Are you bored with visiting the same old Web sites day after day? Have you been searching for something truly interesting and clever on the Internet?

Look no further! The Malaysian office of advertising agency Young and Rubicam has developed something truly unique with their promotional Web site savethewords.org. This unusual site is part of the ad campaign for the Oxford English Dictionary in Malaysia and Singapore, according to a recent story on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

Host Robert Siegel begins the NPR story with this explanation:

"The homepage is a patchwork of signs and labels, each one displaying a single word. Not just any word: obscure words, words in such disuse that they have been bounced from the dictionaries."

He gave examples of words we may not need anymore like squiriferous (the qualities of a gentleman) and frutescent (the qualities of shrub).

"These old, endangered words, and there are dozens like them, are on the savethewords.org website, where they are available for adoption. You sign up for a word, and you promise to use it in conversation and correspondence as frequently as possible."

Unfortunately for our society, there is one small, three-letter word that is thought to have fallen into the category of "old, endangered words" ready for retirement: sin.

No social context

Why has the word "sin" fallen into a group of forgotten words that we rarely hear? The answer is very simply that society has chosen to ignore its meaning and importance. There is no longer a social context for understanding what sin is.

The concept of sin is inextricably tied to the principle of separating right choices from wrong choices and distinguishing good behavior from evil behavior. Our society has developed the condition described by the biblical prophet Isaiah, where there are many "who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20).

Examples of this condition are all around us. If you watch an hour of television, glance at magazines in the store or look at movies in a video rental outlet, you will see dozens of examples of choices and behavior that are condemned by the Bible as evil, but approved by society as good. Such an environment blinds people to the existence of sin, making it a word that we seldom hear.

The reality of sin

Despite this social attitude toward sin, the Bible consistently shows that there is a difference between right and wrong, between good and evil. Sin does exist! It is a reality of human life.

King Solomon wrote that "there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin" (Ecclesiastes 7:20). The apostle Paul agreed with this assessment when he said, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

To love God with our whole heart, we must recognize the reality of sin in our own lives. It is a word that cannot simply drop from our social or personal vocabulary. Much to the contrary, God’s Word shows that the path to real happiness and peace must include resisting and overcoming sin. As vertical thinkers, we must be willing to call sin what it is!