Do not let your speech cause you to sin and do not say in the presence of the messenger of God that it was a mistake... (Eccl 5:6)For those of you who do not already know, I am somewhat an avid watcher of the Fox News channel, and cable news in general. This is of course, partially to blame on my parents. For my dad insists from the moment he walks in the door when he comes home that there be nothing of cartoons or some other goofy show on TV. About the only other thing that he even cares to see on TV when he comes home at the end of a long day of work is a hockey game. But even then, he wants to hear the news first.One thing I have noticed about some of these great (and sometimes lesser) political figures that often come on the TV to be interviewed is their interesting choice of words. For example, when some individual is accused of lying, only the most brazen of personalities would dare accuse somebody else of importance of lying. And watch out if somebody dare accuses another of lying, because if an individual does, the stink they are going to display on TV will be worse than riding with your windows down past a cow pasture on the highway. So, instead of using such an inflammatory word as "lie," another watered-down intellectual word is chosen: disingenuous. Granted, accusing somebody of being "disingenuous" is the same as accusing them of lying, but in a much more polite and easy to swallow way. I think the same thing often creeps into our preaching and talking of sin. Instead of simply calling sin what it is: sin; we instead try to pass it off as something a little more palatable. Instead we call it "a mistake." But it occurred to me recently. If we simply pass our sins off as "mistakes" then we are making very light of the thing that nailed Jesus to a cross. By simply thinking of sin as a mistake we make, then we are in a sense that saying the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was a "mistake." But when we truly realize our sins are not simply mistakes, as if we simply stubbed our toe on the coffee table, but instead crimes of rebellion against a holy and just God, then we come to value the cross for what it truly is. So long as we simply pass the buck on our sin and label it as a mistake, we do a gross disservice to the gospel that we profess to believe, that Jesus Christ was crucified for our SINS. Simply calling sin a mistake might soothe one's conscious, but it will not justify one in God's sight. And so long as we treat sin as a mistake, we are BOUND to repeat a mistake. But only when we treat sin as sin can we hope to have freedom from the sins that weigh us down and hold us in captivity.
