Judging by the headlines in the press over the last weeks, the world seems ready to have a discussion about sin.
There has been absurd criminality, repeated institutional dysfunction, corruption scandals, administrative negligence with serious consequences, political cynicism, abuse in various forms, and a general crisis of trust. All of these issues cannot be explained away as mere accidents or “a few isolated cases”. What we are seeing is a pattern. But what is the best way to capture its outline?
Corruption
Whether we are talking about administrative, professional, economic, physical, or spiritual power, its distortions are impossible to ignore: people and institutions that, instead of protecting, sometimes end up hurting; systems designed to serve the public interest, but which end up undermining it; mechanisms created for the common good, but which are captured by private interests. In all these situations, it is the vulnerable, whether children, patients, employees, citizens, or believers, who bear the consequences.
Abuse is one of the most shocking symptoms of this phenomenon, and the public reaction shows how deeply concerned we are about its legal, social, and institutional implications. We speak out—and rightly so!—about accountability, funding, training, procedures, and organisational culture. We discuss how victims become invisible and how perpetrators often manage to operate without real accountability. However, all of this, important though it is, only captures the visible part of the problem.
From a Christian perspective, the reality that we today call “abuse”, “corruption”, “neglect”, “malice”, or “systemic cynicism” is just one manifestation of a much older fracture: sin as a fundamental distortion of human nature, and as a force that shapes systems, institutions, and cultures.
Sin versus sin
In the Protestant environment, two attitudes towards sin are fighting for dominance.
On the one hand, there is a tendency to use the term “sin” with excessive caution, as if merely mentioning it could propel us into a realm of intolerance, rigidity, or moralism. Those who adopt this attitude rarely speak of sin, considering it too loaded a word for the public sphere, and associating it more with prejudice and outdated religious eras. For them, sin is a concept that we should distance ourselves from, replacing it with “more neutral” terms such as: “error”, “dysfunction”, “trauma”, “maladjustment”, or “social conditioning”. From this perspective, evil must be understood and managed almost exclusively in psychological, therapeutic, or sociological terms.
On the other hand, there is another attitude, equally present, that falls into the opposite extreme: sin is often invoked and diffuse theological guilt becomes strictly accounted for in moral terms. Any visible deviation is pointed out, dividing people into those who respect external norms and those who do not. Sin thus becomes a label that is quickly applied, a social and moral stigma that is used more to correct external behaviour than to reveal the deep reality of the heart. In this paradigm, sin is reduced to a list of prohibitions and the goal is conformity, not healing or changing the heart.
Neither of these two attitudes succeeds in addressing the essence of the problem, of course.
The first circumvents the real severity of sin, reducing it to a psychological dysfunction that can be resolved through therapy. The second reduces it to moralism and behavioural surveillance, losing sight of its spiritual, universal, and systemic dimension.
So, what is sin?
In reality, sin is deeper and more serious than either side realises: it is an objective reality—a fundamental moral fracture that lies at the root of errors, dysfunctions, traumas, and maladjustment. It is a force that distorts desires, emotions, relationships, and social structures, and it cannot be limited only to what we do, to intentional behaviours; it also encompasses a certain kind of inner deformation that we perpetuate, sometimes without even knowing it.
In this second paradigm, sin is the cause that distorts our collective reflexes, institutions, systems, and cultures. This is why, when discussing abuse, adopting only psychological language is insufficient, although it is indispensable for healing wounds. We also need theological language because only this captures evil’s invasive dimension: the way it infiltrates systems, becomes normalised, camouflages itself in traditions, is passed down from generation to generation, and ends up seeming inevitable.
Only a theology of sin that recognises the personal, collective, and structural complexity of evil can convincingly argue that it is not simply an accumulation of psychological misunderstandings, but a moral disease of society as a whole. This moral disease cannot be solved through management and reform, but rather through redemption in a spiritual sense.
How does sin change us?
When trying to understand how contemporary society is changing, we are tempted to look directly at the shocking events: political conflicts, scandals, and crises. We treat these events as self-sufficient phenomena, as if they contained within themselves the reason why they occurred. In reality, however, these events are symptoms of much more subtle societal changes affecting our perceptions, sensitivities, desires, and our relationship to good and evil.
One of the first signs of these changes is the emergence of silent domestic nihilism, evident in our tendency to live without seeking meaning, even though we don’t openly proclaim its loss. Activities become transactional, goals are negotiated on the fly, and motivation is consumed more quickly than ever before. Rather than confronting the big questions, we become comfortable with avoiding them, creating an existential void that manifests as indifference and is therefore difficult to detect.
The fragmentation of identity is equally telling. The tension between flexibility and performance pushes many to compartmentalise their lives, with each compartment communicating less and less with the others. The self becomes a collection of temporary roles—professional, social, and digital—each with its own expectations and reflexes. This shapes a modular identity that is effective for navigating the world but unstable as a moral foundation. Inner continuity, once a natural benchmark, is increasingly being replaced by continuous adaptability, which is valued for its usefulness rather than its coherence.
At the same time, isolation takes on new forms in a hyperconnected culture, because platforms that promise closeness paradoxically create spaces where presence is easy but involvement can only ever be superficial. People share fragments of their lives without ever truly connecting, and this masked distance produces a diffuse but persistent loneliness.
On another level, the culture of subtle addictions not only reshapes our behaviour, but also the way we think. While we are aware of the risks associated with substances, we are much less aware of the risks of becoming addicted to continuous stimulation through constant information overload, fast entertainment, and the impulse to avoid any empty gaps in our time. This constant stimulation reduces the time available for slow reflection, which is essential for forming moral judgements. As we have become accustomed to immediate reactions, the process of deliberation slows down until it becomes a rarity.
At the same time, a form of normalised self-harm is emerging. This is a culture of boundless self-demand, characterised by overloaded schedules, insufficient rest, self-irony that masks deprecation, and ambition that easily overlooks fragility. These practices are so widespread that they are no longer perceived as signs of moral exhaustion, but rather as the price, albeit a steep one, of a competitive society.
When viewed as a whole, this process appears to be a rapid reconfiguration of values and a redistribution of moral prestige. Behaviours once considered expressions of integrity are now seen as rigidities, while gestures once met with restraint are gaining unexpected legitimacy. While this change is less spectacular than technological or social transformations, over time it produces seismic effects, creating disorientation: people no longer clearly know whether the transformations they observe are a step forward or a form of degradation adapted to the times.
This confusion, only visible through accumulation, erodes the ability to distinguish clearly what good truly looks like.
What solutions are being put forward?
One constant promise of modern culture is that if we innovate technologically and socially enough, we will be able to correct the fundamental flaws of human nature.
It is a seductive promise, fuelled by the real progress we see in medicine, communication, and everything that makes life more efficient. However, when we look closely, we see that spectacular changes in the world do not produce equivalent transformations within people. Technical advances may change circumstances, but motivations remain untouched regardless of the level of progress we achieve.
Techno-progress
This is probably most noticeable in technology today. Nowadays, almost every emotion can be measured; we monitor our every step and have numerous tools to help us progress by turning our habits into data. We have tools that promise self-control, self-awareness, and self-improvement. Yet inner conflicts remain unchanged in nature; people still struggle with envy, anger, and uncontrollable impulses and desires that distract or harm them or others. Technology can explain, track, and anticipate these impulses. However, it lacks the ability to transform them. Essentially, all it can do is reveal an inner landscape that remains as challenging to navigate as ever.
Reform to a certain extent
Social reforms have real but limited power. Laws can limit certain behaviours and encourage others, creating the environment necessary for civil coexistence and reducing the impact of our most violent instincts. However, legislation is limited in its ability to create the moral willingness that gives relationships deep cohesion. While the law can certainly influence our actions, it will never be able to redirect our intentions. This asymmetry is evident in every society: although norms are increasingly well calibrated, they fail to prevent the manifestation of desires that lie deep within the individual. At best, they can restrain behaviour, but only to a certain extent.
The paradox of prosperity
Another type of limitation paradoxically comes from prosperity. In theory, comfort should provide the ideal environment for virtue, offering time, stability, and security. In practice, however, prosperity often reveals how surprisingly ill-equipped the heart is for peace. Those who have the resources to live without constraints may find that abundance does not necessarily make them more generous or balanced, but rather makes their own anxieties more evident. The inner emptiness, once masked by the struggle to survive, becomes much clearer when there is no longer a lack of anything.
This all suggests the same thing: although progress can change almost everything on the outside, it remains incapable of changing what motivates moral choices. Technology manages behaviour, legislation orders society, and prosperity provides comfort. However, none of these can regenerate the will in such a way as to produce consistent goodness for oneself and others, or to build moral character. In fact, the more efficient the world becomes, the clearer it becomes that we cannot achieve what we sometimes too lightly call “transformation” through human effort alone. From this perspective, the Christian message offers a personalised diagnosis of human limitations.
Christianity affirms precisely what modernity avoids admitting: that profound moral transformation does not result from optimising external conditions, but from a change that originates from a source that cannot be manufactured, programmed or legislated.
The inner dynamics that sabotage us
Some people do everything “by the book”: they don’t lie, cheat, or bother anyone. However, in Saving God, Mark Johnston wrote that “respectability” is a psychological compromise; it helps us to suppress the voices that guard the boundaries of conventional goodness, whether they are the people around us or the stern voice we have all internalised. In other words, if we do things the “right” way we know we will be left alone.
The real cost of this way of life, which Johnston calls “the triumph of moral effort over self-will,” is a massive loss in virtues such as flexibility, openness, self-directed irony, and an appreciation of the festive character of life. Even the most generous or moderate virtuous individual still operates with the self at the centre of their world. It is no coincidence that Johnston evokes the figure of Luther the monk, before his discovery of grace, as an example of “grim and idolatrous” religiosity, fixated on its own merit and devoid of humour.
We need to recognise that while respectability and the cultivation of ordinary virtues produce quality people, neither can produce individuals who are liberated from the focus on themselves. Yet people are so deeply self-centred (“incurvatus in se”, as Luther said) that we even exploit God for our own benefit. Therefore, true ethical life must result from something other than the natural continuation of a decent life. If human nature is so “inclined towards itself,” then neither autonomous morality, nor discipline, nor a good upbringing will be enough to free us from the gravitational pull of the self. Ethics requires a revolutionary transformation of the individual, not merely a cosmetic change in behaviour. If the source of the problem is within us, then the solution cannot come from there either. Transformation requires an initial impetus that we cannot provide ourselves. Christianity places this beginning in God’s initiative, which comes to humanity precisely when it cannot help itself.
How do we rise?
The current culture, infused with meritocracy, teaches us that progress is the sum of our efforts. However, Christianity radically contradicts this philosophy, instead postulating that real moral progress begins when our efforts reach the limits of our powerlessness.
In other words, progress does not depend on us exercising our spiritual muscles until they become so strong that it becomes easy to do what we know is right. To progress, we need grace, which manifests itself first of all through an awareness of the limits of our efforts.
We realise that we cannot love “with all our mind” simply by deciding to do so, that we cannot be fully available to others through education and principles alone, and that we cannot escape the gravitational pull of the self through willpower alone. It is in this state of spiritual vulnerability, often referred to as “repentance”, that we are most ready to be transformed if we open ourselves to God.
However, many of us are confused because we think that religious truths are like regular information: we hear them, learn them, and apply them to see progress. Yet it is no coincidence that spiritual life is likened to birth. Births are painful and slow, involving a succession of progress and regression that nevertheless form part of the “dance” of bringing a human being into the world.
In other words, understanding that we have made a mistake does not automatically prompt us to change. When we realise we have made a mistake, it is similar to the structural tension experienced by a building. It would be pointless to put up a sign saying “Do not lean to the east” if the building actually needed to be rebuilt. God’s role in our transformation is to perform the miracle of enabling us to do good when we were once unable to do so.
The only safe place
In order to be transformed, we must first receive the forgiveness that has been prepared for us even before the creation of the world. Why? Because forgiveness has the power to lift the veil of shame created by all the wrongs we have committed. When our soul is no longer dominated by shame, but instead feels completely loved, we have the opportunity to truly learn, supported by God.
Our critical inner voice becomes quieter, and we no longer define ourselves by our failures or imperfections because we know that we are unconditionally loved. The identity that God offers us when we turn our soul’s gaze towards Him—that of His children—does not change according to our successes or failures. This allows us to stop living defensively.
God meets us in our failures, not to condemn us, but to teach and heal us. Becoming friends with Him gradually transforms us, building in us a real concern for the well-being of others. We become more attentive to their needs, more inclined to help without calculating the opportunity cost, more likely to empathise in situations that once left us indifferent, and more aware of impulses of generosity, calmness, and patience that do not seem to come from us.
However, paradoxically, after we draw closer to God, things seem to get worse: we experience more inner conflict, guilt, and vulnerability. It’s part of the process. The change that God brings to our lives requires us to confront the issues within us. Complete healing first requires the wound to be exposed. This paradox—the fact that the struggle intensifies precisely after drawing closer to God—is a sign that grace is not acting on the surface, but entering areas to which our will has never had access. The inner evil that we thought we had conquered begins to show itself because it can finally be brought to light. Therefore, when sensitivity, tension, and awareness of our limitations increase, this is not proof that God has withdrawn, but that He is drawing near.
At the edge of possibility
If we look closely, the connection with what is happening in the world becomes clear. The problems we see in institutions are the visible effects of distortions that first exist in people. Abuse, corruption, cynicism, and indifference all stem from the same source: a way of life in which personal gain takes precedence over the well-being of others. The world we see portrayed in the media is, essentially, an extension of the human nature we have been discussing.
No society can be more righteous than the people who make it up. And people do not become righteous through external coercion, but through a simultaneity planned in Heaven between the disarmament produced by the encounter with Truth and the reconstruction from within initiated by grace.
Therefore, demanding impeccable institutions in a culture where individuals fail to regulate their own moral impulses is clinging to a comfortable illusion. The reconstruction of a society marked by its moral flaws must begin at an individual level, not at the level of commissions, strategies, or institutional architectures. However modest it may seem, the transformation of a single person inevitably shapes their immediate surroundings. This type of change is slow, granular, and almost invisible at first, but it is the only one that truly shifts the boundaries of what is possible over time.
