SIN--THE NEW DIRTY WORD

Sin is one of the easiest things to do.  Most times it can be fun.  Where once, not too long ago, sin was abhorred, it is now adored and encouraged.  Sin has been rebranded.

"Misappropriation of funds" now bears the less shameful tag for "stealing a person's money".  "Partial Birth Abortion"  nicely repackages the new and improved "Infanticide".  Disingenuous is the softer label for lying. You would find it hard to recognize sin by its outer labels.  You have to do some peeling first to see the actual product.

The great lie from the famous garden lives on and thrives even in the "Christian" community today.  "You shall not surely die!"  Just as the devil sneaked into the garden, so has he intruded the Church.  Same old message, same objective--to get the human species to distrust and disbelieve God and to cut mankind from his rightful relationship with his Creator.  It is a strategic war for your soul, for it is a soul tie that binds us to one another and to God.

Now, not everyone who looks the part is a genuine Christian who is truly committed to living by the instructions and Spirit of Jesus. Hey! Not everyone who plays an instrument is a musician.  It takes practice, discipline and commitment, and the results are clearly evident.  Saying that I am a musician does not make me one, and having the endorsement of my friends and family certainly does not make my off-key, rhythm-less noise qualify in front of a panel of discerning judges.

Simply put, God says, "This is the way to go if you want to walk with me.  If you choose a different path I won't go that way with you."  We are of worth to God so even if we go down the wrong path he will help us if we turn around and come back to him.  Our ancestors made choices that affect us down the line.  Some sins are harder to break off because of the spiritual forces behind them.  We normally see sin in the light of the person doing it and the consequences.  But we hardly discern the demonic influences lurking in the background.  Sometimes they team up in order to render the person helpless and enslaved, regardless of how much praying they or others do on their behalf.  So the individual reasons, "Well I must have been born this way, so I will stay this way."

Of course!  We ALL were born this way.  We inherited sin in our spiritual DNA, which went bad after our first parent's choice. The cure for this can only come from the master Physician, Jesus Christ.

Similarly there are some cases in the natural that came about as a result of things going wrong in the womb.  Take the case of hermaphrodites, some of whom undergo sex reassignment surgery in infancy.  It creates a dilemma for persons who would want to judge by external appearances.  There are some things in this life that are too complex for the human mind to fathom.  It is necessary then to have compassion as our Saviour did and not behave as if we have all the answers. Their sin was paid for at the cross.  GOD will determine in his own wisdom who belongs to him and who does not.

If we sin wilfully, consistently, insisting that WE should decide what is good and what is evil, regardless of what God says, then the day will arrive when God makes his final choices known.  If we stubbornly hold on to the devil's lie that we are like gods, knowing good and evil, we shall surely die.  Revelation 21:8.

Need I define the repackaged name for "death"?

IMPLICATIONS OF A PRO-CHOICE GOD

It was the off-season. On a hot, slow Thursday night in September my husband, my post-teenage son and I joined our two friends from New York for dinner at the local pizzeria. 

With a table and entire restaurant (plus staff) to ourselves, we caught up with the happenings in our families, work, community, mutual acquaintances, and, inevitably, politics—local and American. Politics led to religion, which in turn raised the issue of personal conviction, and an examination of their relationship to current social systems and their legal frameworks. Our friend, whose wife in her quest for meaning in spirituality has settled for Buddhism, wanted to politely pin me down with the harder questions about homosexuality, its origins, and the pro-life debate. It was encouraging that we could all participate in the discussion without making each other feel intellectually inferior.

The time just flew. We could have gone on and on but it occurred to me that we might have been delaying the staff so we continued our deliberations in the car as we drove our friends home. The final question posed to me concerned whether God would send people to hell. I could have tried a “Jesus tactic” on him—answering a question with a question. I could have asked him, “What do the scriptures say?” and asked him to read Revelation 20:11-15 and Revelation 21:5-8).

Instead I speculated that under our imperfect human system of laws although a person is guilty there are clauses that provide leniency for the defendant. How much more the Great Judge. The important thing is that a person hearing the gospel and refusing to rightly respond by surrendering one's life to the authority and instructions of Christ should not feel unjustly condemned when he is sent to hell. Let God decide how he will deal with those who never heard.

We parted on good terms and in peace that night. However, lying awake in my bed the following morning I could not help but reflect on the pro-choice argument. 

Liberals and even some conservatives vigorously defend a woman's right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy or to allow the child to develop. According to their reasoning a parent (in that case, the mother) has every right to decide how many children she will keep, and how many she will discard, as well as make selections based on the sex and health of the unborn baby. Yet more often than not it is a highly offensive offensive notion to pro-choice advocates that God could also be pro-choice.

Why not? If he is the parent, spiritually speaking, why is it not his prerogative to decide how many children he wants and which ones to abort in the trash can of hell?

If there is no hope (cure) for a foetus with a defect (sin) could it be more merciful for him to terminate life in the womb (this transient existence on earth)?  Then why are people finding it unconscionable? In this light, let us evaluate sin and determine whether people born with this birth defect are worth saving or should be expelled...

Stinking to High Heaven

I wanted to write a disgusting article today--so disgusting that you would see life in a different light.  Therefore, brace yourself and come with me on a journey that can take you to where only a few brave and unwavering people choose to go.

I keep my dogs on a leash.  They are well fed and shampooed. But the slightest chance they get to run away from home they head down to the bay side and scavenge for the smelliest fish guts washed up between the rocks.  The next round is to roll in the neighbour’s fowl manure.  With the taste of freedom, they roam the neighbourhood searching for their street pals, picking up a few ticks and fleas in the process.

I love my dogs but they cannot come home and lick me with their tongues that only moments ago were lapping up the remainder of rotting fish guts on the bayside.  Nor will I open my arms wide and swoop them up in a loving embrace, with all that greenish foul-smelling stuff on their backs.  No Poochi-poochi or Puppy-puppy! 

Imagine--soft, smelly dog poop, heavily soiled feminine napkins, rotten maggot-filled rubbish, a bloated dead dog swarming with blue flies, cat vomit…

To us humans, these are nauseating and repulsive.  Naturally, you would not want them inside your house.  How about going to visit someone else’s house and dragging this filth along with you to your host’s home?  You wouldn’t.  But it is possible for human beings to get so accustomed to living or working among filth or obnoxious smells, that it doesn’t even bother them anymore. 

 

Sin, spiritually, is like that.  Detestable! God cannot and will not get accustomed to sin.  As in the natural, there are some things that are more disgusting than others (for which you can simply look away or walk away, while others might bring your stomach to your mouth), in the spiritual I believe that some things are equally abominable to confront than others.

God is holy.  His house is immaculately clean, and if we want to visit his house or want him to visit ours we must allow him to clean us up.  That is the purpose of Jesus’ blood.  It is the bleach or the cleaning agent that takes away our sins.  How dare we think that we can go traipsing into heaven covered in filth, stinking to high heaven and demanding that God let us in?

Imagine your house rule is, 

“Everyone Please Check In At the Fountain.  Leave all shoes, clothes and other belongings with the door attendant. Bathe and change into the fresh new garments provided.  Then come in”. 

What would you do to anyone caught illegally trying to enter your white-carpeted house, dripping with sweat mingled with mud and bits of leaves? On their feet smeared with black sticky tar are shoes that are already yawning their tired goodbyes to the good old days, while the smell of “cat piss” and decaying onions give warning of an accident on the way to a comfort station. Would you give him a great big hug and offer him a seat on your spotless sofa?

Our sin, however small, is detestable, and God does not want a trace of it whether he travels to earth or lives in the heavens.  His provision for cleaning up is His Son.  You’ve got to pass through his Son.  I repeat:  you’ve got to pass through His Son.  That’s the entry requirement.  It doesn’t matter who else tells you, “You are not too dirty.  Come enter through my door.  You don’t have to go through all that hassle to clean up.” 

Everyone has to check in at the fountain, and that includes you.

Go through any other door that promises safe passage, and I am certain you would not be happy with where you end up.  Many would take the easier way in but which really is the way leading out, far away from where they thought they were heading.  What a laugh the misleading door keepers are having as they try to keep a straight face, diverting the seemingly intelligent and sophisticated through what God’s Son calls the “wide gate and broad way”.   Wow! Lovely street names—Widegate and Broadway.  But it leads to destruction and many go through it.  Matthew 7: 13-14

The ignorant, gullible, unsophisticated, by worldly standards, choose to enter on “Straightgate and Narrow-way.  God’s very own son, when he was down here in human form, left the instructions for getting on the way to Life.  He gave clear directions on how to get to the grand reconciliation with God after our severed relationship with him.  Once we get there we are welcome to live in a harmonious relationship with the Creator and creation, forever.

Now if that isn’t the way to go, I put a reader's discretion warning here:  GTH.  You figure it out.