What became of sin? Let’s call LGBTQIA+ movement what it is

OPINION:

This past week William E. Wolfe, former deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Defense in the Trump administration, tweeted: “The data makes [it] very clear. The continuing increase of younger generations identifying as LGBTQIA+ is an inorganic, manufactured social contagion spread by social media.”

While many of us may be at the front of the line of tens of thousands (and hopefully more) who eagerly agree with Mr. Wolfe’s characterization of what he then describes as a “nation in moral free fall,” there is one basic question we should all be asking: “Manufactured social contagion; absolutely, but why don’t we just call it what it is — sin?”

In his seminal 1973 work “Whatever Became of Sin,” Karl Menninger argued: “In all the laments and reproaches made by our seers, one misses any mention of sin. … It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but now rarely, if ever, [is it] heard. … Is it only that someone may be stupid, sick, or criminal? Wrong things are being done … but is no one responsible. … Has no one committed any sins?”

Menninger then went on to ask: “Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it? Is nothing now a sin? The very word ’sin’ seems to have disappeared. It was a proud word. It was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word. It described a central point in every civilized human being’s life plan and lifestyle. But the word went away. It has almost disappeared — the word, along with the notion. Why? Doesn’t anyone sin anymore? Doesn’t anyone believe in sin?”

Frederic Fox of Princeton University once lamented: “Republicans now refer to the problems of ’pride’ and ’self-righteousness.’ The Democrats refer to ’shortcomings.’ But none use the grand old sweeping concept of sin. [Can you] imagine a modern president beating his breast on behalf of the nation and praying, ’God be merciful to us sinners’?”

At the time of Menninger’s and Fox’s commentary, even The New Yorker seemed to agree: “We seek prestige. We seek respect. We seek credibility. We seek [affirmation, tolerance, agreement and acceptance]. … And in the course of all this seeking … our souls have withered. Day by day, we are turning into monsters. For a hundred reasons, and for no reason whatever, we are [destroying] men, women, and children … and we can’t feel a thing.”

Agreeing with The New Yorker and Fox, Menninger doubled down in posing that modern elites commit pages, nay volumes, to the misdeeds of our culture while misdiagnosing our societal pathologies. “We call them evil, disgraceful, corrupt, prejudicial, and harmful, but [never] sinful,” he said.

Referring to Webster’s Dictionary, Menninger contended that sin used to be defined “as a transgression of the law of God; disobedience of the divine will and moral [turpitude].” Sin, he said, “was once failure to realize in conduct and character the moral ideal; failure to do as one ought towards one’s fellow man.” The “wrongness of the sinful act lied not merely in its nonconformity … but in an implicitly aggressive quality — a ruthless … breaking away from God and from the rest of humanity.” Menninger declared sin was once thought to be the ultimate “act of rebellion” against God and man.

“The recent rapid decline and disappearance of the word ’sin,’” Menninger concluded, “may be a clue to the fundamental changes in the moral philosophy of our civilization. [We use] euphemisms such as ’transgressions’ and ’mistakes’ [but never mention sins].”

Are we a nation in moral freefall? Who with eyes to see and ears to hear could argue differently? Are we in the midst of a “manufactured social contagion” of our own making? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, it all boils down to one word: sin.

We are not good people. You are not, nor am I. We are all guilty. Our transgressions are not mere “oopsies.” Jonathan Edwards once made this abundantly clear. We are all “sinners in the hands of an angry God.” Or more to the point from the apostles Paul and John: “There are none righteous, no not one. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If you claim to be without sin, you make God out to be a liar, and the truth is not in you.” And finally, the “wages of all this sin is death.”

But, thanks be to God, there is a solution. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.” Or, in the simple words of John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace,” “I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior.”

• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host.