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Whatever Became of Sin?
Simon Peter said unto Jesus,
“Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.”
Luke 5:8
In 1974 Karl Menninger, Director of the world-renowned Menninger Clinic in Kansas, published a book entitled Whatever Became of Sin? Dr. Menninger was not suggesting that sin had disappeared from the world. Rather, his title marks a decline in the acknowledgment and confession of sin in Western society. This development is reflected in the Book of Alternative Services, where the confession of sin is now an optional part of the liturgy.
A generation after the appearance of Menninger’s book, I think we are in a position to offer some tentative answers to the question which he has raised. First of all, our increased awareness of world religions makes us realize that sin is not the universally accepted notion we may have once supposed it to be. All societies distinguish between right and wrong, and all religions have some form of morality, but the notion of sin as an offence against almighty God may be proper to the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Where the Old Testament deity thunders, “Thou shalt not!”, Buddhism counsels, “Try not to.”
The Bible says a great deal about sin, but it does not offer a coherent doctrine of sin, and the connection in the Hebrew Bible between sin and ritual impurity poses a problem for us today.
Then there was the sexual revolution of the 60’s, which put a crimp in a major focus of the Christian understanding of sin. To be sure, sexuality is still a divisive issue in our Anglican Communion, and I admire the United Church for having disposed of the same-sex question years ago.
The Christian understanding of sin is also intertwined with the sacrifice of Christ:
He paid a debt he did not owe
FOR US
who owed a debt we could not pay.
Today, without a sense of symbolic reality, the notion of a bloody sacrifice for sin is a hard sell.
But at least in Christianity sin is no basis for vituperative name calling. A judge may find the defendant guilty, but he cannot declare him a sinner. Only God, or the defendant himself, can do that.
Modern depth psychology has called into question the perfectionist morality with which sin is connected. Parts of our personality which we might consider “sinful” may rather represent a shadow side which, if recognized, accepted, and integrated, can make a positive contribution to our lives.
Finally, “sin” comes across as rather inadequate to characterize the atrocities which, starting with the Holocaust, have become an escapable phenomenon in modern times.
So we are left, it would seem, with the understanding of sin in the Gospel text with which I began: Peter’s realization of who and what he is, in the light of the great miracle which he has just witnessed. The text continues: “For he was astonished” (Luke 5:9). This astonishment includes, paradoxically, both fear and fascination, and it is the human reaction to a manifestation of the Holy. An experience of sin in this sense is found in all religions, whether or not the word is used, and it is an essential part of our humanity.
July 16, 2006
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