Wise Words on Sin

"How Could He Do Such A Thing?"
No man chooses evil because it is evil, he only mistakes it for happiness...
Mary Wollstonecraft

“Hate The Real Root To Your Problems”
Fear nothing so much, blame and abhor nothing so much as thy vices and sins, which ought to displease thee more than any losses whatsoever.

"Satan's Secret: The Misery of Wickedness"
If it be true that men are miserable because they are wicked, it is likewise true that many are wicked because they are miserable.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Strap On Your Boots"
...the "war" that I have in mind when I speak of a "wartime mind-set" or a "wartime lifestyle" is not being fought along geographical lines. It is being fought first along the line between good and evil in every human heart, especially the hearts of Christians where Christ has staked his claim, and where he means to be totally triumphant. The "war" is being fought along the line between sin and righteousness in every family. It is being fought along the line between truth and falsehood in every school . . . between justice and injustice in every legislature . . . between integrity and corruption in every office . . . between love and hate in every ethnic group . . . between pride and humility in every sport . . . between the beautiful and the ugly in every art . . . between right doctrine and wrong doctrine in every church . . . and between sloth and diligence between coffee breaks. It is not a waste to fight the battle for truth and faith and love on any of these fronts.
John Piper

"For The Cause"
Evil has more martyrs than good does.
Raymond Brunk

"Moral Poverty"
It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.
Mother Teresa

“Broken Cisterns"
My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters,
To hew for themselves cisterns,
Broken cisterns
That can hold no water.
Jeremiah 2:13

They have affronted their God, by turning their back upon him, as if He were not worthy their notice: “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, in whom they have an abundant and constant supply of all the comfort and relief they stand in need of, and have it freely.” God is their fountain of life, (Ps 36:9) There is in Him an all-sufficiency of grace and strength; all our springs are in Him and our streams from Him; to forsake Him is, in effect, to deny this. He has been to us a bountiful benefactor, a fountain of living waters, over-flowing, ever-flowing, in the gifts of his favour; to forsake Him is to refuse to acknowledge his kindness and to withhold that tribute of love and praise which his kindness calls for...If we make an idol of any creature-wealth, or pleasure, or honour, -if we place our happiness in it, and promise ourselves the comfort and satisfaction in it which are to be had in God only, -if we make it our joy and love, our hope and confidence, we shall find it a cistern, which we take a great deal of pains to hew out and fill, and at the best it will hold but a little water, and that dead and flat, and soon corrupting and becoming nauseous. Nay, it is a broken cistern, that cracks and cleaves in hot weather, so that the water is lost when we have most need of it, (Job 6:15). Let us therefore with purpose of heart cleave to the Lord only, for whither else shall we go?
He has the words of eternal life.
Matthew Henry

"Gobbling Poison"
...spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison"
CS Lewis

"Pardoning The Bad"
"Pardoning the Bad, is injuring the Good."
Benjamin Franklin

“Forbidden Hurt And Commanded Benefits”
Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because it is hurtful. Nor is a duty beneficial because it is commanded, but it is commanded because it is beneficial
Benjamin Franklin

"Change Your Will. Loose Your Chains"
My will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust, habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity. These were the links which together formed what I have called my chain, and it held me fast in the duress of servitude.
St. Augustine

"Tinsel Town"
Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.
Erica Jong

"Mistakes"
More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying they had made them
Anonymous

"Go Green"
There is a lot of talk about going green and loving the environment. But the Bible says the Lord himself will “make the land a desolation” (Isaiah 13:9). He will do it not because our carbon footprint is too big but because our world is wicked and needs destroying (see Noah’s story). While it is true that God Himself is the one who told us to take good care of the trees and seas He made (Genesis 1:28-30), He is prepared to wreck his own garden because of our filthiness.

We should not imagine that He would do this gleefully. It makes the Lord grieve. We get a peek into His emotions in a little exchange between Him and Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch. Baruch thinks he has troubles, just because his personal ambitions are about to amount to nothing when Israel gets overrun by enemies to the north. The Lord tells him to try this on for size:

“Behold, what I have built, I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up — that is, the whole land. And do you seek great things for yourself?” (Jeremiah 45)... I have a glimpse of how God must have felt...God has a heart that grieves when He has to execute judgment:

“How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender . . .” (Hosea 11:8)....

But God has sometimes in history delayed His judgment when people have repented. Consider the Ninevites in Jonah’s time, or Israel’s brief reprieve after the revival under King Josiah...So my modest suggestion for global warming is repentance and revival.
Andree Seu

"Resist Early"
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
Leonardo da Vinci

"Bait And Switch"
Many a Man thinks he is buying Pleasure, when he is really selling himself a Slave to it.
Benjamin Franklin

"He's Bad. He's Bad. He's Really, Really Bad"
Goodness is, so to speak, itself; badness is only spoiled goodness...All the things which enable a bad man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things - resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself... And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled...To be bad, he must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. Therefore he must be getting them from Good Power: even to be bad he must borrow or steal from his opponent...
C.S. Lewis

"Our Blunders"
Error is always in Haste
Thomas Fuller
Admitting Error clears the Score
And proves you Wiser than before.
Arthur Guiterman
Any man is liable to err, but only a fool persists in error.
Cicero

"Close Enough To Be Convincing"
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
Henri Amiel

"Why Injustice Is Condemned"
An act of injustice is condemned, not because the law is broken, but because a person has been hurt.
Abraham Joshua Heschel

"He'd Rather Itch"
An inmate I was visiting commented that some guys show up in prison in such bad shape that he looks at them and thinks, “That wasn’t an arrest; it was a deliverance.” There is freedom, and then there is just rope to hang yourself.

I wonder if most of us wake up in the morning to a variety of bondages, and we put them on like a pair of pants, because we’re used to them. It’s worse than that: We don’t even want to be free of them. There is a man in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce who is hagridden by an annoying lizard (lust) on his shoulder day and night. Yet when an angel offers to kill it, he doesn’t want to:

“There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy—that is, to reality. . . . The time comes when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust, and would not have it taken from him. He’d fight to the death to keep it. He’d like well to be able to scratch: but even when he can scratch no more, he’d rather itch than not.”

How do you figure? Our bondages are ruining our lives—and still we hold on to them for dear life. Why? It seems to me we don’t really believe that God has anything to offer that we would like better. Heaven has always seemed boring to those who live in darkness. It’s just a matter of not believing God, I guess.
Andree Seu

"Aiding The Enemy"
The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
Aesop

"Reject Not Thine Only Means of Survival"
Man’s basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. Irrationality is the rejection of man’s means of survival [God] and, therefore, a commitment to a course of blind destruction...
Ayn Rand

"Goodness =Freedom"
No longer virtuous, no longer free; is a maxim as true with regard to a private person as a commonwealth.
Benjamin Franklin

"Let My Heart Be Broken"
Let my heart be broken with the things that break God's heart
Bob Pierce

"Artificially Sweetened Death"
The devil sweetens poison with honey.
Benjamin Franklin
"Slay Your Dragon"
It is always easier to locate an external enemy than grapple with an internal condition.
C. Wright Mills

"Make No Mistake About It"
The fool mistakes power for virtue, acclaim for merit, nonconformity for dangerousness, conviction for truth, revenge for justice, license for liberty, and kindness for weakness.
Anonymous

"Hooray For Hollywood?"
[Hollywood's] a trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat.
Wilson Mizner

"Do You Think Sin Barren, You Fool?"
After that John was always going to the woods. He did not always have his pleasure of her in the body, though it often ended that way: sometimes he would talk to her about himself , telling her lies about his courage and his cleverness. All that he told her she remembered, so that on other days she could tell it over to him again. Sometimes, even, he would go with her through the wood looking for the sea and the Island, but not often. Meanwhile the year went on and the leaves began the fall in the wood and the skies were more often gray: until now, as I dreamed, John had slept in the wood and he woke up in the wood. The sun was low and a blustering wind was stripping the leaves from the branches. The girl was still there and the appearance of her was hateful to John: and he saw that she knew this and the more she knew it, the more she stared at him, smiling. He looked round and saw how small the wood was after all - a beggarly strip of trees between the road and a field that he knew well. Nowhere in sight was there anything that he liked at all.

'I shall not come back here," said John. 'What I wanted was not here. It wasn't you I wanted , you know.' 'Wasn't it?' said the brown girl 'Then be off. But you must take your family with you.'

With that she put up her hands to her mouth and called. Instantly from behind every tree there slipped out a brown girl: each of them was just like herself: the little wood was full of them.

'What are these?'
'Our daughters,' said she. 'Did you not know you were a father? Did you think I was barren, you fool? And now, children,' she added, turning to the mob,' go with your father.'
C.S. Lewis

"What's She Going To Cost Him?"
It is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman - glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. But clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens? Of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand re-discovery. It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. Apparently the world is made that way. If Esau really got the pottage in return for his birthright, then Esau was a lucky exception."
C.S. Lewis

“Stealing Privacy”
“We share things that are not ours to share as a way to hotwire connection with a friend.”
Brene Brown

“Choose Instead To Quell Suffering And Make Peace”
Your specific personal faults detrimentally affect the world. Your conscious, voluntary sins... make things worse than they have to be. Your inaction, inertia and cynicism removes from the world that part of you that could learn to quell suffering and make peace.
Jordan Peterson