Subtleness of Sin; right before our eyes!

Subtleness of Sin; right before our eyes!

The cartoonists have always portrayed the Devil as a dragon holding a pitchfork as if to nudge us into doing evil.  If that were so we could actually say; “The Devil made me do it.”  Yet, that is not how he acts as if he was standing and whispering into our ears to go ahead and do what is on your mind.  He is more subtle in the manner that convinces us to ignore God and his holiness.  

Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy.  Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a  fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil.”  The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God:  The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.  (CCC 391).

How then does the essence of sin get our attention and cause us to fall under the premise of doing wrong when we might not be ill-tempered people with God’s blessings?  It is in the very subtle manner that Satan will use on us when we are at the most relaxed manner of our lives.  Simply, he finds the very weakness that is part of our make-up in a world that has more pitfalls than grace-that always appears to be the least constriction to obeying God’s commands.

What are some of the ways Satan successfully traps us without us knowing it is he that has set the trap for us to fall?   Suppose our weakness is for sexual pleasure.  We happen to be on the way home from work, we are tired, and most of all the day has been exhausting.  All of a sudden you find yourself driving down an unfamiliar street and there before your eyes is a Gentlemen’s bar and you know the opportunity to meet a woman there is without a doubt.   The trap is set and you go with one option in your mind.  You didn’t intentionally drive down this street but Satan knows how to entice us at the very moment of exhaustion and perhaps a day of problems at the office.

Another way he works on our weakness is a moment when the children are being too bothersome and when they seem to go too far in their way of becoming obnoxious you swing out and strike one in anger.  Are you always ready to punish one in such a manner that you hurt them emotionally as well as physically?  This too is sinful because of using your authority to solve the tension within your strength?  Perhaps you might say it is your parents duty to correct them, but using anger as a way of correcting children is not giving them the love of yourself.

Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants.  It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it; subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death; and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence.”  Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back toward God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.  (CCC 405).

Somewhere, along the journey as Christians, we have all been drawn into sin before the hammer comes down on our knowledge of righteousness and the fall can be an emotional and guilt trip unless we seek the grace of Christ and seek his mercy.  Remember the proverb;  “For the just man falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble to ruin.”  (Prv 24: 16).  Your sin or mine is not the condemnation of God, it becomes the reason Jesus assumed humanity, to redeem us and carry us back to God’s Omnipresence.  

Ralph B. Hathaway