ABSTRACT
In the area of sin and evil, the classical witness is "the wages of sin is death." 1 Everything human in us is jeopardized, for this time and all others, by life situations that make evil inevitable and by our individual and collective choices to do evil. Sinfulness has been understood in various ways. Some emphasize our collusion with dehumanizing social structures, which then turn back and attack our faithfulness; some proclaim an ontological reality that our being itself is flawed, predisposed in every instance to choose against God in a deluded attempt to choose for ourselves. In all theologies, sin presents a rival empire to God's sovereignty, with we humans and our communities occupying a border territory that receives emissaries from both powers, whose internal agents seek to move the selves between them to one loyalty or the other.
