Addicted to sin
By Tom Quiner
“It’s all good.”
This is one of those phrases I hear these days.
Or … “I’m okay, you’re okay.”
Or … “It’ll all work out in the end.”
At their essence, these catch phrases suggest that sin isn’t that big a deal.
It’s all good. No, it’s not.
I’m okay, you’re okay. No, I’m not nor are you.
It’ll all work out in the end. No it won’t, not if we don’t seek the cure for our addiction to sin.
And there is but one cure: the cross.
I know, today’s Secular Humanists like to claim that all religions are good and each have their own truths.
No, that is not correct. There is one Truth: either Jesus was the Christ, the son of God, who bought our freedom by dying on the cross for our sins and destroying death by rising from the dead … or he wasn’t, and didn’t.
Specifically, if Jesus didn’t rise after dying on the cross, Christianity has no meaning. It is a sham religion, and sin isn’t a big deal.
Bishop Robert Barron comments on a new book simply titled, “The Crucifixion.” It is written by Episcopal priest, Fleming Rutledge. The commentary grabs us by the shirt and shakes us to our core by emphasizing that the cross was a very big deal.
Protestants and Catholics alike need to have the message knocked into our heads time and time again: the cross isn’t a nice symbol or pretty piece of jewelry. It is ugly. It is horrible. It represents evil. But it also represents victory of love over hate, hope over despair, salvation vs. death.
Invest nine minutes in your faith. Watch the video. You may even want to get Ms. Rutledge’s book.
I was at a Pompeii exhibit in Montreal, which was very interesting. The kids and I like to rent the audio tour headsets for these things. Thank heavens I ran into the erotica exhibit before they did so I could have us skip to another section. What bothered me was not so much the art- there were only a few items on display- but the audio description of he art.
The narrator explained that we have to understand that the Romans had different attitudes about sex and that it wasn’t until Christianity came along that people began to have inhibitions about sex and to view it as something shameful. First of all, I took offense at the blatant lie that Christians think of sex, which God himself designed, as shameful. It’s not true.
Next, the narrator described how normal it was for all people to perform sexual acts with all different people, and that it was even normal for children to be involved. So we are supposed to look at these acts with the understanding that they were a normal part of a thriving society.
Sin has been with us from the beginning, and to normalize deplorable acts is to fight for the cause of evil. Refusing to recognize evil when it looks us right in the face is to go against God and his design and will for our lives.
For further insight on the topic, I recommend part 3 in the book ‘Mere Christianity’ by C. S. Lewis. This world is not functioning in the way that God intended. We must redeem ourselves one person and one act at a time. And that doesn’t mean we look the other way and pretend that everything is okay.
Yeah, the Romans were really great. If they didn’t want a baby, they’d just abandon it in the streets. Mike Aquilina wrote a great book called “Yours is the Church, How Catholicism Shapes the World.” He itemizes how “great” Roman life was, and the profound, positive effect Christianity had on them. Thanks for the tip on Lewis. I shall read that chapter. And thanks for sharing your experience at the museum. Karen and I had a similar experience at the Cincinnati Museum of Modern Art.
Oh that looks like a good book. I’ve added it to my Amazon cart.
Sadly, I wouldn’t even think of stepping into a museum of modern art with children. I would be too afraid of the inevitable land mines. The Montreal museum was of fine art. Still, I have found that one can never be too careful.
Your instincts are spot on. There was no a single piece in the Cincinnati Museum of Modern Art that was uplifting. The art diminished the dignity of man, not uplift it.