Simple truth – You can’t slow dance with the devil.  

Here is the simple truth; many people have a relationship of tolerance with sin! The fact of the matter is that this statement won’t set off any spiritual alarm bells because we have come to accept this reality.

I have picked my words well; we have a relationship of tolerance with sin! So the simple truth is that sin exists in our lives and sadly most of us think that our sin situation is not ‘so bad’. We think it is not an issue because it is not really harming us.

Let’s take the example of the sin of telling a lie. Note, I called it a sin because that is exactly what it is. But to most people telling a lie is OK and to assuage our conscience we classify them into ‘white lies’ and ‘coloured ones’. The rationale being, if it has not caused serious harm to anyone then why make a fuss about it?

Here in lies the first problem; you cannot be the perpetrator of the crime, the judge and the jury. It is not up to you to determine the hurt or pain that your ‘white lie’ has caused to the other. If we use such a justification, then all sin can be rationally wiped away as having a ‘good reason’.

In any case the Bible is not colour coded! God did not create one set of white lies and another set of red, pink or blue ones, each with their own shade intensity. A lie is a lie, period. Justifying our sin as innocuous ones amounts to us permitting a ‘relationship of tolerance with sin.’

It is this relationship of tolerance with sin that we need to fight. Let me set an example before you. There is no person in their right mind that will have a relationship of tolerance with a scorpion crawling up their body. You won’t say to yourself, “Oh as long as it does not sting let it roam free on my back.” Any person in their right mind will instantly brush it off if not screech in horror. If we know the deadly consequences of a scorpion sting why does the same realisation not dawn on us when we flirt with the consequences of sin in our life?

So what must be done? We have to hate sin! That’s the only way out. Just as you hate the thought of a scorpion roaming on your body, you got to hate the thought of sin in your body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Hate is a strong word to use but for sin nothing milder will do. I doubt if I would sleep well thinking that a scorpion was loose in my home. I would not rest till I turned over every piece of furniture, found it and killed it. That’s what we need to do with sin when it creeps in our lives; turn every behaviour of our life upside down, shake off all that has led us down the path of sin, examine every belief we held on to, dust off all wrong doing and make sure we get satan out of our life as we would do with a scorpion. Then invite the Lord in.

To those who think that the sin of telling a white lie, watching a little porn, taking that little something from someone, gossiping about another, looking but not touching ( you know what I mean), is not a sin, think again! The truth is that you have a relationship of tolerance with sin and by extension a relationship of tolerance with satan. If you do that, you’re slow dancing with the devil.

Fr Warner D’Souza