This article is a continuation of the Biblical Anthropology series. You’ll for sure want to read the previous article, The Serpent’s Temptation (Leaving Genesis 1 & 2 Behind).
Karl Menninger was a well-known psychiatrist of the last century. To this day, the clinic that he founded is world-famous.
In 1930, Menninger did an interview which was later turned into a book, entitled “From Sin To Psychiatry”. After a section in which he mocks the encounters that Jesus had with demons, and with the concept of original sin, he says:
All of these theories which we have been discussing are now being replaced by science – a science called mental hygiene or psychiatry … Mental hygiene or psychiatry assumes that the distress of a personality struggling with an environment is simply struggle and not a matter of devils and witches, sin and “oneriness” or yet a matter or feeble-mindedness or feeble will.
Karl Menninger (1930)
In other words, what we used to call “sin” is simply a struggle with our environment. It’s neither good nor bad.
But the reality is that in the Bible, evil, sin and guilt are more real than our culture is generally willing to admit. Let’s take a look:
If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.
Genesis 4:7
Sin is a beast that wants to destroy us.
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
John 8:34
Jesus taught that sin is a tyrant which enslaves us.
More than that, sin leads to death.
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…
Romans 5:12
For the wages of sin is death…
Romans 6:23
Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
James 1:15
“And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, Thus have you said: ‘Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How then can we live?’
Ezekiel 33:10
Even what we consider to be our “good works” end up being sinful in their essence. Maybe, deep down, we do them partly for selfish reasons. Or from pride.
We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
Isaiah 64:6
From the books of the Law, we learn that sin leads to guilt. Guilt, according to the Bible, is not simply a feeling, or a mental illness. It’s an offense before God. It’s an actual debt to Him – He has a case against us. And so sin must be “expiated”, it must be pardoned. If not, punishment is its result.
In short, God justly punishes sin. Death is not simply a natural consequence. God actively punishes sin.
For our transgressions are multiplied before you,
and our sins testify against us;
for our transgressions are with us,
and we know our iniquities…
Isaiah 59:12
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
Psalm 90:8-9
The face of the LORD is against those who do evil,
to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
Psalm 34:16
Be assured, an evil person will not go unpunished…
Proverbs 11:21
And this might be a surprise for some, but yes, there are “big sins” and “bigger sins” – but we’ll admit that any sin against the God of the Universe is not “little”. As James wrote: “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). And Habakkuk says of God – “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (Habakkukk 1:13).
Every sin, “large or small”, is an ugly, disgusting, rotting offense to God.
The Bible says this about the unbelievers who reject God during the Great Tribulation:
…he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
Revelation 14:10
Yes, the final book of the Bible tells us about the wicked suffering the torment of fire – in the presence of Jesus Christ Himself.
Surely taking a bite of forbidden fruit doesn’t seem like a great evil to us. And yet it was enough to plunge the world into a sea of death. Why? Because it was an offense against the Creator, the King of the Universe.
And so, humanity began its Great Universal Project. It is our answer to what God’s Word says about our sin. And I’ll tell you all about it in the next installment.
