How the World Sees Sin

With discoveries and allegations of immorality swirling about in the news today (e.g., Herman Cain, Jerry Sandusky, etc.), I've been contemplating how the world views morality. All unbelievers operate according to one moral code or another, because the very idea is inescapably written on their hearts. But as Romans 1 tells us, worldlings very early set about retooling their pre-programmed moral code, exchanging truth for lies, deliberately searing their consciences, and appealing to the elemental principles of this world rather than to Christ. But while every unbeliever establishes his own autonomous moral code, society cannot function apart from some level of consensus about sin, and so collective man has always seen the need to legislate morality. Society sometimes borrows elements from the Christian ethic, and rightly so; however, we need to remain acutely aware that a stark gap always exists between the view of sin held by believers and unbelievers respectively. Sins for the believer are carefully enumerated in Scripture, and are described in its pages as primarily against God (so Ps 51:4), a fact that tends to both intensify and in some degree to "level out" the heinousness of all sin. But that is not true among unbelievers. The possibility of offending God is largely removed from consideration here, and the offense of human victims is rendered primary. The American democratic idea of sin seems to follow roughly the following scheme:

• Sins that have no human victims are not sins at all. Thus describing as sin such vices as idolatry, pornography, taking God's name in vain, neglecting the church, and envy, leads to responses of perplexity, bemusement, ridicule, and anger from the world.
• Sins that have only self-conscious and self-determining (i.e., consenting) human participants are not really sins either. Sexual promiscuity, cohabitation, divorce, and the like are frowned at, perhaps, but not regarded as sin. These activities are consensual because no one got hurt beyond injury that is self-inflicted.
• Sins that have human victims that are neither self-conscious nor self-determining are not really sins either. Abortion fits here. If the victim didn't know about it, it didn't really happen.
• Sins that are have self-conscious, but to some degree non-self-determining (i.e., non-consenting) victims are true sins. Crimes against the weak, the minority, the variously "challenged," the disadvantaged, and especially the young are especially excoriated in American democratic society. 

This scheme is not shared universally. For instance, I once asked a Chinese woman what she thought the arbiter of morality was, and she replied, after thinking a bit, "The Government" (I didn't see that one coming)! In other cultures, sins against "societal order" are viewed with with much greater severity than sins against disadvantaged individuals. 

So what are we as Christians to do? Well, a few random thoughts:

• First, we must be careful to guard ourselves and those in our spiritual care against adopting a "worldly" or atheistic view of sin. The path to apostasy is paved with sins rendered benign by redefinition. God is the arbiter of sin, not societal consensus, human law, or me. And it against God (not other humans) that our sins are primarily directed.
• Second, we must be proactive in our apologetic in defining sin as God does. An unbeliever with a low view of sin will never have high view for the Gospel. But don't despair, because Paul tells us that while the world engages in wanton sin and gives hearty approval to sinners, they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death (Rom 1:31). The unbeliever's conscience is on your side as you detail his need for redemption.
• Third, as we've learned from such diverse sources as JoePa and Chuck Phelps, the world holds leaders to an extremely high standard, in counseling and discipline situations, when the sin in view is "sexual immorality of a kind that does not occur even among pagans" (1 Cor 5:1ff). In such cases the name of Christ and the integrity of his church require comprehensive action that exceeds the legal minimum.
• Fourth, we must be mindful that even though sin is primarily against God, Christ expressed peculiar sympathy for people who have been sinned against--and we should too.
• And finally, we must be ever mindful that Christ is able to save the worst of sinners, among whom, incidentally, we all were once numbered.

MAS


Update: For excellent expanded treatments of the third point above see this article by Al Mohler and also this one by Thom Rainer.