, sono cosa sacra e buona, il problema è dove miri, quale è il bersaglio a cui tendi, verso che direzione hai scoccato la freccia.
The Greek word used in the Gospels for sin comes from the verb amartano, which literally means "to miss the target" and is a technical term used by archers. […] The passionate impulses, the arrow, are sacred and good; the problem is where you aim, what target you are reaching for, in which direction you have shot the arrow.
via: Vasco Brondi, Una cosa spirituale (Einaudi, 2025) — L'animale che mi porto dentro
Info & reflection: sin is not passion but the wrong direction. The arrow is sacred.
Related in anthology
- Una cosa spirituale. Non fare niente, altre forme d'arte — Brondi uses amartano in the chapter L'animale che mi porto dentro: passion is sacred, what matters is the target, like finding a food worthy of our insatiability
- Addiction is proof that you're capable of intense devotion. You are just serving the wrong god. — "serving the wrong god" is amartano in a modern key: same arrow, wrong direction
- God can save the sinner you are, but not the saint you pretend to be. — Bloom names the opposite trap: a perfect façade is a wrong target too; "God can save the sinner you are" is the Christian answer to amartano
- How Jesuit spirituality changed Andrew Garfield's life — Andrew Garfield: sin as a missed aim in his daily examen
- Brené Brown on Jesus and vulnerable spirituality — Brené Brown rejects "sinner"; reading amartano as a missed aim would give her another way in