Perhaps it is a deep-seated reluctance to face up to the gravity of sin that has led to its omission from the vocabulary of many of our contemporaries. One acute observer of the human condition, who has noticed the disappearance of the word, is the American psychiatrist Karl Menninger. He was written about it in his book Whatever Became of Sin? Describing the malaise of western society, its general mood of gloom and doom, he adds that “one misses any mention of ‘sin.’” “It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but is now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean,” he asks, “that no sin is involved in all our troubles. . .? Has no one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?” Enquiring into the causes of sin’s disappearance, Menninger notes first that “many former sins have become crimes,” so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman, while others have dissipated into sicknesses, or at least into symptoms of sickness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced by treatment. A third convenient device called “collective irresponsibility” has enabled us to transfer blame for some of our deviant behavior from ourselves as individuals to society as a whole or to one of its many groupings. 

   Dr. Menninger goes on to plead not only for the reinstatement of the word sin in our vocabulary but also for a recognition of the reality which the word expresses. Sin cannot be dismissed as merely a cultural taboo or social blunder. It must be taken seriously. He takes preachers to task for soft-pedaling it, and adds, “The clergyman cannot minimize sin and maintain his proper role in our culture.” For sin is “an implicitly aggressive quality—a ruthlessness, a hurting, a breaking away from God and from the rest of humanity, a partial alienation, or act of rebellion. . . Sin has a willful, defiant or disloyal quality: someone is defied or offended or hurt.” To ignore this would be dishonest. To confess it would enable us to do something about it. Moreover, the reinstatement of sin would lead inevitably to “the revival or reassertion of personal responsibility.” In fact, the “usefulness” of reviving sin is that responsibility would be revived with it.  

The Cross of Christ - John Stott