"For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch making. But at length we have discovered that to be free in this sense, that is, to have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost. The danger is, I believe, betokened by the widespread interest in existentialism, which we are presently witnessing."
It was about 50 years ago when a former president of American Psychological Association penned these words. He was Hobart Mowrer, who was also professor of psychology at both Harvard and Yale. His reflections on the signs of the times at the dawn of what many historians in the West later decided to call as the decade of protests, the 1960s, must be heeded today, most particularly in reference to a still growing unpopularity of the notion of sin in this so-called postmodern world. "In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free," Mowrer said, "we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity, and with neurotics, themselves, we find ourselves asking, 'Who am I, what is my deepest destiny, what does living mean?'"
One need not go somewhere else to verify the fact that what Mowrer wanted to convey is indeed the case. All we have to do to prove the verifiability of his message is to first look at ourselves before we point our finger to those whom we call as immoral like the Roman Catholic priests and bishops who have been accused of sexual scandals right in their own parishes, not to mention their Protestant counterparts. We have become too sophisticated and have somehow overly educated ourselves that we have developed various schemes to cover up our own sinfulness, those priests and bishops included. Many times over, we normally default to playing the blame game when it's about time for us to face the ramifications of our wrongdoings.
As the English-Canadian singer and comedian Anna Russell said (whose words Mowrer did not hesitate to quote):
At three I had a feeling of
Ambivalence toward my brothers,
And so it follows naturally I poisoned all my lovers.
But now I'm happy I have learned
The lesson this has taught,
That everything I do that's wrong
Is someone else's fault.
Mowrer, however, was simply echoing the Judeo-Christian diagnosis of the real state of the human heart, though he would most likely prefer not to associate himself with this faith. As somebody has stated it rather simply, the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. Not until we admit that everything that is wrong in and with the world begins with us, all our efforts combined together to make the world a better place will offer no lasting solution to whatever is wrong in and with the world.
According to the Judeo-Christian worldview, measured against the very nature and character of the holy, just and righteous God, the human heart is morally and spiritually bankrupt. Theologians have called it the doctrine of human depravity which has everything to do not with man's estimation of man but rather with God's estimation of man. That is to say, the standard by which we must measure ourselves, according to the Bible, is God Himself. "For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
The Bible even pushes the issue much deeper when it said that every human being is not only sick with a dreaded disease but is in fact dead because of sin (Ephesians 2:1-2). According to the Christian gospel, the only solution to such a dilemma is for God Himself to act in grace to make it possible to bring man back to life again, which in Christian theology is called regeneration. It was made possible by what the Lenten season seeks commemorate year in and year out, when the Son of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross, and three days thereafter conquered death, hell and the grave when He rose from the dead. It is for this reason that the Bible has been able to proclaim, "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
References:
Mowrer, Hobart. "Sin, the Lesser of Two Evils" in American Psychologist, 15 (1960): 301-304.
Zacharias, Ravi. Can Man Live Without God. Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, 1994.
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