....sad, isn't it? “The urgent sense of personal sin has all but disappeared.”—Newsweek.
“We no longer ask ‘What does God require of me,’ but rather, ‘What can God do for me?’”—Chicago Sun-Times.
In today’s pluralistic and tolerant society, people hesitate to make moral judgments. Doing so is not politically correct, we are told. The greatest sin seems to be to judge another person’s actions.
This kind of reasoning has brought about a change in people’s vocabulary. The word “sin” is now rarely used in serious contexts. For many, it has become a topic for jokes. People are no longer said to “live in sin”; they just “live together.” They are no longer “adulterers”; they are “having an affair.” They are no longer “homosexuals”; they just prefer “an alternative lifestyle.”
But why have attitudes changed? Whatever became of sin? Philosophers, scientists, and theologians in the 19th*century began to question whether accounts in the Bible should be accepted as historically true. For many people, Darwin’s theory of evolution has relegated the story of Adam and Eve to the realm of myth. The result of all of this is that many now consider the Bible to be more a reflection of the mentality and traditions of the writers than a divine revelation.
It is clear that the traditional concept of personal sin and its consequences—as explained by the churches—has failed to help people to overcome the practice of sin. Many churchgoers no longer believe that all these things are wrong. Some reason, for instance, that if two adults have consensual sexual relations and no third party is injured, what is the harm?
A general relaxing of morals in the Western world in the 20th*century has led to, among other things, the so-called sexual revolution. Student protests, countercultural movements, and medically prescribed contraceptives have all played their part in the rejection of traditional ideas of propriety. Soon, Biblical values were upended. A new generation subscribed to a new morality and a new attitude toward sin. From then on, says one writer, “the only law was the law of love”—which basically found expression in the widespread acceptance of illicit sex.
The outgrowth of this type of thinking is a religious culture that defines God in its own terms, churches whose focus is, not on God and what he requires of us, but on man and what will increase his self-esteem. The sole aim is to cater to the needs of the congregation. The fruit is religion emptied of doctrine. “What fills the hole at the center, where the Christian moral code used to be?” asks The Wall Street Journal. “An ethic of conspicuous compassion, where ‘being a nice person’ excuses everything.”
