In every culture, there are things, actions and habits, that people commonly agree will not benefit anyone. These things have been called “taboos” in the past. There are things that will not only prevent human flourishing on every level, but will eventually destroy peoples and cultures from the inside out.

Almighty God has infinite love for humanity. “God loves the world (all people are included in the word “world”, even those who refuse His love and live with hatred toward Him in their hearts) that He gave His one and only Son, to the end that all who would believe in Him would not perish, but have eternal life. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world (to damn it eternally) but to save the world through Him.” John 3:16-17

God calls “sin”, the things that separate us from the wholeness of Life that is only found in Him. The word translated “sin” in the New Testament is an archery term “hamartia”. It means “missing the mark”. There are things that are right and there are things that are almost right.

Even good things can become twisted and idolatrous when a person, household, city or culture rely on them as the “giver and sustainer” of life. Education is good; intellectual pride and arrogance are oppressive and self-centered. Human sexuality was created by God and the context for it being the fulfilling, uniting; the covenant blessing it was designed for, is in God’s institution of marriage between one man and one woman for life. Vestiges of its goodness still exist where human sexuality is twisted and pleasure become an end in itself. Greed is self-consuming and becomes a tool of oppression and bondage.

Sin takes what is good and does all it can to usurp the place in a person’s life that belongs to God alone. Sin can never save a life, restore a life, bless a life, rescue a life, give meaning a purpose that fills a life.

Sin will produce death in every heart. A lifestyle of choosing to mock, ignore or abandon God’s clear Word warning us against going our own way”, rather than following Him into greater and greater life, will kill. Sin kills relationships making people objects of self-gratification. Sin so mars the human heart and mind that people end having no grasp of why they are here on the planet. Sin destroys the functioning of a conscience.

The Cherokee Indians saw the human conscience as a many-bladed wheel in the human heart. Going against God cause the wheel to turn and cut with conviction and remorse. They said, however, there will be those who continue to go against the heart of God and over time the blades wear down so the wheel spins pain-free, ensuring the decay of the human soul.

Sin is much like leprosy. Over time, habitual rejection of God’s love and truth, a human heart becomes numb. What would have shocked and horrified 100 years ago no longer bring any pangs of remorse. Leprosy is a disease that kills nerve cells to the point that there is no feeling in one’s limbs. An ankle can be broken and walked on for days until gangrene sets in, dooming the diseased one to physical death. Sin produces a death that will separate us from all goodness for eternity. 

God calls out through His Word for us to confess, turn from and abandon all sin. He promises us the strength and power of a new life to be able to repent.

Those who stand in congregations where they are supposed to speak for God but instead affirm and bless what God says will destroy us (be that greed, hatred, selfish ambition, narcissism, envy, arrogant pride, jealousy, sexual immorality, gossip, resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness) deceive people, telling them that a loving God doesn’t care what we do, if it makes us “feel happy”.

Lamentations 2:14, “The visions of your prophets were false and worthless; they did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The prophecies they gave you were false and misleading.”

Jeremiah 23:16-18, 21-22, “This is what the Lord Almighty says: 16 “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. 17 They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’ 18 But which of them has stood in the council of the Lord to see or to hear his word?  Who has listened and heard his word? 21 I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied. 22 But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds.”

The Lord God has never denied humanity joy and fulfillment, passion and purpose, love and belonging, wholeness and peace. He has simply and clearly stated that it doesn’t exist outside Him. He has come to restore us to Himself. He has done what we could never have done. The gift of eternal life, a new heart and a new spirit and a way of living that transforms and changes us to actually, finally to become full human. 

Take God at His Word. Believe Him and His love for you. Accept and receive the gift He has already made available to all.