Wages of (Social) Sin

With the recent verdict in the George Floyd case, and the British government report on race, it seems appropriate to share some thoughts on the different levels of sin, and and their social aspects. In evangelicalism especially, we concentrate on the individual and neglect the collective effects of sin. Since this is a blog, my account will necessarily be sketchy and brief. 

 

 

1.       Personal Sin: Individual sins may impact on society or community. Accounts of the Welsh Revival, for example, often cite people abandoning alcoholism and swearing as examples of social effects from conversions.

2.       Social Sin: Where a group, nation, or class, may deliberately, consciously, engage in sin. For example, slavery, colonialism, imperialism.

3.       Institutional Sin: Here sinful practices may become embedded in an institution, and apply even when the people responsible have left; these may also be unconscious, procedures operated by actors who at personal level may not agree with those values. The existence of these, and many of the following levels, will be revealed in effects and outcomes. For example, institutional racism: a teacher may not hold any racial prejudices, but work in a school, which has practices resulting in worse outcomes for certain racial groups.

4.       Systemic Sin: This is a deeper than (3), whereby values and practices in a whole sector of society may embed or entrench. So, rather than an individual school or police force, the entire sector may express racism. It’s important to stress this may again occur separately from any particular person’s consciousness. Hence the concept of unconscious bias.

5.       Structural Sin: Sin may, through injustice, capture an entire social structure, and thereby shape an institution within it. This may be a nation, class, or capitalism per se, as a socio-economic formation.

6.       Principalities and Powers:  Not specifically human sin; but we give them power through our sin, and then become enslaved, entrapped, determined by them. These are spiritual forces which inhabit human structures, invited in through our cooperation.

There is not space to detail how we deal with these. Naturally, repentance is important; but this must be collective as well as individual, recognising the social nature of sin. As we realise that, personally, we need to enter a process of sanctification, so, at societal level, we need process to actualise spiritual repentance. Too often we have ceremonies of repentance and forgiveness which change nothing.

So we need action. For example, laws and institutional change, to operationalise transformation. So, we don’t just enjoin people to be nice, we also enforce laws against murder, for instance. Similarly, we need structural change, because even good individuals lack the strength to change systems on their own, but are spiritually formed, discipled, by them.

In addition, there is an ongoing ideological or educational struggle, to take every thought captive to Jesus Christ. The difference between demons and the powers, is that the former can be cast out, through deliverance ministry, but the latter must be wrestled – a long, drawn-out, very personal, combat. Spiritual warfare is political.