The resilient prevalence of sin in the heart of a Christian...

Often, when I am sharing the gospel with people, I get the same batch of questions and responses when we start talking about sin. There are two points that always seem to cause the greatest difficulty with people.

The first difficult point is that people are always disturbed and somewhat aggitated/angered when I give a practical illustration of how 'good works' are not meritorious...i.e. doing 'good deeds' doesn't store up some sort of 'brownie points' that, if found in enough abundance, force the hand of God to admit a person into heaven. I usually illustrate this with the "Mother Theresa and Hitler stand equally before God as sinners deserving of hell" (though I always explain that their sins were not equal in scope or intensity). People really don't like the idea that a 'saint' like Mother Theresa would ever be put in a parallelism with Adolf Hitler.

The second difficult point is when you catch them in the James 2:10/Matthew 5:28/Luke 18:18-19/Romans 3:9-20 snare (i.e. everyone has broken God's moral law, including you and Mother Theresa). Everyone always thinks that they're a good person (see Luke 18:18-19 and Romans 3:9-20), even though almost everyone I've ever talked to will admit that they've broken at least one commandment (James 2:10 and Matthew 5:28...just on the grounds of Matthew 5:28 the entire world, short of a few tibetan eunuchs, stands condemned). Of course, when you questions them on this, they always judge themselves by the most extreme standards. If I had a dime for the "I've like never stolen a learjet" or "I've never told like a serious lie" lines (a serious lie is apparently is something along the lines of covering up for a serial killer or deceiving the pope), I'd buy controlling interest in Microsoft just to tick off Paul Allen.

Ironically, I got a look into my own regenerate heart yesterday and was pretty disturbed. I won't get into specifics, but I was sexually tempted by a person and it caught me so off guard that I was stunned when I caught myself entertaining the idea, even if for a split second. I caught myself after a moment and ran like Joseph, but MAN! My heart is wicked. wicked. WICKED. It's astounding how sin sometimes sneaks up on you like a Supra while you're jogging on the 401. One moment you're listening to your i-pod and *BAM!!*...you're dead. No warning. No time to react. By the time the light from the high beams is processed on your retinas all you see is blackness. Sin is crouching at my door...it desires to slay me (Gen 4:6). I gotta get back in a war mindset. Gotta get back in the fight mode. I've been slacking way too much in this. Just sayin...Hey! Freaking kill that sin dangit! Praying for bloodlust,

The Armchair Theologian