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The siren call of sin
Any one of us, who has watched a loved one struggle with chronic disease or battle cancer, using the full arsenal of surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation, or who have endured these struggles ourselves, know how relentless pain is. We know how it gnaws at you, how it pursues you when you try to sleep, eat, communicate -- breath.
My first intimate experience watching someone endure the indignities endemic to the pursuit of restored health was with my elderly neighbor, Bea.
We first made her acquaintance trying to help her corral her little dog, Poncho. He was quite the escape artist, and sent her on many a merry chase. Soon enough, Bea was a part of our every day life, sharing her stories, her recipes, her advice and her heart with each one of us.
She had a lovely flower garden and when winter tarried, she would champ at the bit for that first warm day of spring.
Her vision wasn't good, but she never let it keep her down, and as soon as winter relented, she hurried out to the garden, garden fork in hand, to turn the just thawing soil. She hadn't been out there long when my phone rang. It seems that when she turned the fork, a clod of dirt clung to one of the tines. She looked closer, suspecting she had more than a clod of dirt. Could I come quick and look? I dashed over and sure enough, in her impatience to help the ground warm, she had impaled a hibernating toad.
She felt terrible, but took it philosophically, and her garden that year was more spectacular than ever. I think she worked extra hard, trying to make it up to Mr. Toad's kin, I suppose.
The following summer, everything changed when she was diagnosed with throat cancer. Six weeks of daily radiation was the prescribed front line of defense. They painted her neck and throat, providing a target for the radiation and she dutifully reported for treatment, five days a week, day after day.
Though she had more than 70 years of life behind her, these six weeks were the longest weeks of her life. Little by little, the treatment began to take things from her. Her strength and hence, her garden. Her ability to speak without pain. Her ability to swallow more than a pea-sized morsel of food she could no longer taste. One day, on our way home from another exhausting treatment, she whispered, "I just don't think it's worth it."
I did my best to encourage her, noting that she only had a few treatments left, promising to walk with her every step of the way. She did complete the treatments, and we celebrated as best we could, but less than a week later, she was gone. Weary and discouraged, she just slipped away.
I've seen similar battles waged throughout the years, some up close and very personal, others from a distance, but in all but a few instances, the end was the same. Worn out by the relentless pain, the diminishing quality of life, the financial burdens and worries, so many simply grew too tired to fight for one more day, and succumbed to death's inevitable call.
The enemy, who brought death into our world, uses the same tactics with sin and temptation. He has found this tactic especially effective in sins of the flesh, though it applies across the board. Men and women, who fight the good fight of fidelity day after day, temptation after temptation, sometimes just throw up their hands and indulge their lust, battle worn. The alcoholic, longing to be free from the chains of addiction, will pick up that bottle just to silence that ceaseless mental nagging. All who succumb end up laying all that they've worked for, even fought for, on the altar of sacrifice.
Oh there are any number of justifications offered, any number of rationalizations concocted, but it is what it is -- a failure to flee temptation one more time; a spirit simply grown weary of the relentless siren call of sin. There isn't an honest man or woman out there who hasn't endured these sin battles in one form or another and succumbed, at one time or another, doing the very thing they hate.
Sin is compounded, however, whenever we lay at least some of the responsibility on God himself, making him complicit in our wretchedness. Some, abandoning hearth and home for an illicit affair, use the argument that since "God wants me to be happy and this makes me happy" its OK; or some exercise the excuse recently offered by Ray Boltz, in announcing his decision to engage in an active homosexual lifestyle, "God made me this way."
I have been a fan of Boltz for a good many years. One of the reasons why his music appealed to me is because it mirrored so many of my own feelings and my own struggles with sin. His words, in the song "Feel the Nails" cut my soul to the quick, as I too wondered, "Does he still feel the nails, every time I fail? Does he hear the crowd cry 'crucify' again and again?" I often joined him in singing, "I want to live all you died for me to be" from a song by the same name, because that too is my heart's desire.
So for Ray to give heed to the world's opinion on homosexuality (which has been refuted by the mapping of the human genome), for some in the church to agree with that opinion and give license to that sin, every truth now becomes suspect in their eyes.
Much like the believers who have fallen for the Santa Claus gospel (God wants me to be happy) or the Sugar Daddy gospel (God wants me to be rich), Ray has fallen for the "Yes, God can make a mistake" gospel. May he quickly turn and be restored, if not to his wife of more than 30 years and their four children, then to the Lord --who is brokenhearted by his sin, but still powerful to save.
Death is inevitable, because sin brought it into the world. Still, it is a heartbreak when someone gives up the fight to live. Sin, however, is no longer inevitable, making it all the more the tragic when someone gives up the fight for righteousness and gives into the lie.
"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" Romans 6:1, 2 and following (NIV)
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