Cowardly Magicians

Before anyone gets all excited, I need to tell you that my reflections aren’t directed at anyone in particular unless it is myself (which is a real possibility). In case you hadn’t noticed yet, I pretty much agree with the ladies over at Femina. I appreciate their thoughts and insights and the fact that my thought train comes from a different direction does not mean we don’t all arrive at the same station.   

We need to make sure in all our rallying to call out sin, that we first remove the proverbial log out of our own eye before even attempting to remove the splinter from someone elses.

We must ask ourselves, why do we want to call out this or that particular sin? Is it because we think our pointing finger needs some exercise? Does it make us feel all warm and fuzzy to call someone out? Buried underneath all the bible verses, sermons and moralistic fables, are we harboring feelings of disdain for our neighbor? Are we looking for an opportunity to distract ourselves from our own sins by focusing on someone elses? A sort of sadistic magic trick?

Or is it because we despise sin and want to bring freedom from it? Is it because we love our neighbor and hate to see them destroying themselves? Do we REALLY love our neighbor more than ourselves? Be honest now. Nothing is hidden from Him and sin is always found out. 

I admit that I do get nervous when I hear booyahs being hollered about the idea of telling people to “knock it off” in regard to sin. It’s not that I think sin shouldn’t be called out…I think it must be. My concern is more that it is so easy to get excited about boycotting someone elses sin. It requires virtually nothing of ourselves. It’s makes it easy to forget that there are real victims out there and that they need our help. Jesus came for the sick, not the well. Helping the victims means, of course, bringing them out of sin…not creating more victims by either hiding behind them or by pretending they don’t exist.  

Sin isn’t silly and it isn’t stupid. Sin is cunning. Calling it out (which we should) requires wisdom and understanding. If you don’t approach it with wisdom, it will backfire on you, I promise! Heck, YOU might be the one who ends up with a thought bubble above your head for everyone to see and instead of being filled with the thoughts of a harlot, it would read, “Everyone look how good I am! Look at my high neckline!! Do you see? It’s so high that turtles themselves would feel naked!” or maybe it would say something more like, “I’m so enlightened, I don’t think we have any business calling sin out. What is a sin for me may not be sin for someone else. Whose to say anything is a sin?” 

Proceed with caution — not with enthusiastic self-righteousness and not will laziness masked as humility. As a pastor once wisely observed, if a parent *wants* to discipline their child, then they probably aren’t the ones who should be administering it….some one should, but not the guy who is excited to.  Calling out sin isn’t for cowards. It takes guts especially when we know that the standard we apply to others will be the exact standard applied to us — which also means that if we turn away from someone who is drowning in their sin when we could throw them a lifeline that we’ll be left to drown, too. Make sure every sin intervention is done so by first surrounding the sinner with an inflatable ring of love and then hauling them out of their destruction.  After all, you’re a sinner too and isn’t that how you’d want to be rescued?

We all know that bullies are the ultimate cowards. They crush people weaker than they are to make themselves feel strong. Of course we all sin. Of course we are all need to crush sin. But some people crush one sin to give their own sin more room to grow. Don’t be that guy. Don’t be a sin bully. Don’t let sin bully.