Flee The Devil And He Will Resist...

I was thinking the other day about the way we deal with sin. Most folks say when you have a sin problem, you should run away - like Joseph and Potipher's wife. They make it sound like the solution to sin is to avoid it. The only problem occurs when the sin is inside.

So how does that make you better?

Let's take a hypothetical situation. Two believers have, or potentially have, great temptation in the sexual area (yeah, that's hypothetical cause it NEVER happens in real life!). So, in order to avoid sin, they avoid deep, true relationships.

Does that sound weird to anyone else? In order not to sin, these two people are doing the exact opposite of what Jesus prayed we'd do as he headed toward the cross. His prayer was that we'd be one. All of us. The night of his betrayal, one of the most pressing things on his mind was that those who followed him would be ONE, not that those who followed him would never have sex...or any sexual sin. In fact, he didn't even talk about sex that night.

You would never know this by the way most believers act. If we wrote the Bible today, we'd have Jesus telling the Apostles to make sure their daughters dress modestly and their sons never look at pornography. He'd tell them that belly buttons and sticky shirts were of the devil and that anyone who had sex outside of marriage should be considered slightly less valuable than those who have not and then he'd conclude by telling us that no single person should ever, EVER have any physical contact with someone of the opposite sex.

Whatever...It seems to me that Jesus might be more inclined to suggest you bring your sin to the light in community and deal with it, so that you don't have live in fear of it until you die.

Besides, you'll probably have to deal with sometime anyway - somehow you have to become the kind of person who could inhabit heaven...a person who can bend the grass there.

Resist the devil and he will flee; flee the devil and he will resist...and resist...and resist...for the rest of your life.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 4/15/2004 01:32:00 PM