Thursday, September 10, 2026

Fraud Triangle Comparison to Sin Triangle

In one of my accounting classes, we learned about something called the fraud triangle, which I thought was a great theory.  It said for someone to execute fraud, they had to have all three of the following:

1) Incentive

2) Opportunity

3) Rationalization

So if someone wanted to steal, but never had the chance to, it wouldn't happen.  Or if they had a chance to, but couldn't make their conscience accept it as a viable option, it also wouldn't happen.  And of course, if they didn't want to, they wouldn't even pursue it to begin with.

Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to put this triangle idea in Bible classes as a constructive theory behind the concept of sin.  I've always felt that Biblical doctrine was a great way to provide the rationalization necessary to protect against the act of committing a sin, even when there was both the opportunity and a desire to engage in it.

A sin triangle also works because sin looks like a trigonometric function to begin with.

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