The Scam that is Sin

Easter is already here.
One thing Easter does to many of us is to remind us of our faults. It reminds us of our unimagined wretchedness. Of our incomplete nature in the eyes of God’s infinite Holy stature. It haunts us with thoughts of our tattered righteousness – as bad as filthy rags (Isaiah et al). The queer moment of seeing an innocent man being crucified for ‘no reason at all’ is just overwhelming, you know. Have you ever taken an inside-the-mind picture of Christ’s final moments on this earth? The weird fact is that we all at some point of this life have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23).
I don’t glory in my own self. I have no time for that. I am always absent when they make a roll call of perfect people. I ain’t perfect, mun! I am not perfect. I have never been perfect. I don’t think I have... I always tell my friends (those guys know themselves) that not until Christ appears will I be made perfect. I don’t think you are perfect either. Whether it is in the view of what sin is or is the context of what righteousness sounds like, dude/dudette, you ain’t perfect! Period... So, you don’t have to look for perfect people – they don’t exist! I repeat, perfect people are a lie – THEY DON’T EXIST! My suggestion to you who thinks they DO exist is that you should try to look for those people who seek perfection without denying their imperfections, because those to me are normal people. Yes, they are very spiritual too!
The reason I’m saying this is because I somehow I’m more inspired when sin is mentioned or is crouching around because it makes me ask questions. Sin makes me ask stupid questions and most of the time I’m just the tag in between. This is in contrast with when I feel, ‘All is well.’ Because then I don’t really feel intimidated or inquisitive: why should a man worry when nothing is out of order and perfection reigns like my neighbour’s dog, huh? I have to say that sin, (and I don’t care if you like me mentioning it or not) is a paradox of some kind. Sin plays games no one really understands until they are face to face with the Grace of Christ. Sin is as awful before God as it is mysterious to us... But again sin makes us realize that without Christ, we ain’t nothing. Yeah, it makes me know that ‘from the ground did I come, and I am useless, unless I walk with the one who makes the miry clay beautiful...’
You see, a man (or woman – for those who think gender is a god of some kind) rarely understands just why he/she keeps making the same mistakes (that is a name we have recently baptized sin with in order to make it light and easy to go by) over and over again and always with ultimately record-breaking negative results when they struggle to get away from the cycle (what we call, “The Struggle to Break the Punitive Cycle”) ... And to add on to the bad mix, o how sin always seems to be so irresistibly sweet! Sin is irresistible. Very irresistible. The apostle Paul writes about it in Romans 7:15-19 by saying, "For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want – instead, I do what I hate. But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good. But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want! Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me.
It is in the context of the above passage that we will now address human weakness and the ‘scam that is sin’.
Truly speaking, no one loves to sin. Yeah I think so. I think that no one loves indulging in fornication, or being a serial drunkard, or being a chain smoker... No one loves being looked at as the ‘the bad guy/chic’. No one loves being tagged a prostitute of homosexual or lesbian or husband-snatcher or gold-digger or something like that... No one loves being called immoral and corrupt, or greedy and unorganized. No on loves being sinful, unless they are demon possessed. Unless their consciences are dead (1 Timothy 4:2). Unless they have their own moral law – which in itself is a fad because there are no separate moral laws but just one that governs all humanity... So back to our thing with sin; we realize that somehow, sin just happens. Yeah, it just happens, huh? No, it doesn’t. It is just that it is very deceitful - it stealithly creeps in and you nver can overcome it on your own. I will give you an example - my own experience... and my struggle to overcome it on my own never really succeeded until I turned my life over...
I used to hate people who masturbated. I hated them and tagged them as guys without self control. Yeah, so I thought. They had/have no self control, right? I thought that they were extremely impossible. Intolerable, even. “How could someone do that to himself/herself?” I would ask myself. It was easy to question their indulgences because I had never climbed that boat to experience the agony they experienced when sin stared them in the face and they had no guts to tell it off. I thought I was this ‘cool’ guy who loved the Lord and as far as sin was concerned, unreachable or even, untouchable. This was until it came on me like a thud, voila! It swept me off my ‘steady’ conscience. Unimaginable. Very unimaginable. Those are the words I can use to describe what I felt then. “What is wrong with me?”, I would ask myself. Sin was crouching in slowly and I never realized until I was justifying it and the Lord’s Spirit was now on me telling me, “Come ooooout!” It was very loud. Very loud indeed. To make it all short, what happened was simple: I did not watch my limits as far as what I should or should not have done was concerned. I had allowed my mind to wander aimlessly when I missed someone I really cared for, I had resolved to call it ‘normal’. I had climbed the hill of ‘I am justified by Grace’ and that ‘I am eternally forgiven’ and had allowed myself to use my body wrongly. I just thought that somehow, God had created me that way and that I was ‘helpless’ as far as masturbation was concerned. I WAS WRONG. Very wrong. It was my weakness and the moment I realized it, I hated myself... I hated doing it... regret followed... pain engulfed me... unworthiness... futility... name them... Christ was far away. And I was here nailing him again! Tormenting Him again. That is what awakened me... Thank you Holy Spirit... He awakened me... He told me that that all was not lost so long as I choose not ot live in sin anymore... and to be clear on this, it had started tasting normal and sounding good. I was justifying it. I was not ready to repent. My prayer had turned away from, “Lord forgive me”, to “Lord you know my weakness, what can I do, please help me live with this, spare me the guilt”. Dead prayers! Sin had fooled me and I was held in its trap.
How did I come out? You may ask. Christ did it for me. Jesus loves me, you know. He turned me around when I started guarding my heart, my mind, my lips, my eyes... and here I am telling you that you may know what a scam sin really is...

Some points to note:
1. As far as sin is concerned, no one is untouchable and everyone is vulnerable; no one is invincible, but anyone can be trapped
2. Sin seeks to separate you from God and form people you fellowship with (because Satan knows that you won’t get someone to help you pray over your weaknesses and seeks to make you even weaker). Unless you deal with sin by repenting and being remorseful (like David in Psalm 51), dude/dudette, you are doomed!
3. Don’t boast of your perfectionism. You can fall and become the damnest thing we have ever met or known!
4. Be careful on how you use your eyes (what you see), your ears (what you listen to), your nose (what you smell into, hehe!), your lips (what you say), your body (what you indulge into), your mind (what you think at every moment of time) and your heart (what you desire); because these are the main avenues that will breed sin without you knowing – and sad enough it may take your life with it...
5. Learn to use self control – that is why Christ left us with the Holy Spirit as our enabler (our Helper)

Sincerely,
Morris.