Why I am a Christian (7)

Sin Offers the Best Explanation There Is of What’s Wrong with the World

In 2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.

The first four explain why I think belief in a creator is reasonable and credible with what I have learned from science – anything but a leap in the dark.

The next two examine the human condition and show that the way we are wired is entirely consistent with what the Bible says about us. Whether we like it or not, human beings are innately inclined to worship and have an inbuilt sense of moral responsibility (though both can be squeezed out of us with often disastrous consequences).

Now, I am explaining why I think that it’s only in the world of theology that an accurate diagnosis of what’s wrong with the world (and what the cure is) can be found.

I take it as self-evident and beyond dispute that there is something wrong with the world. It’s plain to see. 

Everywhere you go on our planet there is injustice, hatred, cruelty, corruption, rejection and untold other evils.

The best explanation I have found of what’s evidently wrong with the world is that there is a universal and inescapable downward tug on the human soul. The Bible calls this "sin." 

You can hate the word and try to rebrand it - but you can hardly deny the reality it affirms. Even if, for argument’s sake, you take God out of the equation, nobody could honestly claim that they always thought, said or did what met with even their own standards of what is right.

Would you, reading this post now, be absolutely comfortable with the prospect (if it were possible) of having your every thought, word and deed - even in the last week - laid bare for all to see?

Nor can we pretend that this powerlessness to live exactly as we know we should is just a minor aberration. It is a global pandemic. 

Everywhere you go in the world, on every continent and in every nation, at every time in history, you find exactly the same thing. There is not a human being on Earth who is able to live a perfectly moral and upright life. Nor has there ever been before (except Jesus - and I will write more about his sinless life in my post for Reason 13). 

The consequences of sin are everywhere. It's so universal we take it for granted. We know it is not enough to have a front door for our houses; we need locks on them. We know it is not enough to have a lock on the car door; we need an alarm as well. We know it is not enough just to tell an official who we are. We need to provide proof of identity (sometimes several different proofs). We know it is not enough to have a username for our e-mail accounts; we need passwords too (preferably different passwords for different accounts). We know it is not enough for the Highways Agency to inform drivers of speed limits. They need radar and camera devices to enforce them. We know it is not enough to have international borders. Nations have to protect them with armed forces.

Why? Because everyone knows that human nature, by itself, cannot be trusted. We are simply not virtuous. We are flawed – pretty well incurably. What the Bible calls "sin" is hardly an opinion - it's as near an established fact as any fact can be.

Incidentally, sin is hugely costly. Imagine all the resources that could be poured into feeding the hungry, educating the young, caring for the elderly and protecting the environment if we did not have to pay for defence, police, intelligence, security and prisons. But the biggest cost of sin, far greater and more serious than the economic one, is the chasm of separation, the alienation, it opens up between people and God. Sin puts the human race in open rebellion against God and his laws.

This is how the Bible puts it in Romans 3.10-12:

There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,

they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.

Then this conclusion shortly afterwards:

There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, [religious people and irreligious people] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3.22-23).

American preacher Louie Giglio puts it very simply. He explains how easy God made it for people to be good by giving ten clear, basic and simple rules to live by; the Ten Commandments. 

The first is not “You shall give all you have to the poor” or anything terribly demanding like that. The first commandment states; “You shall have no other gods before me.” It’s not all that complicated. But when you try and find, anywhere on Earth, anyone - anyone - who has never considered anything or anybody in their life more important to them than God you are bound to be disappointed. You will not find a single soul.

Nobody, not even the most devout and saintly person on Earth, can even get past Number One of God’s ten clear, basic and simple rules.

This is what the Bible means when it affirms that all have sinned and have fallen short of God’s standards.

It’s a pessimistic assessment of who we really are. But it balances and complements the marvellous vision of being made in the image of God, declared “very good” by the Creator and loved by him (see reasons 5 and 6). The full biblical understanding of human nature is that we were all created glorious and unblemished but that we have all gone badly wrong.

As systematic theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem explains, “It is not that some parts of us are sinful and others are pure. Rather, every part of our being is affected by sin – our intellect, our emotions and desires, our hearts (the centre of our desires and decision-making processes), our goals and motives, and even our physical bodies.”

The Reformers called this “total depravity.” This does not mean that people cannot ever do good things. Clearly, they can. Rather it means that we are all indelibly tainted with a downward pull away from perfection and that we are totally unable to be right with God by our own efforts.

Of course, this whole approach is rejected by the secular humanist mind-set that is so fashionable in the 21^st Century Western world. This philosophy, in its vanity, tends to assume basic human goodness as a default position and even the word “sin” leaves secular commentators embarrassedly reaching for the Thesaurus for something a little more palatable to them. 

C.S. Lewis perceptively pointed out the inherent naivety in this approach in Mere Christianity. “It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.” 

Funny, that. Haven't you become self-satisfied and proud when you have acted in ways that are noble? And haven't you made excuses when you have acted in ways you regret? Me too. It's an experience as old as the Garden of Eden and as widespread as the human race is scattered.

We tend to take pride in our goodness - but it is an illusion that leads to spiritual emptiness and God seeming distant. We bury the guilt we feel about not being all we know we should be.

When God shows us the truth about our self-righteousness and our need for Christ - and when we acknowledge both - everything falls into place.

Most people, if they are really honest, have a sense within them of never being as morally pure as they might be - and indeed want to be. But because in the Western world the Christian message is so marginalised in political circles and so perverted by the media, few understand what sin is – and therefore few experience the wonderful release from its grip that Jesus offers.

When I became a Christian one warm July evening in 1979, I experienced three things; firstly, a sharp sense of my own sinfulness. I saw through all my pretending and posturing. I realised how shallow I was, how utterly unable I was to live a good life. The Bible calls this experience “the conviction of sin.” I finally stopped living in denial and got real.

Secondly, I wept and wept over my wasted past, over all my pride and self-importance and vanity. The Bible calls this “repentance.”

Thirdly, I had a revelation of the love of God for me. Wave after wave of cleansing grace and favour poured down into my soul. I knew I was loved. I knew I was a child of God. Oh, the joy of it! I knew I would never be the same again.

33 years on, I still view my conversion as the most significant experience I have ever had. I catalogue everything in my life is as ‘before’ or ‘after’ that event. And nothing, even falling in love, getting married and having children, has matched it for the intensity of its delight.

Happy are those
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.

Happy are those
whose sin the Lord does not count against them
and in whose spirit is no deceit.

Psalm 32.1-2

That's the seventh reason why I am a Christian; sin is real. The evidence for it is everywhere. I'm as guilty of it as anyone else. But thanks be to God, it is no longer counted against me - or anyone else who turns to him in repentance and faith.