A Christian Hamartiology for a Modern Context
The hyper-individualism of modern capitalism shirks our collective responsibility—the obligation we have toward one another as siblings and neighbors in a shared, created existence—by placing the burden of responsibility on the individual rather than on the fraternity of systems by which experience itself is constructed. For example, homelessness is seen as the fault of the homeless, not as the shared fault of those who benefit from the exploitation of poverty for the accumulation of wealth. Similarly, disability is treated as the problem of the "disabled"—to be resolved through assimilation—rather than as the result of a hegemonic and disabling ableism. In other words, sin is understood as the antecedent of personal guilt, perpetrated by an individual, rather than as the moral condition of dehumanized social and moral existence, of which we are all made victims and from which we are to be liberated to repentance by divine grace. (Repentance must too be understood properly—no...