Deadly What?

For those who follow Christ, we are in the middle of a season we call Lent. It is a season of preparation and self-reflection. Not counting Sundays (as they are mini-Easter celebrations year round), Lent lasts for 40 days, beginning with Ash Wednesday and running up to Easter. We start with Ash Wednesday because it reminds believers that we are only human, and fallen humans at that. We slow down long enough to think seriously about the ways we push ourselves away from God and then we ask God to forgive us. Because God is full of compassion and love, we are forgiven and called to “go and sin no more.” Before returning home, a pastor or priest places a cross of ash on our forehead to remind us we are “made from dust and to dust we shall return.” It is only God who rescues us from sin and death, reunites with us once again through Jesus, and offers the promise of everlasting life together. This year, my faith family wrote our sins on slips of paper and as we left the Worship Center, walked outside and dropped our slips into a burning fire. As we stood and watched each one turn from paper to ash, it was an amazing image of how God turns our sin from burning reality to nothing but ashes that are blown away in the wind.

Each Sunday throughout Lent, our faith community is looking inward at the sins we struggle with. Seven that stand out among all others have been referred to for generations as the “Seven Deadly Sins”. It’s quite a list, including lust, anger, pride, sloth, gluttony, envy, and greed. I must admit, I have struggled with the entire list from time to time. That’s what makes it so deadly. These sins can slip in and out of our lives in such sneaky ways, that many of us don’t even recognize them. But don’t get complacent. They’ll literally kill you!

Lust, for example, has taken many a Christ-follower to the depths of hell. Men have struggled with pornography, never realizing how they have taken away their own wives’ dignity. Too many guys see a little sneak peeking as totally harmless. Oh contraire, my friend! When the men in our lives are drawn to look at pictures of women in compromising or helpless poses, our society moves step by step away from the holiness and honor we were created on. Instead of being set apart for God to use in spectacular ways to love and change a world, we fall down a slippery slope of thinking our daily existence is wrapped around nothing more than self-centered gratification. Personal relationships become strained and guilt slithers up our legs and squeezes off true life and freedom to be who God created each of us to be.

I speak from experience. As a child who was sexually abused for more than ten years, I was surrounded by self-gratification. I can only wish that my perpetrators would have stopped at least once per year to bow before their God and ask earnestly, “Show me my heart, O God. Open the deepest, darkest crevices and remove all that distances me from you.” Instead, they continued in their own dark little world, reading pornography, taking lust-filled images into their very soul, and then allowing that darkness to direct their decisions to take the dignity away from another: a small and innocent child.

I speak to you women out there too. We get drawn into lust-filled cycles, as well. We are falsely told on every magazine cover that short skirts, low necklines, and 6 inch spike heels will make us a woman. Our nurturing spirits and compassionate hearts make us women. Don’t fall for the media driven crap we, and our daughters/granddaughters, are being handed in every check-out line across America. Feel free to turn the magazines around backward. Maybe the store owners will get the message and remove that smut from our, and our sons/grandsons, eye line.