We live in an age of 'political correctness' - speaking or acting in such a way as to make sure no one people group is offended. Everyone is so sensitive these days! Of course, we Christians do not want to offend a brother or sister, but sometimes we avoid offense at the expense of truth. We need to confront sin and we need to confront bad theology... we need to speak the truth, and we need to speak it in love.
Listen to these words from Bishop J.C. Ryle on 'sin'. It is amazing that he wrote these more than 100 years ago. If I didn't know that, I would have thought he wrote them yesterday. How timely they are:
A scriptural view of sin is one of the best antidotes to the extravagantly broad and liberal theology which is so much in vogue at the present time. The tendency of modern thought is to reject dogmas, creeds, and every kind of bounds in religion. It is thought grand and wise to condemn no opinion whatsoever, and to pronounce all earnest and clever teachers to be trustworthy, however heterogeneous and mutually destructive their opinions may be. Everything…is true, and nothing is false! Everybody is right, and nobody is wrong! Everybody is likely to be saved, and nobody is to be lost! The atonement and substitution of Christ, the personality of the devil, the miraculous element in the Scripture, the reality and eternity of future punishment, all these mighty foundation-stones are coolly tossed overboard, like lumber, in order to lighten the ship of Christianity, and enable it to keep pace with modern science. Stand up for these great verities, and you are called narrow, illiberal, old-fashioned, and a theological fossil! I know nothing so likely to counteract this modern plague as constant clear statements about the nature, reality, vileness, power and guilt of sin.
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