Oct 1

Whatever Happened to Sin?

Over fifty years ago, Psychiatrist, Karl Menninger, lamented the absence of sin in the everyday dialogues of American society when he wrote several years ago:

In all the laments and reproaches made by our seers and prophets, one misses any mention of 'sin,' a word which used to be a veritable watchword of prophets. It was a word once in everyone's mind but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles—sin with an ‘I’ in the middle? Is no one any longer guilty of anything? Guilty perhaps of a sin that could be repented of or atoned for? . . . Anxiety and depression we all acknowledge, and even vague guilt feelings; but has no one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?[1]

Unfortunately its been all downhill from then. Secular authors have also chastised the church for its laxness and its loss of moral relevance. The church – the very place where one would expect to hear about sin – has fallen silent. James Twitchell rightly pointed out, “Looking at the Christian Church today, you can only see a dim pentimento of what was once painted in the boldest of colours. Christianity has simply lost it. It no longer articulates the ideal. Sex is on the loose. Shame days are over. The Devil has absconded with sin.”[2]

The confession and renunciation of sin and the pursuit of God’s holiness are almost entirely foreign to today’s church. Repenting and asking forgiveness for sin – once the veritable quintessence of authentic confession – has given way to a church that marches to the drumbeat of moralistic relativism.

Have you noticed how secular people today never use the word “sin” or “evil”? That's because they don’t believe people are sinful or evil, instead they are sick or psychologically dysfunctional.

But have you also noticed that in some churches sin is not an affront to a Holy God either, it's just something that can be addressed through therapy. A llittle therapy here and there will take care of everything. You would be hard pressed in some churches to understand why Jesus had to die at all, when psychotherapy can now make you feel good about being a sinner. In some churches, people are even calling evil good and good evil. How did we get here?

Back in April of 1999, after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold massacred twelve of their fellow students and one teacher at Columbine High School, North America was in shock. How does something like this happen? A day or two later, the headlines from newspapers read, “Littleton Shootings are Symptomatic of Male Identity Crisis.”[3] The article blamed it on psychological issues and did not consider it an act of evil.

Two and a half years later, after the attacks on the World Trade Center, Alice Hornstein, a Yale student, wrote an article that was printed in Newsweek magazine. In this piece she wrote about a class discussion they had right after the attack. She was shocked and appalled that there was no moral outrage among the professor and the students. Not one person was willing to admit this act of terrorism was evil. In fact, some of her classmates did not believe what these terrorists had done was even wrong, let alone horrific.

Just over a year ago, Audrey Hale, a self-identified 28-year-old transgender assailant killed six people at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. Three of those students were 9-year-olds. Hale had been a former student at the same school. The assailant had left behind a manifesto, artwork and other writings, according to police. Of course the public is always interested to know what a person's motive was for such a horrific act.

On September3, 20024, The Washingtons Times commented on the manisfesto stating in part , "The Nashville mass shooter agonized over gender identity, wallowed in self-pity, ripped Christianity, and plotted cold-blooded murder in the weeks before opening fire at the Covenant School, killing three children and three staff members. They also recovered two "memoirs" and other evidence that the killer had planned the attack well in advance and that there were other locations that might have been targets as well.

Whatever Hale’s motives were, the media and society in general could not bring itself to call her actions sinful and evil. Instead, they looked for reasons to justify this person’s behaviour.

This is the same familiar refrain we hear all the time. The only way the media and others can account for such horrific behaviour is to blame it on mental illness. It is never because of sin or evil.

Dallas Willard was a brilliant philosopher who taught at the University of Southern California (USC) and for years was the head of the philosophy department. He said “In intellectual circles, evil, like sin, is a non-category. It is impolite and politically incorrect to speak seriously of it, even if it involves flying airlines loaded with innocent victims into skyscrapers.”

Dr. Hobart Mower was a well-known psychologist who taught for years at Harvard and Yale. He also served as the President of the American Psychological Association. He wrote an article in the American Psychologist that was quite controversial at the time, but very telling nonetheless. In the article he said:

For several decades we psychologists have looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and claimed our liberation from it as epoch-making. But at length we have discovered that to be free from sin is to also have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful. It is to court the danger of becoming lost. The danger is, I believe betokened by the widespread interest in existentialism which we are presently witnessing. In becoming amoral and ethically neutral and free, we have cut the very roots of our being and have lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity. What’s ironic is that our patients who come to see us as psychologists eventually realize that we are asking the same questions they are: Who am I? What is my deepest destiny? What does living mean?”[4]

It seems that Dr. Mower exposed his profession to the truth, because he received a great deal of criticism for his article.

But as Mower went on to note, even while psychologists were waking up to their error of training individuals to avoid responsibility for their actions and reject moral absolutes, those in religious circles were heading down that same erroneous path:

At the very time that psychologists are becoming distrustful of the sickness approach to personality disturbance and are beginning to look with more benign interest and respect toward certain moral and religious precepts, religionists themselves are being caught up in and bedazzled by the same preposterous system of thought as that from which we psychologists are just recovering.[5]

One such example during this time was Robert Schuller’s “positive” teaching at the Crystal Cathedral. Schuller said a few years ago, “Jesus never called a person a sinner. He also said, “There is no greater damage that can be done than to refer to the lost sinful condition of man.”[6]

But Schuller stood in direct opposition to Jesus’ teaching in Scripture. Jesus said in Matthew 9:13, "for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." In Luke 19:10, Jesus said, “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.” In fact, the only people Jesus could help were those who recognized that they were sinners. How has such teaching by Schuller and others in the church affected our world.

In a large university in Texas, a college professor named Virginia Owens teaches English. In one of her classes, she had her students read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from Mathew 5, 6, and 7. She was curious to see how they would respond to this great sermon by Jesus.

It was not surprising that most of her students were flabbergasted and shocked by Jesus’ teaching. For instance:

1. A man commits adultery if he lusts after a woman in his heart. You have to be kidding.

2. The thought of loving your enemies. This just seems crazy.

3. When someone wrongs you, forgive them. Why not get revenge on them?

The student’s feelings obviously stemmed from the way it made them view themselves and how they were conducting their lives. They didn’t realize they were experiencing conviction over their own sinfulness.[7]

St. Augustine said: “We love the truth when it enlightens us, we hate the truth when it convicts us.” These students did not like the conviction they were experiencing and therefore they were hostile toward the words of Jesus.

These students, like so many others in our world, lived with the belief that, “I know what is right for me. I am going to do what is right in my own eyes.” Ultimately, a person's view of God, even if it’s an atheistic view, is the foundation in which all their reasoning proceeds. They screen out all that does not fit with their view, and this is particularly true what comes to sin and moral evil.

At the heart of the Biblical narrative is human depravity; and that God sent his Son to redeem us and set us free from the slavery of sin. As the Apostle Paul declared: “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. [8](Romans 7:24, 25)

The Bible says, “that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.” (Rom. 3:23) Don’t let your sins blind you to the life you can have. Sin will always keep you from a right relationship with God. Confess your sins to God. Believe that his Son, Jesus, died for you so that your sins can be forgiven. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. So, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:34,36)

[1] Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? 6th ed. (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1974), 13. [2] James B. Twitchell, For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 149.

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/04/20/damaged-masculinity-may-help-explain-columbine-and-other-mass-shootings/

[4]Charles Creitz, “Nashville school shooting reignites tragically familiar debate over to how to 'save our children”, https://www.foxnews.com/media/nashville-shooting-reignites-tragically-familiar-debate-save-our-children. [5] Annie Holmquist, Fee Stories, Psychologist in 1960: Rejecting Moral Accountability Was a Big Mistake, https://fee.org/articles/psychologist-in-1960-rejecting-moral-accountability-was-a-big-mistake/. [6] Ibid. [7] Robert Schuller, The New Reformation, p.100, 126) [8] Virginia Stem Owens. “God and Man at Texas A&M.” Reformed Journal 37, no. 11 (1987): 3–4. [9] Tyndale House Publishers. 2015. Holy Bible: New Living Translation. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.