“A century ago a person may have committed adultery flagrantly and in defiance of God and man, but he would have admitted that what he was doing was a sin. What we have today is not only immoral behavior, but a loss of moral criteria.” Veith, G. E., Jr. (1994b). Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture. Crossway, p 18.

              In other words, “sin” no long carries the weight it did in the past. While sins like adultery, stealing, and so forth have been around from the earliest descendants of Adam and Eve, we live in a time when the conscience of the broader public has become so seared, that it is hardly a thought any more. Not only have individuals become numb to the guilt of sin, but a majority are losing awareness that sin exists in the first place.

              Many of us feel like this is unprecedented in our lifetimes and we are somewhat correct, but this is not truly unprecedented in history. In Biblical history, we are told of an age, in fact multiple ages of Israel’s history when everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21;25, Judges 17:6, Isaiah 5;21, Deuteronomy 12:8, Jeremiah 11:8).

              Over the past few generations in America, we lived with a consensus about many sins being wrong and deserving of public denouncement. Having a child out of wedlock, adultery, public drunkenness, and other sins were enough for someone to lose some value in their public reputation. While still treated as a person in the image of God, their sins were considered a warning sign that all was not well for them.

              Today, such sins do not produce such a response from the public at large, but are so commonplace that their acknowledgement in the public sphere produces little to no response. We have lost the criteria as a society to look upon such sins as even being sins. Loss of this mooring leads us inevitably to seeking more and more after what is right in our own eyes.

              To recover from such a loss of moral criteria, we must first discern where we went off the tracks with our beliefs, our thoughts and feelings, and our practices individually and collectively. Then we must systematically shine the light of God’s truth on them, exposing them so we can restore this public consensus.