Theologia et Vita

  We tend to reserve the word sin for things loud enough to scandalize us. Murder. Adultery. Theft. Drunkenness. Apostasy. But there is another class of sins that can sit quite comfortably in a church pew: impatience, envy, resentment, ingratitude, self-pity, gossip, loveless criticism, subtle pride, discontent, and the anxious insistence on controlling what God has not put in our hands. These are sometimes called “respectable sins,” not because Scripture regards them lightly, but because we do. Their earthly consequences are not all equal, certainly, but they share the same ugly anatomy: a heart failing to love God and neighbor as it ought. Beeke and Smalley put their finger on the problem: “We are often more concerned about sin’s consequences for ourselves than its offense to God.”¹ Cornelius Plantinga approaches the same reality from another angle. Sin, he argues, is “culpable shalom-breaking,” the guilty vandalizing of the order, flourishing, communion, and peace God loves.² ...