The "The Problem Is Sin" Problem

​By David Barr
With football coach Dabo Swinney in the news so much due to Clemson's victory in the national championship game earlier this month, I was reminded of the time he was asked his opinion of football players kneeling during the national anthem to protest racist police violence. As part of his answer, he blamed the problem of police shootings on the moral failures of individual cops. He said, “It’s so easy to say we have a race problem, but we got a sin problem.”
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Swinney is not alone in thinking this way. Christians, especially evangelicals, often explain problems like poverty, violence, and prejudice in terms of sin, rather than attributing these specific problems to specific causes that we might address. I regularly hear people say things like, “The problem isn’t X; it’s sin.” 

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