“Whatever Happened to Sin?” is the title of a long ago written book by Karl Menninger, an American psychiatrist. It does seem to be a word on the endangered species of vocabulary list. Most times I hear the word outside of worship or Bible study it has to do with eating high caloric foods that clog one’s arteries. You know, “That dessert is absolutely sinful”…meaning it is really bad for you but tastes, O so good!
Sin is a useful word. It supersedes the words mistake or error. Sin is a word that connects a wrongful act with God. If I make a mistake in measuring a space for a new refrigerator, it is simply a mistake between me and the person selling new refrigerators. God isn’t really into tape measures and refrigeration.
If, on the other hand I am constructing something and cut corners simply to make something cheaper or easier with no care for safety, that can be more than a mistake. God cares greatly about people being unnecessarily put at risk.
There is actually a mistake you and I make about sin. We think sin harms another. Indeed it can and often does. That is why sometimes the best confession made is not to God but to those against whom we have sinned. Ask any 12 Step group about this.
The mistake we make regarding sin is we get the part of what sin does to others while at the same time miss the effect and the affect sin can have on us. The truth is we do sin, but sin also does us. Yes, of course others have and will sin against us and we suffer its consequences. We are well aware of that. However our own sin has consequences to ourselves. I am not talking about punishment for our sin when it causes a valued relationship to break or has some ripple effect on others. Instead I mean that our own sin even when not noticed by others has a way of striking us. Guilt builds up over time and produces nothing very healthy.
Acts and even thoughts of racism have a way of embittering us. Disbelief in science and climate change while effecting us, effects those too with power to do something about it who fail to lift a non-pollutant finger. Racism can shape us in a way few sins can do. As we live it, act it, and deny it, these forces work together on us to make us into a person whom we would acknowledge God does not want us to be.
In sin we have a force, a power, from which we cannot escape. Sin-sick we hope for an escape as we often are aware we are becoming not only one whom God does not want us to become, but also we are aware we are becoming someone whom we don’t want ourselves to become.
This is why confession and repentance are so important. We need to acknowledge our sin for the sake of neighbor and for the sake of ourselves. We need to strive to turn from this sin for the sake of neighbor and oneself. This is loving our neighbor as oneself at its best. Love of self can often be stating we are too often not all that loveable. To acknowledge this can be to love oneself and one’s neighbor more deeply.
God wants confession and forgiveness not out of a hardness of God’s heart with hopes of convicting and punishing us. God wants confession and forgiveness for a better you and me, a better neighbor, and a better world.
Sin will always do the neighbor. Sin will always do ourselves. Sin always needs as response our acknowledgement and efforts to combat sin. Let’s provide an answer to Menninger. What ever happened to sin? It did not go away. Neither did it go underground. Instead sin has lost some of its grip on us. God’s forgiveness will help with that.