Most agree with Romans 3:23, but disagree on what to do about it.
(By Bob Smietana, Christianity Today). America is full of sinners—and most of them want to mend their ways.
Two-thirds of Americans (67%) say they are sinners, according to a new study from LifeWay Research. Most people aren’t too happy about it—only 5 percent say they’re fine with being sinners.
As America becomes more secular, the idea of sin still rings true, said Scott McConnell, executive director of the Nashville-based group. “Almost nobody wants to be a sinner.”
The survey question about sin was inspired in part by an exchange McConnell witnessed on his way to a Nashville Predators hockey game. A religious group of protesters began preaching at people on the street outside the hockey arena, calling them sinners, he said. That led a few people in the crowd to embrace the title with enthusiasm.
“I wondered how many people really think of themselves as sinners,” said McConnell.
Diverse responses to sin
Americans tend to fall into three categories when it comes to sin, according to LifeWay Research’s representative survey of 1,000 Americans.
A third (34%) of Americans say they are sinners and are working on being less sinful, while a quarter (28%) say they are sinners and rely on Jesus to overcome their sin. Meanwhile, 1 in 10 Americans say sin doesn’t exist (10%) or that they are not sinners (8%), while a larger share (15%) prefer not to say if they are sinners at all. Only 1 in 20 is fine with being sinners (5%).
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Before the events of the past weekend, the institutional PCUSA had, and will continue I am sure to expend vast amounts of time and energy on getting whites in general, in a 95% white denomination, to admit their complicity in structural and systemic racism. But rather than take a Biblical or Reformed approach on the matter of individual sin in this regard, and the need for individual transformation by prayer and conviction into confession of sin, then release and transformation. The PCUSA chose to adopt a secular model of corporate guilt by either association or skin type. That the fact of birth as either this or that, that one is guilty of a corporate sin by matter of skin type or culture. And rather than employ the Biblical model of the need for personal regeneration and release from sin, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The PCUSA chose to employ book tours, guilt narratives, victimization mythologies, in an attempt to shame people into some form of confession of racial sin, and if that was not sufficient some form of re-education camps and conferences, which is what their NEXT, DisGraced annual gathering is by and large. Again that played well with their base in academia, denominational employees, campus activists, and the new Left. Who remain the real and only consumers of their product.
Though this is to be expected, for the PCUSA and most if not all of liberal Protestantism, Sin, by and large is either a myth or a relic of a faith of dead old males. Sin, as a personal vice or issue, really does not exist or apply, especially to matters of sex, sexual behaviors, and or other so called private matters of abortion, euthanasia, suicide by choice, or some implied right to such services. Why should one expect them or anybody else to take Sin as anything else other than some personal flaw or imperfection solved by an episode of Dr .Phil or Oprah .