Dub McClish
We seldom read the word sin in the newspaper or hear it on TV, in the movies, or even in conversation. It has almost become a sin to mention sin. It has not always been so. Our nation, rooted in Biblical concepts and terms and continuing in such for almost two centuries, long had a moral sense of righteousness and therefore of sin. It is not so now. What has caused such a casting off of the concept of sin? Almost a century ago Humanistic psychologists, sociologists, and educators decided guilt is a harmful emotion, so sin, the cause of guilt, became a dirty word. By the 1960s, these ideas had so taken hold that they produced the “sexual revolution.” “The rest is history,” as the saying goes.
The means of mitigating the idea of sin in the public psyche was ingenious: Label sinful acts by new names and/or call them “diseases” or “disorders.” Related to this strategy has been the advent of “political correctness” (PC), itself a euphemism for censorship and the discourager of honesty. Consider some examples of PC labels for sin:
Alternative lifestyle: The sin of homosexual behavior or sodomy, named after the city of Sodom, notorious for this ungodly and unnatural behavior and for which God destroyed it and surrounding cities (Gen. 19:1–25). Alternative to what?—to normalcy and Biblical morality (1 Cor. 6:9–11).
Gays: Misnomer for those who practice the sin of sodomy. The Bible calls them “sodomites” (1 Kin. 14:24; et al.), “effeminate,” and “abusers of themselves with men” (1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:10; cf. Rom. 1:26–28). There is nothing “gay” about this or any other wickedness.
Same-sex unions: The sinful (not to mention absurd) idea of homosexual “marriages” (or as one describes it, “state-sanctioned sodomy”). Such wickedness sullies the Biblical, physical, and societal normalcy of marriage between a man and woman and the creation of a family unit for the generation and rearing of children (Eph. 6:1– 4).
Cohabitation: The sin of a man and woman living together as husband and wife without becoming husband and wife—”shacking up” in common parlance. The Bible calls it “fornication” which will bar one from Heaven (1 Cor. 6:9–11). With the glorification of this sin, illegitimacy rates have predictably soared.
“Sexually active” and “safe sex” belong in the same list. The PC “police” insist on “tolerance” of all viewpoints and practices, except, of course, those viewpoints that insist on the “intolerant” Biblical doctrines that define sin and exalt righteousness (Pro. 14:34).
