Sin is Misery

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One

The Temptation to Envy the Godless

So often we look around and we see people living a secular life, a life that doesn’t submit to the Ten Commandments, the teaching of the Lord, or the moral instruction of the Church. And we think, “These people look totally happy. In fact, a lot of the time they seem to be having a better life than I am.” 

But, of course, that doesn’t compute, does it? Because if you’re far from God and his truth, then you are going to inevitably fall into sin. And sin makes you miserable because it separates you from God’s goodness, the goodness of other people, and it even makes you attack your own goodness. And that’s not a happy way to live.

Two

Sin Makes You Attack Your Own Goodness

In every sin, you take something about yourself, and you misuse it.

This is super-obvious in sins like gluttony, drunkenness, or things like a sex-change surgery, or getting yourself sterilized – all of which means violently attacking your own body. But it’s true in every sin, you’re attacking yourself.

In lust, you take your good capacity for spousal and parental love, and you violently twist it in on itself. In gossip, you take your good capacity for expressions of love and truth, and you bend it out of shape so that it expresses malice. In boasting, you take your good capacity for truth and humility and you attack it. In resentment, you take your good capacity for gratitude and appreciation, and you simply shatter it.

Every sin is the moral equivalent of banging your head against a wall. If you saw somebody banging his head against the wall repeatedly, even if he had a smile on his face, you’d say, “Oh, that’s awful. Poor guy.”

That’s how we should feel about sin, even if many people commit those sins cheerfully.

Three

Sin Attacks Goodness in Others

Sin doesn’t just attack our own goodness, it attacks goodness in others. 

Anger, envy, laziness, and every form of selfishness, it makes us use other people, neglect other people, violate other people.

Even good-hearted people, nice people, cheerful people – sin makes them damage relationships without knowing it. Makes them recommend divorces, makes them walk out on marriages, makes them drive a friend to the abortion clinic, makes them vote to legalize the murder of euthanasia. Sin makes you damage people, even, and especially, those closest to you. 

It’s very, very sad what sin makes people do. It’s ugly. It’s not something any of us should look on with envy.

Four

Sin Ignores God’s Goodness

Worst of all, the irreligious have cut themselves off from God’s goodness, from prayer, from mass, from the sacraments.

Think of this world as a vast, sprawling desert, which can feel pretty cool in the morning, but as time goes on becomes torturously hot. Well, faith and the Church’s teachings are the compass that you need to get you through the desert safely. And prayer and the sacraments are the canteen of cool water that can keep you from dying of thirst in the process.

The sin that cuts you off from God, even by mere agnosticism or uncertainty, that cuts you off from divine truth, that’s throwing your compass on the ground and crushing it underfoot. It cuts you off from prayer and the sacraments too, which is like taking the top of your canteen and pouring all your water into the sand.

And people who do that might seem okay, at first. After all, the desert starts out pretty cool in the morning, and you might feel find wandering around aimlessly with no water for a little bit. But as the day, as life, progresses, the desert get’s hotter, the sun beats down cruelly. And suddenly, having no direction and no water, well, then your aimless wanderings become more desperate. And what if you can’t ever get out of this infernal desert? 

Five

Never Be Envious of Godlessness

Shame on us if we ever hanker after sin. If we ever envy the irreligious. 

Shame on us if we are like the Israelites in their desert, fed and led by the hand of God, provided with food from the sky, water from the rock, and headed towards a good land, overflowing with milk and honey…Shame on us if we ever look back wistfully to Egypt, the land of slavery and indignity and hopelessness.

Please God, take away all our hankering for sin. Take away our envy of those who do not know you and our laws. And Lord, look on the lost, the godless, those whose lives are bound up with sin in ways they don’t even know and have mercy on them. Lead them to the happiness and salvation that can only be found in You.