My "focus", gfm, is on the FACT that the reason "sin" exists for Christians is because of the attribute assigned to the god of Christianity... the main one of which, is that damn near everything that humans do, other than adoring that god, offends it.
Anything that humans do that perverts or otherwise deviates away from God's transcendent, universally flourishing, and universally harmonious "order of operations" for his creation is "sin".
Galatians 5 provides a good compare/contrast between what "offends" God and what "pleases" God. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance (quarreling), emulations (jealousy/malice), wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings (rowdy/crude behavior), and the like are all behaviors/attributes that "offend" God as they all pervert and otherwise deviate away from his flourishing/harmonious/perfect design of the world.
On the other hand, love (agape love, sacrificial uniting/healing love), joy (delighting in already possessed blessings, unrelated to circumstances), peace (inner calm, unrelated to circumstances), longsuffering (patience, enduring wrongdoings of others, etc), gentleness (kindness), goodness, faith, meekness (humbleness), and temperance (self control) are all behaviors/attributes that "please" God as they all exemplify God's flourishing/harmonious/perfect design of the world.
That, in great part, is the reason today's Christians go to such lengths to disassociate themselves from the god of the Old Testament...
I can't speak for other Christians, but as for myself, I don't disassociate myself from the OT at all. It is just as much a part of the Bible as the NT is. What I do find, however, is that a lot of people, especially non-Christians, typically take certain select OT verses out of context or otherwise don't understand the history/setting/context of said verses, thus bastardizing them when attempting to apply them to present-day Christians.
THE GOD JESUS WORSHIPED. "The god Jesus worshiped" found many things offensive that modern Christians (and modern people in general), in large part, no longer consider immoral or perverting...and "the god Jesus worshiped" was not offended by many things modern Christians (and modern people in general) deem to be disgusting.
All this is revealing, as I understand it, is that God's perfect nature and man's sinful nature are two completely different things.
For example, there are a seemingly-growing number of Christians who condone homosexuality (IOW, they do not consider it to be a sin) even though a simple reading of the Bible clearly reveals it to be such (via multiple references in both the OT and the NT).
Those who have blindly guessed that a GOD exists may be correct (which necessitates that they may be wrong)...perhaps have bought into notions of the GOD's attributes. To me (this is strictly me), the attributes assigned to the Abrahamic GOD...sound more like the mores and wishes of a relatively unsophisticated, unknowledgeable, superstitious, ancient people...than the dictates of a GOD able to create a universe as immense as ours. Christians may be correct; the ancient Hebrews from whom they derived their GOD may have been correct. And it all may be a flight of fancy...like the flights of fancy of the Greek, Roman and Norse deities.
I find this to be reasonably presented.
Sounds good...almost poetic.
The bottom line, though, is that every "sin" is merely something that offends the god. This "what comes first, the taking of offense or the whatever" seems to be opportunistic and gratuitous.
I feel that this is a repetitious A->B->A->B cycle... I'll just clarify that I don't think that you're wrong in how you're defining sin, but rather I feel that a "personal preference" approach in defining sin (as opposed to a "quality control" approach) is an approach that misses the joy in the bigger picture of the Christian belief of what sin is, how it has been overcome, and how God's initially perfect creation will one day be restored back to a perfect state. (
The Plan™)
My guess is that Christians assert that everyone is a sinner, because they think it sounds self-effacing...and they consider self-effacement to be something their god demands or likes.
By self-effacing do you mean modest? I just want to be clear on what you're saying as that particular term is not a part of my lexicon.
If so, then my response would be that your guess is definitely one reason why Christians assert that everyone is a sinner. I would also add that Christians make that assertion because it is the truth. Everyone outside of Jesus Christ has, at one point or another, perverted or otherwise deviated from God's perfect design of this world. My Galatians 5 reference from earlier notes several attributes that every mere mortal has possessed at least one of them at one point or another. Simpler minded Christians will otherwise correctly (per the faith) assert that everyone is a sinner because Romans 3:23 says so.
