The American Aversion to "Sin"

...Tthere is a strong tendency for powerful or self-satisfied people individually to delude themselves into thinking that they don’t sin. Little people sin – poor people, underemployed people, wage earners, the perennially ill, the psychologically warped – but powerful people, winners, the truly successful, don’t sin. Sin is for losers. Righteousness, and perhaps even rightness, and an honorable reputation, are for winners.

Race, Rights and Six White Women

I should have preached this sermon last Sunday. But frankly, I did not fully appreciate last Sunday how upset millions of black Americans were because of the George Zimmerman verdict. Only in reading some of the extended newspaper and magazine accounts of the trial and its aftermath and listening to some of the blacks interviewed on television did I begin to see and feel how alarmed and frightened many in the American black community are because of the jury’s decision.

The American Proclivity for Puritanism

The impetus toward purity is an excellent one. It results in much that is good and honorable. But the search for purity can become puritanical, and, as Mr. Shakespeare said, Aye, there’s the rub. Striving for righteousness can lead to self-righteousness and arrogance and overconfidence. It can cause us to elevate ourselves in our own minds.