We Are All a Part

Something often unrecognized, ignored, or overlooked in Evangelical circles is the idea of structural or social sin, and I've been thinking about it a lot these days. We like to emphasize personal responsibility and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. These are good things, of course, but there is also a lot to be said about God relating to us as a society, community, etc.

Corporations, in the US, have all the legal rights and privileges of a person, which is completely separate from the persons that form it. I do not agree with granting Starbucks, McDonalds, or any other corporation the same rights as human beings, but it does highlight the fact that a group is more than the sum of its parts. Certainly, Starbucks or McDonalds does have a distinct "personality" that may or may not be related to the personalities of the people that govern it. There is something much bigger that is created, and to boil down the morality of such a group's actions to "personal responsibility" would be ignoring the larger forces at work. Of course, the same is true of communities, churches, governments, etc.

However, in recent weeks my thoughts have not been so much about what structural sin is or how to explain it. I have been thinking much more about the people who already recognize the realities of social sin. I have seen more than one person take so much "personal responsibility" in the evils of the larger group of which he/she is a part, that its weight is crushing. The guilt of participation in these systematic problems and the inability to escape/change them are crippling. Certainly, I battle the same tendencies myself.

I have come to see that, just like we need the Grace of God to save us from the overwhelming guilt of individual sin, so also we need His grace and forgiveness to save us from the guilt of the systematic evil of which we are all a part.