We often forget that sin is bad. Perhaps as we mature we become used to our own sins and blasé about their consequences. There’s the tendency to pride and arrogance. The idol of comfort. The gap between what we profess and how we act, which is hypocrisy. The lure of those three little words: “I deserve better.” I don’t know: these are just some which seem significant to me. But for each of us there are probably sins and temptations to sin with which we are so familiar that we are barely conscious of them.
Sometimes people think of God wanting to spoil our fun and think of sin as forbidden but nevertheless desirable. But sin is offensive, painful and destructive. It leads to suffering for ourselves, for those around us and even for God. Sin is evil.
So how can something so offensive seem so attractive?
Albert Nolan’s book God in South Africa includes a section on the nature of sin which I have found very insightful. He writes as a Catholic criticising the apartheid regime, and says some interesting things about the relationship between personal and social sin. I don’t want to follow that thought, but rather say something more personal. I want to say a few words about how Nolan’s understanding of sin and temptation has helped me deal with my own personal temptations. In doing this I don’t want to appear to be preaching. It seems appropriate to me in this setting to reveal something of myself and there is no intention to instruct or teach.
Nolan writes that “we can only sin by fooling ourselves at that moment about what we are really doing.” Temptation is inherently deceptive: it presents some action as desirable when in fact it is destructive. “Evil in itself is not attractive. It cannot tempt us without deceiving us and presenting itself as something that is good and attractive.” Temptation seduces into suffering.
That points us towards a response to temptation. These are some thoughts which roll around my mind and become a sort of litany in response to the voice of temptation.
Since temptation is based on a lie, I ask “What is the lie behind this temptation?” If you can spot the lie, the temptation slinks away embarrassed.
A sinful option is often presented by this voice of temptation as inevitable. “You know its what you want; it’ll be enjoyable; there’s no reason not to” etc. But to reclaim the responsibility of choice is a powerful defense. “I don’t need to do this” makes it much easier to follow with “I choose not to.”
Persistent temptation might then say to me “Ah, but you’ve always done this. It’s just natural.” To which I say “No, no, no, you’ve got the wrong person. Maybe I used to be like that, but its no longer my nature.” In fact to Christians, reborn with the nature of Christ, to sin is unnatural. Sure, sometimes we still do sin, but the anguish of conscience we feel in doing it shows how out of place it is.
“Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”