What about me and my weeds?

It’s a big world out there, full of all manner of sin. In these United States sodomites parade their perversion down Main Street. In Canada to denounce sodomy as perversion is to invite prosecution by the state. In parts of Europe more couples cohabit than marry. In Iraq and East Timor militant Muslims blow up churches in service to Allah. Sin abounds out there.

Too often Christians, in rightly wanting to wage war with sin, aim far and miss far. One of the great evils of these great evils is that they distract us from the great evils in ourselves. Flamboyant sin delights the devil because its very brightness blinds us to our own more humdrum sins. It is a good thing to be aghast at the great sins of the world. We ought never to become jaded to any sin. We must see it for what it is, an affront to God, and an assault on His dignity. The problem of sodomy isn’t that it turns our stomachs or makes our children ask embarrassing questions, but that it is a vile stench in the nostrils of God. It is a good thing to pray that God would do great things to stop this wickedness, to pray that His grace and His wrath would be poured out.

But it is a better thing, if you’ll pardon the piety, that we pray and labor to eradicate that sin which is closest to us, which resides within our own hearts. Sodomites, after all, not only do not have the Spirit of God indwelling them, but are in fact doing what they do as a result, not just a cause of, the judgment of God. Political fools who will not kiss the Son won’t kiss the Son because they can’t even see His kingdom. Fornicating Euros were raised by those outside the covenant, and so it is little wonder that they play the harlot. And Muslims are in the grip of the demon that they worship.

I, on the other hand, have been bought with a price. I am a child of the Father, in union with the Son, and indwelt by the Spirit. I have been born again unto good works. I am a new creation, and so my sins, rather than being small by comparison, dwarf the peccadillos of the damned. I haven’t been given much, but have been given everything. And so everything is required of me. I, as a Reformed person, am the worst of the lot. I would rather spend my time debating about the place of good works in the life of the Christian, than cultivating good works in my life. I would rather hone my “worldview” than see the log that is in my own eye. I think sanctification is a doctrine, rather than a calling. And I am more interested in having my mind renewed than in being transformed. I would rather look down my nose at piety than I would seek it out.