Respectable Sins: Confronting The Sins We Tolerate by Jerry Bridges is about sin — not the obvious sins of our culture but the subtle sins of the believers, the target audience of this book. It’s also a book I love to hate because I struggle with some of the sins discussed in the book.
In the preface of the book, Jerry states “that those of us whom I call conservative evangelicals may have become so preoccupied with some of the major sins of society around us that we have lost sight of the need to deal with our own more “refined” or subtle sins.”
Here’s the list of sins by chapter in the book. Which ones apply to you?
- Ungodliness
- Anxiety and Frustration
- Discontentment
- Unthankfulness
- Pride
- Selfishness
- Lack of Self-Control
- Impatience and Irritability
- Anger
- The Weeds of Anger
- Resentment
- Bitterness
- Enmity and Hostility
- Grudge
- Strife
- Judgmentalism
- Envy, Jealousy, and Related Sins
- Competitiveness
- Controlling
- Sins of the Tongue
- Gossip
- Lying
- Slander
- Critical Speech
- Harsh Words
- Insults
- Sarcasm
- Ridicule
- Any speech that tends to tear down another person
- Profanity or Obscene Speech
- Worldliness
- Money
- Immorality
- Idolatry
- Preoccupation with the things of this temporal world
- Accepting and going along with the values and practices of society around us without discerning if they are biblical