Sin

The term sin may initially appear as anachronistic in the 21st century, yet some observers consider it disturbingly relevant. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, once responded to an inquiry regarding the notion of sin by insisting on its relevancy beyond the theological. Its impact and effects are what provide its clearest definition. The emergence of the human and social sciences, especially within the 20th century, provides a framework from which to recognize and study the kinds of variances in human nature that result in a broad continuum of destructive dispositions and behaviors forever repeating in all human lives. Jung suggested that tendencies toward destructiveness are endemic within individual and collective human personality across time and cultures. This entry explores sin as an inevitable human fact and perplexing mystery, personal and social patterns of living that breed pathology, the religious question of theodicy, and the nature of human nature in a new human situation.

Twentieth-century theologian Paul Tillich concurred with Jung’s assessment that there is a fundamental estrangement from one’s essence that is an inevitable fact of birth. Tillich suggested that threats to self-actualization or realization are so tied to daily existence that the human birthright, so to speak, is riddled with existential anxiety that produces estranged behaviors in all humans. Jung once opined that sin is nolens volens (Latin, willing or not) mingled with our daily bread. Thus, all human beings fall prey to the lures of iniquity. In his Letter to the Romans (Rom. 7:15–20), St. Paul captured the perplexing dilemma that confounds human beings, irrespective of religious tradition and culture: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me . . . I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want I do.”

In life, innocent people suffer. At times, the guilty go free. Justice does not naturally prevail. Such strife seems to be prevalent in human development and passed from generation to generation. Fear, guilt, despair, estrangement, anxiety, and violence seem to be as much part of the human saga as the experience of loving relationships, joy, interpersonal and social harmony, respect, creativity, physical and emotional security, and hope. Becoming entangled in negative patterns of living necessarily results in a dislocation from loving, right, just, and reciprocal relationships. Tendencies toward self-justification follow, often preventing sinners from seeing the light of critical self-examination that might lead to change of attitude and heart. Sin pushes a person egocentrically inward, spiritually backward, and ultimately deathward, which is the real meaning of the term mortal sin.

Every human being is born into this complex human predicament and shares its strife. No one escapes it. Such describes the markers of the origins of sin in human midst over against the gifts of more graceful experiences that also mark the human journey of a life span lived to the full. The world is riddled with an abundance of shaping traditions, political systems, and social structures that have given birth to racial, religious, sexual, social, economic, and geopolitical forms of prejudice and exploitation. If we do not address the root causes of these distortions, we become accomplices to their continuance. Such is the stuff from which sin is spun.

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