In the words of writer Hilary Brand, “It is clear that the word ‘sin’ is in trouble”.[1] Brand is not alone in observing that we might call the ‘classic’ or ‘orthodox’ Christian language of sin simply does not register with a 21st-century view of the human person or in contemporary ethical reasoning.[2]
I notice this when performing infant baptisms (when it is just unthinkable to parents that their innocent child needs a spiritual bath because they share in the human condition of spiritual uncleanness); and when I read the 1662 Book of Common Prayer which addresses us as ‘miserable offenders’, ‘not worthy so much as to pick up the crumbs from under thy table’, because ‘there is no health in us’. This language seems so sharp and unfamiliar, even in my Christianised ears. I often wonder what an unchurched person must think when they hear it. We don't speak like this – at least not without irony - anymore.
It is my purpose in this series of posts to suggest not only ways in which the concept (and the language) of sin might be recovered for contemporary disciples but also to say that it must be if we are to communicate how good the good news is.
As we will see, erasing the word does not take the reality of sin away from human experience. Initially, I will further analyse the observation that sin is a ‘lost’ doctrine and inquire as to why. Secondly, I will note that this has left a secular world with some difficulties when it comes to speaking about human morality. Thirdly, I will return to the Scriptural sources for an account of sin that will prove far richer than the one rejected by our contemporaries. Fourthly, we will see that though sin has been suppressed, it is very much alive in modern tragedies like Breaking Bad and Bojack Horseman. Lastly, I will present some suggestions as to how an account of sin might prove to be an asset rather than a liability for a presentation of the Christian gospel.
To return to my opening observation: there’s been a culturally successful campaign to erase the traditional language of sin. On the one hand, it has been made a medical problem to be treated by drugs and therapy. If I ‘sin’ (or imagine myself to have sinned), then I don’t need to be forgiven so much as healed.
On the other hand, sin has also become a primarily social problem to be addressed by fixing social structures. I sin (if I do) because I am a creature of my environment or a victim of oppressive systems. In both cases, the idea of personal culpability is at least minimised and often completely denied. Punishment is not the required response, but therapy, or revolution. ‘Sin’ has been trivialised - made into ice creams, or something fun also but a little bit bad for you.[3]
There is a justification for this shift partly in that ‘sin’ has been used in cruel and self-interested ways by religious institutions and leaders to bolster their own power. It can be seen as creating a problem that the church has a monopoly on fixing. And institutions, it turns out, can be as evil as individuals.
But also - and this is a more subtle point – Jesus’ ethical description of the human person looks not just at actions but at our epithumia, our desires. In this, he is saying no more than what the Ten Commandments also say, since they speak about ‘coveting’, which is not an action but a desire that is sinful, quite apart from an action that may result from it. In traditional theological language, we speak of the language of 'concupiscence'.
What's the issue? If ‘sin’ is that which I am to blame, then how can that include feelings and desires that I cannot help - especially when in contemporary anthropology we might say that my desires and inward feelings are who I am? There's a version of thinking about the human person that says that the only hard reality we have to deal with in thinking of ourselves is the subjective, inward part of us.
Traditional Christianity says the self is unstable; contemporary anthropology claims that it is the point of stability. If there is a 'sin', it is inauthenticity - suppression, rather than expression, of desire. Hence the disappearance of sin in the sense of personal culpability for wrongdoing and wrong-desiring, even in some modern theological thinking.
Traditional Christianity says the self is unstable; contemporary anthropology claims that it is the point of stability.
The great Taylor Swift argues in her 2024 song ‘Guilty as Sin’:
How can I be guilty as sin?
Someone told me, there’s no such thing as bad thoughts.
Only our actions talk.
Swift at least allows the category of wrongdoing, but clearly, she disagrees with Jesus on the inner life.
An example of the ironic use of ‘sin’ is It’s a Sin, the catchy dance hit released in 1987 by the British synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys. Although lead singer Neil Tennant said that he penned the lyrics in only a few minutes and denied that they had any particular depth to them, they read as a startling account of personal anguish:
Everything I've ever done
Everything I ever do
Every place I've ever been
Everywhere I'm going to
It's a sin
At a literal level, these lyrics are despairing. There’s no conversion story in the song, no ‘come to Jesus’ moment, no atonement or cleansing. It’s a message devoid of hope.
Only, that would be to misinterpret the song completely. We need to begin with the context: in the mid-1980s, gay and lesbian rights were just coming to mainstream prominence. Openly gay performers like Tennant were now exactly that – openly gay. The AIDS/HIV epidemic had thrown particular light on the gay experience. The terrible suffering and shame of that disease had been added to the stigma of social exclusion for many gay people – but paradoxically, this gave the movement for homosexual liberation an impetus and even a dignity that had previously not been visible to the wider world. What was suppressed was now expressed.
In It’s a Sin, Neil Tennant evokes his Catholic upbringing and its theology of sin. The message he received was that everything about him was sinful – ‘Everything I’ve ever done’. If he were to believe still this cruel message, then to look back on his life would be to find everything about it a matter of shame. But that is precisely not what he is saying, because the mode of this song is ironic. He is saying the opposite of what he means. The song itself is a rejection of the doctrine of sin as cruel – without grace and without hope. To live in this story is to carry a weight that he just cannot bear. And so, he emphatically rejects it by pretending to still believe it. The song is a performance of a life narrative that he now renounces. He is in fact now proud that what once was called sin is no longer subject to that interpretation.
[1] Hilary Brand, ‘Whatever happened to sin? An examination of the word and concept in contemporary popular culture’ in Holiness, Volume 2 (2016) Issue 3 (Holiness & Contemporary Culture): pp. 283–312
[2] See Simeon Zahl, ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: the Lost Doctrine of Sin’ in https://mbird.com/theology/hiding-in-plain-sight-the-lost-doctrine-of-sin/; and Elizabeth Oldfield Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times (Brazos, 2024), pp. 25-30
[3] It is worth noting how the language of ‘sin’ has been attached to food – possibly revealing a wealthy culture’s wrestle with an excessive amount of high calories that we find ourselves unable to stop consuming without difficulty.
I look forward to this series. The evangelical sin narrative was dependent on a mythical time of perfection and innocence which is ruined by Eve's food choice. How does sin appear in an evolutionary world? I'd like to hear how human behaviour - rape, greed, murder, selfishness - is called sinful in us but not in animals. (Even packs of adolescent male dolphins commit gang rape.) I'd like to hear how discovering the knowledge of good and evil could be bad. It seems that God beckons us to a higher ethic of altruism and responsibility.