‘Sin’ For Normal People

Searching Amazon reveals no book bearing this title, but a series produced by Peter Enns and Jared Byas as part of their The Bible For Normal People project addresses individual books of the Bible. For example, there’s Romans For Normal People, sub-titled ‘A guide to the most misused, problematic, and proof-texted letter in the Bible’ (which seems a very fair description).

It got me wondering whether the problem isn’t confined to biblical books.

It might not be too much of a stretch to say that ‘sin’ is the most misused, problematic, and proof-texted word in the Bible. There would be other contenders running it close, of course: ‘saved’, ‘redeemed’, and ‘justified’ all spring to mind. ‘Holiness’ deserves a shout as well, given the way in which conservative evangelicals have been deploying it so widely of late, but I’ve written previously about how that particular word is misunderstood and misused (https://www.steveburnhope.com/blog/what-is-holiness?).

You may already know that I have a bit of a thing about these ‘Christian’ or ‘biblical’ words because most of them are meaningless to, or at least misunderstood by, people who don’t inhabit Churchworld. Only the resident insiders know what they mean (and even many insiders don’t really know what they mean).

We sing them in worship songs (where ‘biblical’ words often appear to have been mixed and matched rather randomly), and we hear them sprinkled throughout sermons—sufficient to reassure the audience that the speaker is ‘sound’ and ‘biblical’, perhaps. But can we explain them to unchurched friends and family? Too often, the answer is ‘no’.

I’m not blaming ordinary Christians for that, because they don’t set the agenda for what gets into song lyrics and sermons (though I do at times wonder why they don’t ask more questions about what these words are supposed to mean).

There’s a concept in linguistics called ‘sign theory’. You may not have come across the name, but you'll probably recognise the idea. It says that no word has an intrinsic, immutably fixed meaning (we’re all aware how words evolve and mutate over time and we can probably all think of a few examples). Many words that were in regular use even 100 years ago are now mothballed. New words have replaced them—and yet, they’re still ‘pointing to’ the same things as their predecessors. New words are always being required as well, to signpost us to new things or do so in a new way.

Words function like a shorthand. When I say ‘cat’, it triggers in you a mental picture of a feline creature that (depending on the context in which I’m using it) is likely to be very similar to the one that I have in my head. That’s the point—the three-letter word has enabled us to avoid several sentences of me explaining what I mean by a cat.

In sign theory, linguists distinguish between the ‘signifier’ (the word) and that which is being ‘signified’ (the cat). What matters is what’s being signified. The word we use to achieve that is a neutral (arbitrary) word used simply as a tool to point us to a reality.

So how does ‘sin’ fit into all this? The blog title is obviously not intended in the sense of a guidebook for how normal people should go about sinning! Rather, I’m asking what the word ‘sin’ means to normal people (as opposed to churched people—if you’ll momentarily forgive the distinction).

You may be thinking, why does it matter? Surely every branch of life and commerce has its own insider vocabulary of some sort. And yes, that’s true, to a point. Plumbers, physicians, electricians and IT folks all have their own versions.

But while a product’s technical specifications may be the central focus when discussed in-house, that's rarely the case when it’s communicated to the public. And the church is (or should be) just as much in the communication business vis-à-vis its target audience for the gospel.

What the word ‘sin’ is ‘pointing to’ is particularly relevant because Christians will generally say that ‘sin’ is the problem to which Jesus is the solution.

Yet I can’t imagine a manufacturer succeeding in selling a cleaning product if they can’t explain what it cleans and how it does it. Why would the church expect to do any better in presenting Jesus as the solution, if it can’t clearly explain ‘sin’ as the problem?

I’m saying we need new vocabulary. Not to change what the word ‘sin’ is pointing to. Not, as many conservatives fear, ‘diluting’ it, or ‘minimising’ it, to ‘soften it’ for people, but to communicate what it’s pointing to (or, signifying) more effectively. There is no value in clinging to a word that no longer communicates just to keep a religious audience happy.

The same is true when it comes to Bible translations. We may love the old-fashioned language of the KJV for cultural reasons, but where its language is no longer communicating well, it requires updating. Our unfamiliarity might make it sound closer to the original, but that’s a misnomer; it’s not more authentic, it’s just more archaic. The Bible should not be an ancient relic. The old joke that the King James is the version that the Apostle Paul used makes the point.

So how might we go about that in the case of ‘sin’? It’s easier said than done; but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

If people no longer understand the value of a product that we know is great, we don’t need a new product; we need a new advertising agency to develop new words, concepts, and visuals to present it. The same product better communicated equals more people saying “I get that—that makes sense.”

I find it helpful to think about sin in two related ways: sin against God, and sin against people. They can't ultimately be separated, but distinguishing them helps us explain what Christians mean.

When it comes to sin against people, selfishness is not a bad place to start, with the very worst sins reflecting a selfishness that knows no boundaries—that doesn’t care who gets hurt, or how much they get hurt, in pursuit of something we want. Sin understood as a spectrum of selfishness isn't a complete answer, but it's a potentially helpful starting point.

Where that stops working so well is sin against God, which is far trickier. When I hear someone wanting to explain the Bible as ‘God’s Instruction Manual’, I feel like asking if they will please point me to the part where the instructions are, so that I can follow them. Suddenly that catchphrase doesn’t work so well.

It’s easy to say that ‘sin’ is doing things that God doesn’t like, or that the Bible says we shouldn’t be doing. It’s also quite easy to identify some biblical examples of that (in one of the so-called ‘vice lists’, perhaps). But explaining to a thoughtful, unchurched person why God doesn’t like something, or why the Bible says we shouldn’t do something, or why we’ve selected some things it says while ignoring other things, is far less easy.

People will likely ‘get’ it when it’s self-evidently something causing harm to a person or a relationship. But they probably won’t get it if our main reasoning is framed along the lines “because God says so” (aka, “because the Bible says so”).

I’m not saying it’s impossible to convey that cogently—and nor am I saying that we shouldn’t try—I’m just saying think about how it comes across, how it sounds.

In the evangelical circles I move in, only rarely do I hear Christians talk about ‘structural sin’ or ‘societal sin’—though surely all forms of sin, all its manifestations, are equally damaging to our world. Jesus bore sin and died for sin to defeat the power of sin and its toxic effects on human life in every respect, not just in relation to individuals’ lists of personal wrongdoings.

Such reductionism is unhelpful, since it’s quite likely that people today will grasp sin in the sense of ‘structural sin’ or ‘societal sin’—the ways that sin has become embedded in the very fabric of how things work in our world—rather more easily than they do personal sin in relation to God.

That isn’t to minimise sin in relation to God; it’s about where we start from to help people to ‘get’ it.

Examples would include racism, sexism, xenophobic nationalism, hate speech, intolerance, totalitarianism, misogyny, war-mongering, ignoring abuses and their cover-ups, and harmful ideologies associated with either capitalism or socialism. ‘Institutional sin’ is a manifestation that happens whenever institutions—big business, government, and religious organisations (yes, the Church included)—do such things or permit them.

I suggest the simplest way of explaining sin against God lies in what Jesus said in response to the question of what was God’s greatest commandment—the one that mattered to God the most, the one concerning which all other commandments, all other divine expectations of humanity, were simply the practical detail: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:30 and parallels). Surely ‘sin’ is a failure on one or both of those counts—a failure to live out both of the elements that are combined in that commandment in the best ways we can.

When we’re explaining ‘sin’ to people, perhaps we shouldn't begin with lists of behaviours. Instead, we should begin with the kind of world God wants—a world characterised by love of God and love of others—and then explain that the word is pointing to everything that falls short of that vision.