446 Sermon Illustrations on Sin

In “The Guilty Vicarage,” his essay on detective fiction, W. H. Auden argues that crime novels are often more akin to addictive magic than to authentic art. We read them, says Auden, not to discern a version of our own evil in the murderer but to make him the scapegoat for our guilt. Like other recent masters of detection, P. D. James has been moving steadily away from such subartistic escapism. Original Sin, her twelfth crime novel, seems at first to offer the escapist temptation, only to lure us into an ever intenser confrontation with our own sin and guilt.

The murder milieu is a small, family-owned publishing firm called Peverell Press. It is located in Innocent House, a grand Georgian mansion on the Thames, downriver from London. As a four-story stone palace that was initially financed by means of a murder disguised as a suicide, Innocent House proves to have been grotesquely misnamed. A century-and-a-half later, its inhabitants are reaping the bitter fruits of this original sin. Innocent House seethes with the hatreds and humiliations, the betrayals and infidelities that characterize both public and private life in the modern secular city. Everywhere there is guilt, and everyone is guilty. But nowhere is relief to be found in confession and contrition and pardon. These are the real marks of our post-Christian world as P. D. James portrays it. Her depiction of our society’s pervasive lovelessness in Original Sin is often more frightening than the approaching political hell she prophesied in her last novel, The Children of Men.

James is a genius of thick characterization no less than the densely realized milieu. She gives even minor figures richly particularized identities. Like the Victorian masters with whom she is often compared, James offers the reader such intimate personal knowledge of her characters that we deeply identify with their struggles. The novel’s four deaths require both readers and characters to grapple with theological no less than criminological questions. Throughout the whole book, in fact, James wrestles with pressing religious concerns, with quandaries that are made all the more acute because their traditional Christian answers have been abandoned.

By what rites, ask friends of a suicide, can they bury a woman who was a settled atheist? Is self-murder the supreme act of aggression, as claims the nun who is the suicide’s sister? Or is it the most pitiable of all deeds, as James’s vaguely Christian detective insists? By what secular means, asks a woman who has been made the sexual plaything of her lover, can she regain self-respect? Can a man care for a dying aids victim out of general compassion rather than personal friendship? Is it possible for a couple who has no religious hope beyond this life not to worship their only child? Can an old man confess and come to terms with the egregious sins of his past rather than silence and obliterate them from memory? Must a Jew define himself by the crimes committed against his race, bearing a burden of innocence that is even heavier than guilt, and thus representing the evils of humankind rather than their redemption? Should this same Jew break the law in order to spare a guilty fellow Jew from humiliation, even though his own career as a detective will be ruined?

Such questions come sharply to focus when the first murder victim turns out to be the chairman of Peverell Press, a ruthless man who is despised by his associates, and yet who, as we learn, had his own suffering: a complex man made contemptible by circumstance as well as choice. Adam Dalgliesh, James’s investigator par excellence, relies upon moral and religious intuition as much as professional expertise to discern the motive for murder. It lies not in the victim’s uninviting character, but in a long-nursed grievance having to do with his family history. Hateful though he is for his arrogance and cruelty, the dead man is killed for offenses he did not commit. His avenger retaliates by perpetrating not one but two acts of uncreation. He also slays a third victim in order to cover up the first of his crimes. Thus does evil beget evil in ways so religiously perverse, James suggests, that the modern secular world has no means either to fathom or control them.

Observing the difference between ancient and modern paganism, C. S. Lewis remarks in The Problem of Pain that “Christianity now has to preach the diagnosis ... before it can win a hearing for the cure.” P. D. James would seem to be agreed. No one at Innocent House takes evil seriously. Hissing Sid, the toy cloth snake that serves to stop drafts and prop doors and stuff the mouth of a murder victim, is the mascot at Peverell Press. James makes clear, by contrast, that evil is not an absurdity to be taken lightly because it affects only murderers and their victims. Sin, she shows, is an aboriginal and perduring presence in the best, no less than the worst, of us. The novel’s stunning resolution thus makes us identify with the killer as well as his victims. He has committed triple murder in defense of the good- indeed, the highest good, Justice -- and in retribution against one of the worst evils of our age -- the Holocaust and its closet allies. Unlike Ivan Karamazov, with his abstract rage at innocent suffering, this destroyer has terribly concrete cause for his resentment.

Such, James reveals, is the awful subtlety of sin. It guises itself in the garb of righteousness. It forbids us to forgive sin and to return good for evil. It takes vengeance into its own hands rather than letting it belong to God. Finally, and most dreadfully, it remakes us in the image of the Uncreator. Hating one who had calcified himself against all pity for the defenseless, the punisher has turned his own heart into stone. He has become what he despises, a man incapable of care.

Yet the killer is not unlike his colleagues at Innocent House, nor his real- life readers. When God goes, P. D. James suggests, so does all tempering grace disappear from public and private life. Yet there is something immensely salubrious about a murder mystery that, in detecting our guilt, will not let hardened hearts remain impervious to it. Original Sin makes us face the deadliest of all diseases, the one its title names, the sickness unto death. And diagnosis offers at least the hope of cure.

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Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./BOOKS & CULTURE Review

Why Good People Do Bad Things: Cornelius Plantinga goes toe to toe with sin.

Item: A pastor at a neighboring church has a call to a new ministry. I hope he goes. I don't know him personally, but I do know that he is very effective. Just maybe, if he leaves, some of the people who are raving about his gifts and flocking to his congregation will take a look in my direction!

Item: A few weeks back I made a purchase for our church. Certainly it was for the benefit of one of the programs we are running right now. But elements of the purchase were really only for my own use. Can I get away with routing the whole payment through the congregation's budgeted line items, and thus save my own professional-development allowance for other things?

Item: I meet weekly with a men's Bible study/fellowship group. They ask me how I'm doing. Regularly I tell them I'm so busy, too busy. One friend asks me if I'm spending enough time with my family. There is a humble pride that wells up inside when I assure them of my godly intent to be a good husband and father, while in the same breath acknowledging that my faithfulness to Mistress Church kept me busy seven days last week.

Remembering these things brings a little embarrassment, and I'm glad about that. At least there is still some screeching in the ears of my soul when the "vandalism of shalom" (Plantinga's term) works its dissonant stealth.

But what bothers me, in these reflections, is the ease with which I envy, the passion with which I lie, the fortitude with which I sacrifice my family on the altar of self. And I'm a "good" person-at least in the eyes of society. So I read Not the Way It's Supposed to Be, turning every familiar corner with consternated recognition.

"I can see clearly now"

Plantinga's book is marvelous, on a number of different levels. For one thing, it is clear, logical, and to the point. A "breviary of sin" he calls it: a brief introduction, listing, defining; an orderly arranging of information about the topic. There are few questions about sin that linger without some address in these pages. The enigma of sin itself remains, of course, and Plantinga never tries to explain that inexplicability. But his purpose for the book is precise ("to present the nature and dynamics of sin"), as is his method:

I shall define sin, describe how sin corrupts what is good and how such corruption spreads, discuss the parasitic quality of sin and the ironies and pretenses generated by this quality, compare sin with folly and addiction, and conclude by describing a couple of the classic "postures" or movements of sin (attack and flight).

A second delight is the clear imagery Plantinga paints. We grapple to philosophize or theologize doctrines about sin, but Plantinga lifts our eyes from the page to the screen. Can you remember the scene in the movie Grand Canyon, where the stranded motorist is terrorized by young toughs, and the tow-truck driver negotiates an uneasy peace when he says, "This ain't the way it's supposed to be"? Can you picture the spread of contaminating pollution? Can you visualize the blood-red belly of a parasitic worm? Can you dance in the streets with revelers cloaked behind masks of deceit?Plantinga ushers us into the world of Proverbs 1-9, where sin gains wily personhood and corruption masquerades as our next-door neighbor. Even the patterns of sinful behavior are postured: first, evil hammers at us in unrelenting attack; then, if our resistance seems ready to hold the castle doors in place, stealthy vapors of hell spirit us away in flight from the soul's true home and the mind's proper lodgings.

Trained vision

Third, this is a book about sin in which sin is never the main character. Plantinga begins his travels in creation's innocence, and, after wandering for a while in the murky underworlds, leads us round eventually to re-creation's shalom. Throughout the journey, it is the light from above that guides and not the trembling darkness below.

Fourth, this is a book in which the author seriously attempts to live the message. I've plagiarized a multitude of times in my preaching and writing, each occasion resolving to carry better the Truth along conduits of truth. I'm attempting something Plantinga seems to have achieved to a remarkable degree. Along with the usual sourcing footnotes, he supplies a plethora of acknowledgments to colleagues and acquaintances who have generated a thought or urged a contour of investigation. It is not a necessary literary feature, perhaps, in our usual publishing pursuits, but one that, in this case, ties the message to its medium.

I happen to think that Plantinga's preface overestimates real awareness of sin in previous generations and, by the same token, underestimates a corresponding awareness in our own society. But every generation needs to be reminded of the reality of sin.Plantinga says he wrote this book for nontheologians. Even non-Christians who are troubled by undefined evil would read his words with profit, he suggests. And it's true. If you have a conscience, get this book. And if you don't . . .

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Not the Way It's Supposed to Be, by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. (Eerdmans, 202 pp.; $19.99, hardcover). Reviewed by Wayne Brouwer, senior pastor at Harderwyk Christian Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

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*

A MAN committed a murder, and was pursued by the relations of the man

whom he murdered. On his reaching the river Nile he saw a Lion on its

bank and being fearfully afraid, climbed up a tree. He found a serpent

in the upper branches of the tree, and again being greatly alarmed, he

threw himself into the river, where a crocodile caught him and ate

him. Thus the earth, the air, and the water alike refused shelter to

a murderer.

On Judgment Day many will try to hide from the Great Judge, but they

will not escape their dreadful punishment!

Does your heart seem set on sin?

Strategies for refocusing your affections.

Intimacy with Jesus helps us see the "rubbish" in our lives for what it is.

Jam 1:14, Rom 8:5-9, 1Pet 2:11, Heb 12:4, John 17:17

Affections Aligned. Phil 3:7-11, 4:6-7, Col 3:1-2, Isa 26:3

Seeing Sin Clearly. 2 Cor 7:10, Eccl 2:10-11, Rom 3:19-20

Taking a Closer Look.

QUESTIONS ABOUT SIN.

What sins did I commit today?

What did I perceive to be the value of those sins?

What did they cost me?

How did they affect the advancement of the kingdom of God?

What steps led to those sins?

What response does that sin cause in my heavenly father?

If opportunity to commit those sins comes again tomorrow, what will

be my response?

STRUGGLE WITH PRIDE

Pride sets me up for discipline by God.

Pride is the ugliest expression of independence from God.

Pride is repulsive to the godly.

Pride induces sinful boasting in me.

Pride demonstrates that I misunderstand the source of my abilities.

Pride keeps me from recognizing my need for God and, therefore, keeps

me from prayer as well.

Pride in my speech is tiresome to people listening to me.

Working Out Your Salvation. Phil 2:12-13

The Grabouw Journal, a South African news journal, reports the story of Roger Russell, an activist crime-fighter. In August, Russell began a 2,800-mile walk around South Africa to focus attention on the nation's infamous crime rate; his second day out he was mugged. He wasn’t out to judge the guilty, just bring an end to crime.

The Journal said, "It was either an awful start or the best one he could have hoped for." You see Russell is down but not out; he’s coming back to finish what he started.

Comments: God announced in various ways, over hundreds of years, He wanted to relieve man of his sin-burden; He told us in advance He would send a Savior, a Deliverer, a Redeemer, a Shepherd, a Messiah. When He did, He sent His Son [John 3:16], who came in the flesh and dwelt among us [John 1:14], to focus attention on the world’ s infamous sin rate. He didn’t come to judge the world but to save the world [John 3:17].

At the Lord’s first attempt to reach sinful man, man attacked Him rather than receive Him … oh, He was down but not out; He ’s coming again to finish what he started, only this time it’ll be to judge the world [John 5:29; Hebrews 9:27; Revelation 14:6,7].

_________________

Source/Attribution: In "Reality Check for Anti-crime Trekker" by Ian Fisher; via NY Times on the Web, September 11, 1999.

Great confusion exists, both inside and outside the church, about what the gospel message is, said David Dockery.

"For 20 centuries there have been dogs eating around the edges of the church, not just cults or groups outside the church, but theologians, preachers and evangelists inside the church," said Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

Asking a group of seminarians what the gospel is may seem to be a redundant question, Dockery said, but the gospel is a puzzle to many people today.

Preaching from Ephesians 2:1-10, Dockery said the confusion comes from a failure to understand the severity of the problem of sin.

The passage presents man in "a desperate condition," he said. "We are helpless, we are powerless, we are ungodly, we are enemies of God, we are sinners, each and every one of us.

"This includes our powerless, passive inability to please God, but it also includes our active, ungodly hostility, our rebellion toward him, and unless we realize our desperate condition, we don't see our need for the gospel."

Churches concentrate too much on therapy and not enough on man's condition, Dockery said. "I'm not suggesting there isn't a place for counseling or therapy, but I am concerned that it not override the theological, the moral or the ethical, for how else can we understand that we are sinners who have fallen short of God's glory?" he asked.

Everyone falls short of God's glory in two ways, Dockery explained -- active commission and passive omission.

"Each and every one of us have failed to love God wholeheartedly," he said. "It's a desperate condition, but the good news is that's not the end of the story, but unless we understand that condition we do not understand our need for the gospel and do not understand what the gospel is."

After discussing man's desperate condition in Ephesians 2, Dockery said the Apostle Paul proceeds to exalt God's divine compassion.

"God has given us new life, a new life not only made possible by him, but in verse 5 it says it is shared with him," Dockery said. God's love is not based on man's actions, he said, but on God's grace that "came to us while we were dead in our trespasses and our sins."

"Because of God's divine compassion in sending the Lord Jesus Christ, we have been shielded from the nightmarish prospect of his divine wrath," Dockery said. "He has become our substitute, bearing our sin and our guilt and all of the Father's wrath has fallen upon him, all because of his marvelous grace."

God shows this divine compassion "in order to display his grace and his glory to all the ages to come," Dockery said.

Salvation is not a transaction where "God does his part and then we come along and do our part. It's not a 50-50 deal," Dockery said. Rather, "It is all a gift -- grace through faith," he said. "Faith is not our part of the deal. Faith is the empty-handed instrument that brings us to God."

The result of faith is transformed lives that are God's workmanship, Dockery said.

"These changes are the fruit of God's marvelous grace at work in our lives, not the cause of it," he said. "It is all because of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, by grace alone, through faith alone, for his glory alone. That is the good news of the gospel."

*

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

God... commands all people everywhere to repent. Repent, and believe the good news. Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Yet even now, says the LORD,

return to me with all your heart...

Return to the LORD, your God,

for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,

and relents from punishing.

Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Turn, then, and live. Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.

[The Lord] does not deal with us according to our sins,

nor repay us according to our iniquities.

For as the heavens are high above the earth,

so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;

as far as the east is from the west

so far he removes our transgressions from us.

Seek the Lord while he may be found,

call upon him while he is near;

let the wicked forsake their way,

and the unrighteous their thoughts;

let them return to the Lord,

that he may have mercy on them,

and to our God,

for he will abundantly pardon.

So they [the disciples] went out and proclaimed that all should repent... They should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance.

Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Romans 3:23; 1 John 1:8,9; 2 Peter 3:9; Acts 17:30; Mark 1:15; Revelation 3:3; James 4:10; Joel 2:12-13; Ezekiel 18:31,32; Acts 3:19,20; Psalm 103:10-12; Isaiah 55: 6,7; Mark 6:12; Acts 26:20. Psalm 51:1,2,10.

.....

A COMEDIAN, Dan Leno, used to open his act saying, 'Ah, what is man? Wherefore does he why? Whence did he whence? Whither is he withering?'

Who am I? As our first three chapters disclose, I am a special person made in the image of God, but whose image has been scarred. I am like God, and like the devil. I am good... and bad. I am a delight, but my sins are a horror, both to God and to myself.

How bad am I? There are two opposite errors in some replies to this question. 'Too bad' you might say. Wrong. 'Not bad enough' - again, wrong. Pascal once wrote: 'There are only two kinds of people - the righteous who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners who believe themselves righteous.'

We are all are equally guilty - not just those the law calls 'criminals'. Indeed it's people who think they're good enough who are in the greatest peril. Most people in the Bible who were asked to repent were religious people. We cannot offer our righteousness to God (we'll never have enough), only our penitence.

You will sometimes read about the doctrine of 'total depravity' in connection with our sin. This doesn't mean that humans are as bad as they can be, but rather that no part of us has escaped the pollution of sin.

C.S. Lewis explains the old prayer-book phrase about being 'miserable offenders' by analyzing the situation of those who don't realize they're miserable. Passengers on two trains speeding towards each other on the same track may be reading magazines, dozing over a drink, or laughing boisterously. They don't feel miserable. But in fact their situation can be described as utterly miserable. Tell them they're miserable and they'll laugh at you.

John Bunyan's classic Pilgrim's Progress opens with 'a man clothed with rags standing in a certain place with his face from his own house, a book in his hand and a great burden upon his back.' 'How camest thou by thy burden?' this pilgrim was asked by his companion, Mr. Worldly Wiseman. He replied, 'By reading this book in my hand.'

The book, of course, was the Bible, a book with an accurate diagnosis and cure for the human condition. The problem: you are a sinner. Cure: 'Repent!' If you check a concordance you'll find 'repentance' is an idea mentioned as often in the Old as in the New Testaments (eg. Ezekiel 18:31, Luke 13:3, Acts 3:19). Jesus' first recorded preaching was about repentance, so was his last.

So repentance isn't funny, like the little old men in cartoons with sandwich boards shouting 'Repent, the end is nigh!' Or the mourners' bench in Charlie Chaplin films. Byron was wrong in his opinion that 'The weak alone repent'.

And the cynic who said...

Christians are people who feel

Repentance on a Sunday

For what they did on Saturday

And intend to do on Monday

...could not be more wrong!

Repentance is about radical change. It means coming to your senses, waking up to yourself! It means turning from your sins to God.

Repentance isn't the same as 'doing penance': inflicting pain on yourself isn't the way to go. Christ died for your sins: his sacrifice was sufficient. Repentance is more than feeling sorry, though it includes sorrow. Judas felt remorse for betraying Jesus, but apparently he didn't truly repent. (His greater sin was not to betray our Lord, but to refuse to go to Calvary for a pardon). Repentance is more than feeling guilty: guilt can be a form of self-hatred. You should hate your sins, not yourself.

And repentance is not superficial. The bucks stops with you, the penitent. You can't blame anyone but yourself. Repentance has no room for excuses, putting the blame somewhere else. Sigmund Freud, probably more than anyone else in the twentieth century, has done a lot to help us understand ourselves. He located many of our personality disorders in the early experiences of infancy. These, he said, are repressed into our subconscious and come back later to haunt us. Now this may be true, but it could lead to a 'blame-oriented' approach to life. Many who have never heard of Freud still blame their parents for who they are. Repentance is the opposite of blaming. It's you taking responsibility for who you are and what you've done.

Repentance involves a radical change of heart, and mind, and behaviour. It is a U-turn, not merely a course correction. The story of the prodigal son and the waiting father (Luke 15:11-32) is about repentance. The boy felt sorry for himself, then sorry that he'd wronged his dad, so he decided to go to his father and confess: 'I have sinned against God and against you'. He was instantly forgiven, welcomed back into the family, and his homecoming was the occasion for great rejoicing. There's feasting in heaven, Jesus said, whenever a sinner repents. If you have repented did you know you caused the angels to throw a party?

The Bible encourages us to confess our sins to God and to another human being (1John 1:9, James 5:16). Be careful to whom you confess: that person must be able to keep a confidence, and to pray a healing prayer for you.

You are saved from the penalty of your sins (though their effects may lnger). So confess them and forsake them and then don't carry their guilt with you: 'own and disown' them. God has truly, completely forgiven you. It's like being sick, then well: don't keep thinking about your sickness; enjoy your health!

A Christian evangelist was asked, 'How is it that your religion has been around for 2000 years and hasn't influenced more people?' His reply: 'How is it that water has been around for thousands of years and many people are still dirty?'

A final serious word: the refusal to repent is worse than the sin for which one ought to repent. The question really isn't 'Shall I repent?' but 'Shall I repent now, when it may save me?' Jesus had some awesome things to say about one's repentance being one's punishment... So...?

.....

The biblical view of the history of mankind and of each individual is contained in the first three chapters of Genesis. We are created to serve God by loving him and each other in freedom and joy, but we invariably choose bondage and woe instead as prices not too high to pay for independence. To say that God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden is apparently a euphemism for saying that Adam and Eve like the rest of us made a break for it as soon as God happened to look the other way. If God really wanted to get rid of us, the chances are he wouldn't have kept hounding us every step of the way ever since.

[Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, London, Collins, 1973, p.55-56.]

I went back to the New Testament, to the Acts and the epistles, to Peter and Paul, who were the first ones to preach the gospel to a pagan world. What does it mean to preach the Christian gospel to such a world...?

Christ, after his resurrection, said... `Now that the resurrection is a reality, now that forgiveness of sins is accomplished in this new covenant, go out to all the earth and preach the good news of the forgiveness of sins to all the nations'...

That is good news, to the Masai, to the guilty man cast out of his community, to the sinful son and to the offending family. I do not have to convince them of sin. They know of sin. What they did not know of was forgiveness. It has touched the earth. This is where Christianity parts company from Judaism and from Hinduism and from paganism. Sin is a conquered thing. This is a redeemed world. One wonders if one should dare talk to pagans about sin - apart from Christ, until they know Christ.

The job of a missionary, after all, is... to teach the forgiveness of sin.

[Vincent J Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, London, SCM, 1985, p.61-62.]

Jesus describes sinfulness as more than just doing wrong things. When we fail to do what's right, it's as bad as doing wrong. You can be totally law-abiding and not give a thought for anyone else. Sin is basically four things: 1. Failing - in our thinking, saying and action - to do what is right. 2. Trying to find meaning and fulfillment without God's love, relationship and guidance. 3. Rejecting and rebelling against God. 4. Missing out on the full and creative life God intends for us...

[Repentance] begins with being sorry enough to quit the past... It begins with: * changing directions * changing sides * changing what is important to us * changed alliances * changed intentions * changed commitments... There should be changes everywhere - enough for it to be noticeable: * at home * at work * at sport * in relationships * in lifestyle * in attitudes * in thinking.

[John Smith]

Sin incriminates. To be a sinner means to be guilty before God. Guilt is that aspect of sin which belongs to the past, and is well expressed in the words from Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam,

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ

Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

As Paul would say, 'the handwriting is against us', and this is something that no merely human means can ever remedy...

The late Archbishop Temple once wrote, 'A great deal too much attention has been given to sins as compared with sin. And so, if it happens that I cannot think of any particular wrong thing that I have done, or any particular good thing that I might have done and neglected, yet still I must ask God to be merciful to me a sinner, for I share the common sin of [humankind] and make myself in a host of ways the centre of the world. I think like a human and not like God.'

[James Philip, Repentance: Its Meaning and Implications, London: the Tyndale Press, 1963, pp. 12-13,20.]

Your intellect says, 'I accept Christ,' your emotions say, 'I love Christ,' and your will says 'I will follow Christ.' In true repentance all your powers are diverted and channeled through Christ. It is not just giving mental assent, it is not just an act of volcanic emotion, nor is it an act of will power alone. True repentance is bringing all of our being - mind, heart and will - under the control of Christ.

[Billy Graham, 'The Meaning of Repentance', a sermon preached on 'The Hour of Decision', Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Box 779 Minneapolis, Minnesota 55440, 1967, pp. 8-9.]

Repentance must not be mistaken for remorse. It does not consist in feeling terribly sorry that things went wrong in the past; it is an active, positive attitude which consists in moving in the right direction. It is made very clear in the parable of the two sons (Mt. 21:28) who were commanded by their father to go to work at his vineyard. The one said 'I am going,' but did not go. The other said, 'I am not going,' and then felt ashamed and went to work. This was real repentance, and we should never lure ourselves into imagining that to lament one's past is an act of repentance. It is part of it of course, but repentance remains unreal and barren as long as it has not led us to doing the will of the father. We have a tendency to think it should result in fine emotions and we are quite often satisfied with emotions instead of real, deep changes.

[Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, 'Meditation and Worship', in John Garvey (ed.), Modern Spirituality: An Anthology, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1986, pp. 35-36.]

Ignatius sums up as one single and fundamental principle (in other words, his First Principle and Foundation): our end is God; therefore what helps towards God is good, what gets in the way is bad. Things are not good or bad in themselves, but only in the effect they have on our relationship with God. We can recall Augustine's classic, rule-defying pronouncement: `Love, and do what you will'.

[Margaret Hebblethwaite, Finding God in All Things, London, Fountain Paperbacks, 1987, p.35]

Repentance is a gift... I do not have to live into fearful defensiveness in relation to my past... I can learn things today that shed a whole new light on yesterday's conclusions, and this is precisely what I hear Jesus encouraging us to do in his call for us to repent and believe the Good News. He is affirming that God is more interested in growth than innocency, in how much we have learned from our mistakes rather than how many mistakes we have made. Is not that the crucial point in the way the father of the prodigal son responded to his return from the far country? He was more concerned about what the lad had gained in terms of self-understanding than about the money and time he had lost in coming to that wisdom.

[John Claypool, 'Growing and the Gift of Repentance', a sermon preached in Northminster Baptist Church, 3955 Ridgewood Rd., Jackson, Mississippi, on August 31, 1980.]

Repentance, metanoia, is the turning of the mind, and with the mind the imagination, the affections and the will, away from self and sin and towards God. It is within an act of Godward-turning that our self-examination happens. We look towards God in gratitude for his loving-kindness, towards Jesus in his death for our sins, towards our own true self in what it is meant to become. The examining of our consciences will be thorough, and while it means a looking into ourselves it will not be an introspective self-scrutiny, for it will be mingled with the looking up towards God and the exposing of the self towards him. But the preparation will be thorough. It is not a matter of naming those sins which seem to be 'big' or which worry us specially, for it is necessary to confess all the ways in which our attitudes and actions have been contrary to the Christian way. That is important. It is a confession of the whole self, and the attitudes and actions which we may sometimes think to be small may be a decisive part of the self's orientation.

[William Ramsay, Be Still and Know: A Study in the Life of Prayer, London: Collins (Fount paperbacks), 1982, pp. 107-8.]

Oh the comfort,

the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person,

Having neither to weigh thoughts or measure words

but pour them all out just as they are

Chaff and grain together,

and a faithful hand will take them and sift them,

keep what is worth keeping,

and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away

-- Dinah Maria (Mulock) Craik, in her novel “A Life For A Life” (1859)

[often falsely attributed to George Eliot, which is the pseudonym of

Mary Ann Evans, English Victorian novelist (1819-1880)

The most noble strategy for dealing with guilt is the way of self-punishment. Do you remember how T.S.Elliot's Celia said, `I feel I must atone for this'? This is a very deep impulse of the human spirit - to conclude that because a wrong has been done, some price needs to be paid or some equivalent action taken. At least in this approach there is a recognition of the seriousness of the situation and of the individual's responsibility. However, the problem with self-punishment is that one never knows how much is enough; we can spend all our lives scourging ourselves and still feel no sense of absolution. Soren Kierkegaard's father, as a shepherd lad out on the freezing Danish slopes, once cursed God, and the memory of that act of blasphemy haunted the man for the rest of his life. He never stopped punishing himself for this misdeed. He gave lavish sums of money to the church, even lacerated his own body, but he was never able to believe that the debt had at last been paid. Any attempt to design or effect our own atonement is bound to end in uncertainty and failure. [John Claypool, The Light Within You, Texas: Word, 1983, p.188.]

The practice of confession and absolution is central to the teachings of the Christian church. Throughout the pages of Holy Scripture the reader encounters a variety of forms and procedures reflecting an understanding of and support for confession and forgiveness.

Luther struggled to restore the proper practice of individual confession and absolution to the church... His writings reveal that he allowed... six types of confession:

(1) confession in the heart (secret confession)

(2) general or public confession in the liturgy

(3) public confession made by an individual before an assembled congregation

(4) reconciliatory confession (based on Matthew 5:23-24))

(5) the 'mutual consolation of the brethren'

(6) private (individual) confession.

[Walter J. Koehler, Counseling and Confession: The Role of Confession and Absolution in Pastoral Counseling, St. Louis: Concordia, 1982, pp. 38, 39.]

Confessing one's sins to another human being... makes a public expression of my sorrow... It is an act of humility wherein I accept the authority of the Church as guardian and guide to the holy things of God. I accept my fellow human being as someone better able than myself to make a judgment of where I stand, of my guilt - and of my goodness; and I accept through his word the promised forgiveness of God, who knows me through and through. This practice brings peace of mind and soul, a deeper trust in God, and a facing of the reality of sin in my life as something to be tackled in the future, once it is clear that the past is no more a burden, that guilt does not remain, that there is nothing to hold me back.

Michael Hollings, Hearts Not Garments, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982, p.50.

The seven capital sins are pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth...

What am I proud about?

What are my ambitions?

What does sex mean for me?

Have I shown anger and if so was it constructive?

Have I suppressed anger in any areas of my life, and if so is it doing

damage?

What am I dependent on in food and drink?

Have I got professional jealousies, or jealousies in relationships?

What am I lazy about?

Or, if we turn our minds to the corresponding positive qualities:

What is the gift of humility?

What would it be like to be less concerned with better status and

possessions?

What would it mean to have a sexual drive directed towards the real

purpose of sex?

What is the virtue of gentleness?

What is best for my health in eating and drinking?

What would it be like to desire the well-being and success of others

without envy?

For what causes would it be good to be able to work tirelessly...?

`God works with those who love him... and turns everything to their good' (Romans 8:28). And St Augustine adds, `even my sins'.

[Margaret Hebblethwaite, Finding God in All Things, London, Fountain Paperbacks, 1987, pp.158, 142.]

.....

O Lord, our God, grant us the grace to long for you with our whole heart, and that so longing we may seek and find you; and that so finding you we may love you; and that so loving you we may hate those sins from which you redeemed us for the sake of Jesus Christ.

[Anselm, cited in Praying with the Saints, Dublin, Veritas Publications, 1989, p.12.]

Lord, your 'need' is to love, mine to be loved by you. Your 'need' expressed itself in my creation, my being made an object of your love. I am a masterpiece of spiritual, emotional and physical engineering, with a spirit yearning to relate to you, the living God; a soul and mind and heart and will to relating lovingly to others, and a body to relate to a dynamic cosmos.

Your love, Lord, expressed itself ultimately in the life of Jesus, and now in the life of Jesus-in-me.

Lord, when I think back on my sins, my feelings range from sadness (for what might have been) through regret (either that I was found out by others or found out who I was really was myself) to anger (that I could have been so destructive and stupid). Perhaps also fear: what will almighty God do to me for what I've done?

So out of my darkness, sorrow and night, Jesus, I come to you. I receive your gift of forgiveness, and ask for your help to live in the future a life of commitment to yourself and obedience to your word.

I am not worthy to come to you, or belong to your eternal family, Lord. But apparently that's not the point: your invitation is not conditional upon my goodness, but simply upon my acceptance of it.

I accept!

.....

A Benediction: May God, who in your conscience has already graciously given you an awareness of your sins, give you also grace to repent, grace to accept his complete forgiveness, and then grace to forgive yourself! Amen.

.....

[John Smith, 'When Love Comes to Stay', Care and Communication Concern, 1990, pp. 5,7.]

*

I became a Christian when I was 20 years old. A pastor told me about the cross of Christ. I believed then, as I believe now, that what Christ accomplished on the cross meant salvation for me. I have not wavered in my basic belief since that significant moment of conversion.

That belief, however, has not spared me from the difficulty-even the agony-of discerning what it means to apply Christ’s work on the cross to my daily life. I know that the cross of Christ has saved me. I wonder why it has not changed me, at least to the degree I expect and want.

I know that the cross of Christ has delivered me from sin, yet I still struggle with sinful habits every day. I believe that Christ suffered for me on the cross, yet I still wonder what Christ’s suffering on the cross has to say about my own suffering. I realize that the cross has achieved peace among enemies, yet I am aware of many hostile and broken relationships in the Christian community. I want to know how the cross of Christ can change the way we live in ordinary life.

SEEING SIN FROM UNDER THE CROSS

The first way the cross can transform our day-to-day living is to provide us with the power and means to tackle sinful habits. It provides a simple but profound principle: We have died to those habits. We can nail them to the cross. Say no. Stop.

It is, of course, easier said than done. Augustine understood sin’s grip simply by observing his own life, which he then reflected on in his famous Confessions. He argued that though evil has nothing of value to offer us, it gives the appearance of good in order to attract us. But the good it offers is always at the wrong time, in the wrong place, under the wrong circumstances. Still, our perverted nature propels us toward such evil. Before we know it, we are bound to it. "The truth is that disordered lust springs from a perverted will; when lust is pandered to, a habit is formed; when habit is not checked, it hardens into compulsion" is how Augustine described the process.

If these habits are so destructive, why is it so hard to put them to death? Because doing so makes us feel as if we are dying, not just the sin in us. Take food, for instance. As all of us know, good food in large quantities can become habit forming. It can lead to gluttony. Gluttony concerns not merely the quantity of food we eat, which is bad enough; it also concerns our attitude about food, our preoccupation with it, our impatience when we do not get it fast enough, and our resentment when we are deprived of it. Gluttony is a nasty, ugly habit.

Imagine for a moment that you struggle with the sin of gluttony. You are a Christian, and you have confessed your gluttony to God and have received assurance of forgiveness. But you are bothered and perplexed because gluttony still rules your life. Forgiveness, in other words, has not led to change. So what should you do?

One day, while reading your Bible, you stumble across this text from the Apostle Paul:

And so, because [Jesus] died, sin has no power over him; and now

he lives his life in fellowship with God. In the same way you

are to think of yourselves as dead, so far as sin is concerned,

but living in fellowship with God through Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:10-11, TEV

Perplexed, you look for other texts to illumine the one you just read. A passage from Hebrews makes it clearer:

Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom our faith depends

from beginning to end. He did not give up because of the cross!

On the contrary, because of the joy that was waiting for him, he

thought nothing of the disgrace of dying on the cross, and he is

now seated at the right side of God’s throne.

Hebrews 12:2, TEV

You want to die to your gluttony. You decide to say no to it. You put it to death. Of course, your gluttonous habit makes a big fuss, crying out that if you sacrifice eating as much and often as you want, then you will die of starvation and lose all pleasure in life. But in faith you tell yourself that you will not die; only the vicious habit that is hurting you will die. You choose, instead, to believe Scripture-that there is joy before you, a kind of resurrection of your life. You assume that you will actually experience greater pleasure by living for God rather than for your stomach. You risk giving up the sin because you believe that, though you will suffer immediate loss, in the long run you will gain something far greater. You will experience the wonder and joy of living in and for God, who is the giver of every good and perfect gift (James 1:17). You remember the words Jesus spoke in the face of temptation: "Man does not live on bread alone" (Luke 4:4). You recall that His true food was to do the will of His Father in heaven (John 4:34). He said of Himself that He is the bread of life, and the bread He feeds us will satisfy us for eternity (John 6:35-59). So you dare to die to the sin of gluttony. That death, you believe, will prepare you to receive a different kind of food that only God can give, the food of obedience, joy, and divine approval.

Jesus had to die on the cross in order to usher in new life. Our stubborn sins must also die if we are to fully experience the joy and freedom of the new life He purchased for us. To live under the cross is to keep the nails handy.

SEEING SUFFERING FROM UNDER THE CROSS

The same cross that has the power to free us from stubborn sin also has the power to transform our perspective of and response to suffering.

In the past few years, I have changed my mind about suffering. I spent decades avoiding it because I considered it an unmitigated evil. When at the age of 40 I found myself in circumstances that forced suffering upon me, I still believed that it was evil. Now I am not so sure. Not that I think the opposite, that suffering is an unqualified good. I believe it is ambiguous, an evil that can lead to good, a plague that God can redeem. Suffering reminds us of our desperate need for God and makes us aware of our dependence on grace. It is like a fire that forces an evacuation of a condemned house that had become a familiar and comfortable place to us. Once we get outside and into the open air, we begin to see what we were missing.

The cross inflicted inconceivable suffering on Jesus. Jesus said that we, too, must bear a cross-which reminds us that we should not expect, and do not deserve, an easy life. Not that we should seek suffering. Even Jesus dreaded the cross and asked His Father to spare Him from it (Lk. 22:41-44). We know, however-again through the cross-that suffering does not have the final word. The resurrection does.

In and of itself, the cross was bad. It serves as undeniable evidence of the evil of the human heart, because people just like us ordered Jesus’ execution and mocked Him while He hung there in agony. But the cross was also good. It accomplished the world’s redemption. We can, therefore, rejoice, knowing that God will use our suffering to change our lives. He will form character in us (Romans 5:3-4), awaken hope in us (Romans 5:5), and work all things together for our good (Romans 8:28).

Two years ago, I wrote a book about suffering. I have received many letters from people who wanted to tell me their own stories of suffering. I have asked permission from a few to tell their stories to others. One woman, Mary, was in a terrible automobile accident when she was only five years old. Her grandmother, aunt, and only sibling - a younger brother - were killed. She, the only survivor, was trapped in that chamber of death for more than an hour before an emergency crew could get her out. It took her parents, who were touring Europe at the time, three days to get home. By the time they arrived, she had retreated into a cocoon of silence that lasted for nearly two years. Gradually, she emerged from her silence and returned to normal, or so it seemed.

Mary forgot the accident, but the memory of it did not forget her. She was married in her 20s and had a baby. When her little son reached the age of her brother at the time of his death, the memories flooded back. She had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized. That experience set her on a journey of pain, healing, and redemption.

She was well on her way to emotional and spiritual health when she wrote to me. She concluded her letter by admitting the obvious: She would never have chosen what had happened to her. "Let this cup pass from me," she would have said to God. But she did not have a choice. She came to realize over time that her suffering had a good effect. It served God’s redemptive purpose. She understood the tension in which Christians must live - the tension between human weakness and God’s strength, life’s afflictions and God’s redemptive plan, catastrophic suffering (which she surely faced) and spiritual victory. She was living what Paul wrote: "We are often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair; there are many enemies, but we are never without a friend; and though badly hurt at times, we are not destroyed. At all times we carry in our mortal bodies the death of Jesus, so that his life also may be seen in our bodies" (2 Corinthians 4:8-10, TEV).

Mary embraced suffering so that God’s life could fill her up. It is a perspective she learned by living under the cross.

SEEING PEOPLE FROM UNDER THE CROSS

When we live under the cross of Christ, we will also see transformation in our relationships.

I used to be concerned about my natural limitations and weaknesses, and I wished that I could be rid of them. I wanted to be strong, independent, and competent. Now I am less concerned about my weaknesses and more concerned about my strengths. My weaknesses remind me of my finitude and need, and they drive me to seek help from something or someone outside myself, namely God. My strengths, on the other hand, often deceive me into thinking I am greater than I really am. My strengths make me feel powerful and superior. I use them to assert myself over others.

The sad, violent, and destructive history of the world tells the story of human strength gone bad. Aryans dominated other races and exterminated millions of Jews (as well as other "undesirable" populations) because they thought Aryans alone embodied pure stock. Whites rule over blacks because they think they are superior to them. One political party mocks or dismisses another because it assumes it has the edge on truth. The worst cruelties done in world history have been done in the name of strength, not weakness.

The cross exposes the danger of human strength, unmasking it for what it is-an attempt to thwart God. It was pharisaical religion and Roman law, both expressions of cultural achievement and strength, that sent Jesus to the cross. Both were the products of enlightened people and sophisticated culture. The best of humanity, as it turned out, did the worst thing imaginable.

The Apostle Paul describes "the dividing wall of hostility" (Ephesians 2:14) that separates one person from another, or one group from another. That dividing wall represents strengths that we use to assert our superiority over others - our wealth, education, gender, ethnicity, party affiliation, culture. The cross tears down those walls. For example, Christ’s death broke down the wall of hostility that separated Jew from Gentile. "He abolished the Jewish Law with its commandments and rules, in order to create out of the two races one new people in union with himself, in this way making peace. By his death on the cross Christ destroyed their enmity; by means of the cross he united both races into one body and brought them back to God" (Ephesians 2:15-16, TEV). Jewish law made Gentiles outsiders and aliens, an unacceptable group of people. The cross exposed the vanity and emptiness of those laws. Peace resulted from the demolition of the wall between Jews and Gentiles. It does that to all walls.

The cross altered Paul’s attitude toward his former opponents. His pharisaical background no longer made him feel superior to others. Instead, he viewed people through the cross. He saw what the cross did to transform them. "No longer, then, do we judge anyone by human standards. Even if at one time we judged Christ according to human standards, we no longer do so. When anyone is joined to Christ, he is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:16-17, TEV). Paul celebrated people, no matter what their background or culture, because the only thing that mattered to him was their relationship with Christ. Thus at the end of his letter to the church in Rome, he gives personal greetings to dozens of people, though the majority were Gentiles, women, or slaves. Paul did not consider what they were in the eyes of culture but who they were through the work of Christ. The cross revolutionized the way he looked at people.

I use Cry, the Beloved Country, a novel written by Alan Paton, in one of the classes I teach. It tells the story of a black South African pastor, Stephen Kumalo, who learns that his wayward son has murdered a white man who had devoted his life to racial reconciliation. The victim’s father, James Jarvis, is not sympathetic with his son’s convictions. In bitterness, he not only mourns the death of his son but also views his martyrdom as a waste of his son’s life.

But Jarvis’ heart begins to change when he reads his son’s writings, for they accuse white Christians such as Jarvis of being hypocrites. Their true religion, his son charges, is not the Christianity of the cross but white supremacy. Christianity exposes the evil of racism and brings reconciliation between enemies. When he sees his prejudice from under the cross, Jarvis is transformed.

When the two grieving fathers finally meet, James Jarvis is able to embrace Stephen Kumalo. The sacrificial death of his son liberates Jarvis to love a man he once considered an enemy. Reaching across racial and cultural barriers, he makes a new friend.

The story is fiction. The principle behind it is truth. The cross effected peace between Jew and Gentile. It has that same power today to reconcile feminist and traditionalist, black and white, liberal and conservative, fundamentalist and Pentecostal, Republican and Democrat. But there is a price to be paid. The cross will deprive us of the right to use our strengths to gain power over others. It forces us into a position of humility and vulnerability. It breaks down the dividing walls of hostility we create to have an advantage over opponents and enemies. It transforms relationships.

THE ONLY WAY TO LIFE

The cross, then, is not simply the means of our salvation, although it is that to be sure! It is also the means of our transformation. It is the way of life we must follow if we want to close the gap between who we are in Christ (as His redeemed children) and how we live from day to day (as sinful humans in the world).

The cross brings good news on two levels. It promises to redeem us; it also promises to change us. Such change is bound to produce pain. It is painful to die to self, to embrace suffering, and to reconcile with opponents and enemies.

But it is worth it. I have followed Christ for many years now, and I am serious about my faith. I am not a perfect man. I still have many problems. But the problems are different now. The foundation upon which I am building my life has become sturdier over time. I have died to some old habits, and it feels very good to be rid of them. I have faced suffering and come through it with a deep sense of the goodness of God and the power of God’s grace. I have made friends with people I would have spurned 20 years ago, yet I have not had to compromise basic convictions to do it. I have lived the Christian faith long enough to understand its incredible power. The cross has provided for me not only a way of salvation but also a way of life. It is the only way to live.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Author GERALD L. SITTSER is an associate professor of religion at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. He is the author of several books, including A Grace Disguised (Zondervan) and Loving across Our Differences (IVP).

©2002 The Navigators All rights reserved.

*

Simply following the course of this world - simply doing what comes naturally - simply doing what everybody else is doing - leads to death.

You may already know about Claude Eatherly. He was one of the World War 2 pilots who dropped the first atomic bom on Hiroshima and Nagasaki [Holwick: He actually was the pilot of the weather plane that gave the go-ahead for the bombing]. He came back from war a changed man. He had become sullen, morose, withdrawn. His friends hardly recognized the miserable man.

Upon his retirement from service in 1947, he refused to accept a pension from the government. He tried to send his medals back to Washington, but his friends prevented him. He felt so guilty he could not sleep nights. He would wake with a start, crying out for the hurting children whose death he had delivered.

He apologized to the mayor of Hiroshima for his actions. He sent money to care for the children that he orphaned. He confessed to the council of the city that it was he who had given the go-ahead order.

He became a drifter, a drinker, a bum. He abandoned himself to liquor and cards, drifting from job to job, always seeking an escape from his overpowering sense of guilt. The United States government, instead of punishing him for what he did, praised him and tried to make a war hero out of him. But whenever Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mentioned in a conversation, he would blush, his face working with emotion, and walk away. He couldn’t stand his guilt. Since no one wanted to punish him for what he had done, he vowed to force someone to punish him for what he would do. He began committing crimes, hoping to be caught. He was, only to be convicted, sentenced - and released, either to freedom or an insane asylum.

Then he suffered the worst indignity of all: Hollywood offered him $100,000 to make a film of his life.

His remorse highlighted the ethical quandary of winning a righteous war that nevertheless cost such a huge toll in human lives. Passing judgment on whether he was a hero for speaking out about his suffering, or a malingerer out to capitalize on his wartime experiences became a way to stake a claim within the debate about nuclear weapons. Eatherly was aware of his predicament, and it grew into a larger question on the use of nuclear weapons that would go on to outlast him and his legacy: “I have been having such difficulty in getting society to recognize the fact of my guilt, which I have long since realized,” Eatherly lamented to Anders [an anti-nuclear activist] in one of his letters. “The truth is that society simply cannot accept the fact of my guilt without at the same time recognizing its own far deeper guilt.”

________

The final paragraph is taken from "The Hiroshima Pilot Who Became a Symbol of Antinuclear Protest," by Anne I. Harrington, August 6, 2020, The New York Times Magazine; .

AN ANCIENT SOLUTION FOR MODERN GUILT

Lonnie Gentry

In June 1984, the Boston Globe reported the story of the tragic drowning of an eight-year-old boy. According to three friends who were with him, he had slipped into the water while hunting for golf balls at the local country club. The friends, thinking he was playing a trick on them, did not attempt a rescue, and the boy drowned. Two years later the truth of the boy's drowning came to light. One of the friends had pushed him into the water. Even though no harm was intended, the friends had decided to protect themselves by keeping the truth a secret. They did not realize the effect guilt would have on their lives.

According to parents and friends, after the drowning the boys suffered emotional instability, became withdrawn and started having nightmares. One "began crying frequently after Chris' death and had to sleep with his mother... Once he cut his head when he ran full-speed into a dumpster." A second was fired from a job "because he would stay home from work on days when he felt 'angry and disgusted' about telling a lie to protect a friend.'" The third started "hearing voices and seeing visions and barely talked to his parents." He later entered a hospital for emotionally disturbed children.

A pretty heavy price to pay for keeping a secret, but guilt often exacts such a high price. Consider the experience of David, King of Israel, when he tried to keep secret the guilt of his sin: "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer." In poetic language David says he suffered, both mentally and physically, from guilt.

Maybe you know the weight of unresolved guilt and identify with the anguish of those three friends and of David.

Is there a solution? There was for David, who not only suffered but also recovered from his guilt. Since his ancient guilt was just as destructive as our modern guilt, his solution should work for us! The promise of scripture is that it will! His solution: Come clean before God.

--THE WORKER, James Avenue, Nashville, TN

Story of NED LANGFORD. In US Army during Spanish-American War; in Philippines. When war was over he went home, but several years later found out he had leprosy. Had to return to Philippines to a leper colony. This is the story of his first visit. He meets Sancho, a boy he had known while he was in the army. True story told in the book, Who Walk Alone.

"My knees went weak. A sweetish, sickening odor came through the open door. For the first time I was going to see what leprosy could do. Here were the heavy cases, and thus far I had seen none as bad as these must be. We went through the door into a hall and from that to the ward. . . .

"I followed the Padre, keeping my eyes resolutely glued to his white robe, not seeing anything else until we stopped beside an iron cot. The figure that lay there was covered to the chin with a sheet.

`He is almost blind.' I was repeating what the Padre told me, repeating it as if it would help me not to see what I beheld.

"Never in my wildest imaginings had I dreamed of horror like this. This--this rotting piece of flesh was not Sancho--Sancho the fine-featured lad I had known, riding the family water buffalo down to the creek for a bath, exercising his father's fighting roosters, playing happily with the other children. . . .

"He had not moved. He lay there and I looked. His eyebrows and eyelashes had gone; his forehead was covered with shiny, reddish welts, some of which were open wounds. The bridge of his nose had fallen in and the nostrils were expanded, frightfully swollen with great festering tubercles. Through those ulcerated cavities the air was sucked audibly into his lungs. His lips, like his nostrils, were thick and enlarged and a paralysis of the mouth was beginning, so that it was set in an immobile, open oval.

"The Padre, watching me, spoke: `Sancho, my son, I have brought someone to see you.'

"The flesh moved. The eyes, opening, turned toward me. He spoke, but I could not understand; his voice was weak and there was a queer and terrifying hoarseness, . . . I was being addressed by the dead. I looked at the Padre.

"`Is that you sergeant?' the Padre interpreted.

"If I could talk, it must be quickly.

"`Yes, Sancho. I came as fast as I could. I was in quarantine, you know.'

"He moved his head. I went on talking. I had to. I reminded him that I had heard that he believed he had infected me. I assured him that it could not be so. I repeated it two or three times.

"He was trying to speak. I stopped to listen. He tried to thank me and to smile. That was the most horrible thing of all. Then a change came over his body, it began to twitch and somehow I knew he was crying and muttering he had infected Carita. The Padre touched my arm.

"`Come,' he said. As we went a nurse came to the bed. Through her soothing tones I could hear Sancho's moans, pitiful, weak, helpless, hopeless. . . .

"The tears were coursing down my cheeks. Mercifully they blinded me so that I did not wholly see the figures in each bed, but I saw enough. As we neared the door, a man was sitting by his bed. He had no hands; there were bandages where the ends of the stumps came. One foot was uncovered, to be bandaged. The whole thing was a mass of festering flesh. A figure in white was kneeling, just by. It rose at our approach--it was a woman, Sister Victoria. She smiled sweetly at us. She had the face of a saint.

"`Good morning, Father. Good morning, Mr. Ferguson.'

"She was going to bandage that foot! I dashed past the Padre out into the underbrush where I was violently ill." (Who Walk Alone, pp. 123-125)

Pig & Sheep were walking down a wet, muddy, slippery road. Both slipped, fell into a muddy ditch. Pig: stayed there. Sheep: Got up, shook herself off, went on her way. When Christians fall, they get back up--they don't just lay there! That's what it means to "walk in the light as he is in the light."

The story is told of a principal of a small middle school who had a problem with a few of the older girls starting to use lipstick. When applying it in the bathroom they would then press their lips to the mirror and leave lip prints.

Before it got out of hand he thought of a way to stop it. He gathered all the girls together that wore lipstick and told them he wanted to meet with them in the ladies' room at 2 pm. They gathered at 2 pm and found the principal and the school custodian waiting for them.

The principal explained that it was becoming a problem for the custodian to clean the mirror every night. He said he felt the ladies did not fully understand just how much of a problem it was and he wanted them to

witness just how hard it was to clean.

The custodian then demonstrated. He took a long brush on a handle out of a box. He then dipped the brush in the nearest toilet, moved to the mirror and proceeded to remove the lipstick.

That was the last day the girls pressed their lips on the mirror!!!

I know......that's disgusting!!!! But sometimes it takes something disgusting for us to recognize the seriousness of what we have done. Like my sins, for example. I'm often tempted to take them lightly

("they're not really so bad"). Sometimes I need to be shocked by the what happened on the cross because of my sin. The spit running down Jesus' face, the blood gushing out, the excruciating agony of spikes

being driven into his flesh. It's not a pretty sight. In fact, it's disgusting! But it is in that disgusting sight that I find the strength to turn from the sin I may be contemplating.

"Then they struck him on the head with a reed and spat on him; and bowing the knee they worshiped him. And when they had mocked him, they took the purple off him, put his own clothes on him, and led him out to

crucify him." (Mark 15:19-20). (Alan Smith)

If we fail to be radical against sin we will drift because sin is deceitful. Paul Harvey tells how an Eskimo

kills a wolf. Coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze. Adds another layer, then another, and another ... until blade is completely concealed by frozen blood. Fixes knife in ground, blade up. Wolf's keen sense attracts him and he sniffs and takes a lick...then another. Licks faster & faster. Feverishly. Doesn't notice when blade is exposed. Doesn't realize he's being satisfied by his own warm blood. Bleeds to death!

Several yrs. ago a man robbed a convenience store clerk. Gave her a $10.00 bill to get her to open cash registered. It worked! He got everything in drawer--total of $4.34--and left the $10.00 bill! Lost $5.66!

A few yrs. ago before the breakup of the Soviet Union, a 19 yr. old West German boy flew a small airplane across the Soviet border, across hundreds of miles of Soviet territory, and landed in Moscow in Red Square.

Immediately arrested and imprisoned by embarrassed Communists. As he awaited trial a reporter from Newsweek asked him if he ever thought about what would happen when he landed. He said: "You know, I didn't think about that very much; I was so caught up in the challenge of it." (From Bob Russell, TAKE COMFORT, Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing, 1991, p. 119).

"Conscience," said an Indian, "is a three-cornered thing in my heart that stands still when I am good, but when I am bad, it turns around and the corners hurt a lot. If I keep on doing wrong, the corners wear off and it does not hurt anymore."

--Construction Digest

The word translated “evil desire” (Gk, epithymia) at James 1:14 simply means desire, craving, or taste. Whether to translate it with a negative connotation as here (cf. 2 Pet. 2:10) or with a positive one (cf. Luke 22:15) is determined by the word’s context. In this text, it points negatively to those times and places where human beings allow our desires to “drag away” and “entice” us. Interestingly, these two words are fishing terms! They refer to baiting hooks and yanking in a day’s catch.

Can you imagine a big bass swimming through calm waters with his school? He is minding his own business, flexing his gills for oxygen, and headed to a familiar feeding ground. Then he catches sight of a luscious night crawler! It’s well below the water line and moving ever so slightly and slowly. It’s a free lunch waiting to be taken! But the fish has to be careful not to tip its presence and alert another in the school to his easy meal. So he nonchalantly swims in its direction, sees it is even fatter than he thought, and makes a quick dart to gobble it up - intending to fall right back into ranks. The instant he darts and gobbles, though, he feels a jerk and is unceremoniously pulled from the water!

Before he can figure out what has happened, he is flopping about on the bottom of a boat and gasping for oxygen - about to be lunch rather than get lunch. Just a few minutes earlier, a man sitting in a boat had carefully threaded that night crawler onto a sharp hook. He knew better than to throw a bare hook over the side of his boat. He would catch only what he might happen to snag off the bottom - an old boot or clump of grass, maybe, but no bass. So he knows to be crafty. He will have to use a bait that is attractive to the fish. His goal, though, is not to feed the fish but to lure, entice, and snare him. He wills to end the fish’s freedom and to put him in his hot skillet. But he does it by enticing him with a bait that appeals to one of his most basic needs.

The same strategy works with those of us who are human - all too human, at times. We have certain fundamental needs that are in no way evil. Perhaps it is a need for intimacy or achievement or security. But how shall we satisfy the need? There are wholesome and holy satisfactions for it in this world created by a God who is neither tempted to evil nor able to tempt us to evil.

Now that Satan is in the picture, it is not hard to imagine him baiting hooks that will snare and destroy us with appeals to these basic desires. He’ll dangle the prospect of immediate intimacy and hook you with long-term emptiness. He knows how to lure you with a shortcut to achievement and success that will hook you with a criminal record or - and this is much worse! - teach you that cheating or saying whatever you must to get what you want can move you to an outcome that pleases you.

Making SURE His Sins Found Him Out:

Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn't control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words, "Give me all your money or I'll shoot," the man shouted, "That's not what I said!"

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, a past president, Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:

On March 23, 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. The deceased had jumped from the top of a ten story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to that effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased were aware that a safety net had been installed just below at the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

Ordinarily, Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out of commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended" is still defined as committing suicide. That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below at street level, but that his suicide attempt probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.

The room on the ninth floor from whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously, and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus. When one intends to kill subject A, but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with the murder charge, the man and his wife were both adamant. They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had not intended to murder her. Therefore, the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident, that is, the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus. Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was in fact Ronald Opus.

He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

--via The Winfield Newsletter, Winfield, AL

[Holwick: Alas, according to the official site, this is just an urban legend. I was THIS close to using it in a sermon, too. See http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/legends1999-07.html]

The following incident won the runner-up prize in the 1999 Darwin Awards:

A Vermont native, Ronald Demuth, found himself in a difficult position. While touring the Eagle’s Rock African Safari (Zoo) with a group of thespians from St. Petersburg, Russia, Mr. Demuth went overboard to show them one of America’s many marvels. He demonstrated the effectiveness of “Crazy Glue”... the hard way.

Apparently, Mr. Demuth wanted to demonstrate just how good the adhesive was, so he put about 3 ounces of the adhesive in the palms of his hands, and jokingly placed them on the buttocks of a passing rhino. The rhino, a resident of the zoo for the past thirteen years, was not initially startled as it has been part of the petting exhibit since its arrival as a baby.

However, once it became aware of its being involuntarily stuck to Mr. Demuth, it began to panic and ran around the petting area wildly making Mr. Demuth an unintended passenger.

“Sally [the rhino] hasn’t been feeling well lately. She had been very constipated. We had just given her a laxative and some depressants to relax her bowels, when Mr. Demuth played his juvenile prank,” said James Douglass, caretaker. During Sally’s tirade two fences were destroyed, a shed wall was gored, and a number of small animals escaped. Also, during the stampede, three pygmy goats and one duck were stomped to death.

As for Demuth, it took a team of medics and zoo caretakers’ to remove his hands from her buttocks. First, the animal had to be captured and calmed down. However, during this process the laxatives began to take hold and Mr. Demuth was repeatedly showered with over 30 gallons of rhino diarrhea. “It was tricky. We had to calm her down, while at the same time shield our faces from being pelted with rhino dung. I guess you could say that Mr. Demuth was into it up to his neck. Once she was under control, we had three people with shovels working to keep an air passage open for Mr. Demuth. We were able to tranquilize her and apply a solvent to remove his hands from her rear,” said Douglass. “I don’t think he’ll be playing with Crazy Glue for a while.”

What in the world was Mr. Demuth thinking???? I believe it is safe to say that he wasn’t thinking at all! Lest I be too harsh and critical, though, I have to remember all the times in my life when I have “attached” myself to something sinful. The results were just as disastrous, and I have often found myself wondering, “What was I thinking?” The truth is, I really wasn’t thinking at all.

That’s the very nature of sin. We “attach” ourselves, thinking we can always quit whenever we want to. We don’t even consider what the consequences will be. I appreciate this quote by an unknown author: “Sin will take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you more than you want to pay.”

I almost didn’t use the story above because of it being so disgusting. But then I realized that it is nothing compared to the disgusting things that sin leads us to do in our own lives. Perhaps we need to be reminded every now and then of just how disgusting the results of sin can be.

“But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.” (James 1:14-15).

To what (or whom) have you attached yourself?

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SIN?

Thomas Eaves

1) Stealing is now--Kleptomania

2) Adultery is now--Trial marriage

3) Sex is now--A sexual relationship

4) Gambling is now--An investment for the future

5) Fornication is now--Living together arrangement

6) Lying is now--Freedom of expression

7) Homosexuality is now--An alternative lifestyle

8) Cursing is now--Colorful speech

9) Abortion is now--Birth control

10) Euthanasia is now--Showing mercy

11) Nakedness (immodest apparel) is now--Styles

12) Drunkenness is now--Alcoholism

A school boy asked his father, "If you count a cow's tail a leg, how many legs does the cow have?" The father replied, "five." The boy said, "No, because calling a cow's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."

Call sin by any terminology you desire, it is still a sin and sin will separate you from God (Isaiah 59:1-2) and the pay day of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

--via A BETTER WAY, Spring,

The Lesson of the Door Knob

While playing golf recently an old friend related a story from his childhood memory bank about his grandmother. She raised chickens and would occasional have problems with snakes getting into her chicken house and eating the eggs. Being a resourceful woman, she would place a white porcelain door knob in the nest with the eggs. When the snake would come by for his next meal, he would mistakenly choose the door knob instead of an egg. Unable to crush the door knob during the consumption process as he did the eggs, the snake would apparently choke and eventually die. Within a few days my friend's grandmother would find the dead snake, retrieve the decoy egg, and save it for the next unsuspecting and uninvited dinner guest. I do not remember what prompted the telling of the story (though I think it might have had something to do with my golf ball ending up in an area where snakes were likely to be found), I do remember one of the applications that came to mind: You need to be careful of what you swallow.

There are a number of biblical examples of that lesson. Although the roles were reversed in the garden, when the serpent convinced Adam and Eve that "You will not surely die" if they ate the fruit of the "forbidden tree, they needed the lesson of the door knob. As David relaxed on his rooftop, peering into Bathsheba bathing area, he should have considered the lesson of the door knob. When Joseph was being tempted by Potiphar's wife, he obviously remembered the lesson of the door knob and ran away from the tempting situation as fast as he could. When Judas was taking the payoff from those who wanted to kill Jesus, he should have remembered the lesson of the door knob. As Peter was made his bold claims of his devotion to Jesus, he would have done well to consider the lesson of the door knob.

The same is true for us.

The middle-aged husband who has become bored with his life and "innocently"agrees to have dinner with his young and attractive work associate would do well to remember the lesson of the door knob.

The young mother and wife who has grown tired of being at home with the kids and decides to "get out and live a little" needs to remember the lesson of the door knob.

The teenager who is feeling that his parents "don't know anything about real life" and wants to "experience it all" needs to consider the lesson of the door knob.

The young executive trapped climbing the ladder of success faster than he ever imagined needs to slow down and reflect upon the lesson of the door knob.

The young man fresh out of school who has decided he wants to go into the military so he can "see the world" only to find himself on world tour like he never imagined somewhere in a strange land may be reciting the lesson of the door knob.

The newlyweds trying establish themselves in the community by going deep into debt for their "dream house" and their "dream car" and their "ideal family" need to consider the lesson of the door knob.

During this time of year we see a lot of things that we feel absolutely "we must have," until we get them. Then we may wonder why. Why did we not remember the lesson of the door knob?

Many things look shiny and appetizing on the outside. But, when you look inside they have an incredible way of not being what we thought we were getting. The automobile. The career move. The relationship. Once we try to peal away the shell, or the shell will not crack, we realize we did not get what we had expected.

It can happen in our quest for spirituality too: "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophies, which depends on human traditon and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." (Colossians 2:8, NIV)

This week, we would all do well to make sure that the egg we are about to swallow is really an egg. Door knobs, not matter how much they may look like an egg, are not healthy. So, be careful what you swallow.

A report by an international news agency reveals just how bad a day some people can have. Recently, while renovating a building in the historic part of Natchez, Mississippi, masons found the fully-clothed skeletal remains of a man who has been missing for more than 15 years. His remains were found stuck in the chimney of an old, historic, Mississippi building; a structure dating from before the Civil War. The man disappeared without a trace in 1985. At that time, a gift shop was a tenant in the building. Investigators discovered the man had a police record - as a burglar.

The Bible tells us our sins will find us out. In fact the Bible itself tells us the Word is Christ and that, “there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #9619]

In 1520 one man brought small pox to Mexico, where it cost three and

one half million deaths. Another man, who landed in England in 1348,

was responsible for spreading the black death, "Bubonic Plague," the

greatest killer Great Britain has ever known.

Likewise, one inconsistent or disloyal church member can hurt the

whole church. Listen to Paul: "Whether one member suffer, all members

suffer with it; or one member be honored, all themselves rejoice with

it" (1 cor. 12:26).

It does not take many bullets from a rifle to kill a man. One

bullet can kill. It does not take many deadly diseases to bring death

to the human body. One deadly disease can bring death. It does not

take the breakage of many bones to cripple the hand. One broken bone

can cripple.

The Bible teaches, "One sinner destroyeth much good"

(\reference{Ecc. 9:18}{Ecclesiastes 9:18}).

- Robert G. Lee, SERMONIC LIBRARY, p. 46.