Is Our Perspective on Sin Warped?

There are a lot of sins in the Bible. We don’t feel the same way about all of them, though, do we? Some sins trigger strong righteous indignation or an intense “ick” response. Others we barely notice.

We’re not entirely wrong to feel that way. Though there are not really any small sins, some are bigger than others. (See Bob Gonzales’ excellent study on that topic: The Greater Sin: Are There Degrees of Sin?).

But this range of reactions to different sins should prompt us to ask some questions.

• Why do we feel more strongly about this sin than we do about that one?
• Are our degrees of revulsion toward sins what they should be?
• How does God’s assessment of which sins are bigger compare to ours?
• How do we go about evaluating our attitude and emphasis in response to one sin vs. another?

These are important questions for so many reasons! For one, sin is always with us. Among humans, it’s as old as Genesis 3 and isn’t going away until God has transformed both us and our world. Our understanding of sin determines our view of why the world is in the mess it’s in, what separates man from God, and why we need a Savior. It’s at the heart of the gospel.

And the theological factors aren’t the whole picture, either. Our view of sin in general, and of specific sins in particular, shapes our emphases in ministry, from the conduct we expect of one another in congregations to what we preach and how often, and with what tone. It influences what foot we put forward in our interactions with the unbelieving.

A little story

One of the Christian elementary schools I attended as a kid had a noticeable sin emphasis. We had chapel services frequently, and every single sermon included at least one rant against rock and roll, blue jeans, long hair, and rebellion.

Yep. The seventies.

At first, I didn’t even know what rebellion was, but the amount of attention the topic received made me really sick of hearing about it. Then there was the sneering, obnoxious attitude of those who referenced it the most.

Maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I seem to recall feeling that if those guys were against rebellion, I just might be for it! Some of the older kids in the school definitely chose that path.

Observations:

• We can become obsessed with a handful of sins and let that warp our thinking, our communication, and our ministry to one another.
• Our perceptions of what sins matter most in a cultural moment can be wildly inaccurate.
• Our attitude and tone in response to specific sins can be counterproductive.

It’s well worth the trouble to take a fresh look at Scripture on the topic of how we evaluate the importance of one sin vs. another!

We can begin with a question: How do believers and ministries like the one I described above get that way? In other words, how does our estimation of the importance of one sin over another go wrong?

Some mix of three factors seems to drive it:

• Our personal bias
• Our tribe
• Our culture

Personal bias

Let’s be honest. We all have a tendency to view the sins other people commit as more serious than the ones we commit. As growing Christians, we’ve all had the experience of pondering a passage of Scripture and suddenly seeing ourselves in a different light. Then we have a “thou art the man” moment (2 Sam 12:7).

If a man after God’s own heart could be that incensed over someone else’s sin (2 Sam 12:5-6) yet so blind to his own, who are we to think we don’t have the same tendency?

The problem of personal bias—and resulting personal blindness—also underlies this humble prayer:

Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. (Ps 19:12)

Surely this tendency is also what Jesus confronted in Luke 6:41-42.

The influence of our tribe

Our tendency to see others’ sins as bigger than our own has a social form as well: the tendency to see the offenses of those outside our group as bigger than those inside our group.

It’s not a coincidence that the Pharisees exemplify these sin mis-evaluation problems. Matthew 9:10-13 is a memorable case. To the Pharisees, they themselves were the right people, and those outside their group were the wicked ones. Jesus didn’t agree!

This sin-perception problem takes another form. Not only do we tend to give our own group a pass and hold outsiders to a higher standard, but our group has traditions—it has a subculture. A result is that emphasis on certain sins becomes part of the oxygen at our gatherings. We’re unaware of it and never question it. The consequences can be serious:

But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” ⁶ he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. ⁷ You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ⁸ “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; ⁹ in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” (Mt 15:5–9)

God gave the apostle Peter personalized training in overcoming this kind of tribal blindness (Acts 10:13ff, culminating in Acts 10:34-35).

Culture shock

Merriam Webster defines culture shock as follows:

a sense of confusion and uncertainty sometimes with feelings of anxiety that may affect people exposed to an alien culture or environment without adequate preparation

We usually assume culture shock happens when someone relocates to a different culture, but what if they stay put and a new culture comes to them?

Few, if any, question that American culture has changed rapidly over the last decade. My unscientific impression is that nearly everyone also thinks it has changed for the worse, though opinions range widely on the specifics of what has gotten worse.

I believe many conservative Christians are experiencing culture shock. So much of what we care about has changed so quickly and—as the Webster definition has it—“without adequate preparation.”

One result is that our sense of which sins seem huge and which seem smaller—to the point of being nearly insignificant—has been influenced.

The culture factor, then, takes two forms:

1. The tendency to absorb our culture’s ideas of right vs. wrong/sinful.
2. The tendency to identify what’s changing in our culture as the thing most worthy of our concern.

We’re all well acquainted with the first of these. We can quote Romans 12:2. The second is more complicated. Sometimes what’s changing really is most worthy of our concern and emphasis—at least for a while. But are we getting it right? To return to the title of this post, is our perspective on sin warped?

Hopefully it’s evident at this point that we’re never getting it entirely right, and our perspective is always at least a little warped. In a future post, I hope to explore some ways to challenge ourselves and maybe do a little better.