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Jesus Christ is our first and only sure redeemer from sin, a lifeline who saves us from ourselves. Evangelism, then, is an essential and potent way of addressing our problem with sin. However, even this strategy may disappoint. People continue to sin after they've become disciples of Christ. Evangelism does not eliminate hypocrisy, but creates the possibility for it!

And the Fall's effects extend beyond individuals to the entire creation. The very social structures we inhabit have been corrupted. "The particular social situation in which we involuntarily find ourselves—including the political and economic system, our intellectual and family background, even the geographical location in which we were born—inevitably contributes to evil conditions and in some instances makes sin unavoidable," Millard Erickson writes in his Systematic Theology. "Sin is an element of the present social structure from which the individual cannot escape."

Some structures, such as Illinois state government, evidence more corruption than others. So they regularly churn out spectacular sins. Any successful effort to reform government, then, will account for both the individual and social effects of sin. These efforts will resist the temptation of seeing any particular leader as a messiah untarnished by sin. And they will recognize that concentrating power in the hands of any one leader will make him or her more vulnerable to sin.

So far, it appears that Illinois will not learn this lesson. Fellow politicians and media commentators have labeled Blagojevich "crazy," writing him off as a delusional oddity. Crazy he may be, but Blagojevich is no isolated case. As they say, original sin is the easiest doctrine to prove, because the empirical evidence is overwhelming.

Collin Hansen is a CT editor at large and author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists.

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December (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 53