A PRACTICING SINNER MUST BE A PRACTICAL ATHEIST

Morning Meditation 3/28/2013

Sin is basically an act of moral folly, and greater the folly, the greater the fool.

The notion in this present world that the careless sinner is the smart fellow and the serious minded Christian is a stupid idiot---all together out of touch with life---just cannot be made to stand up under scrutiny.

I don’t see how any man can argue against the fact that sin, in addition to anything else it may be, is always an act of wrong judgment.

To commit sin, a man must for the moment believe that things are different from what they really are. He must confound values---he must see the moral universe out of focus.

He must accept a lie as truth and see truth as a lie. He must ignore the signs on the highway and drive with his eyes shut; he must act as if he had no soul and was not accountable for his moral choices.

There are references in the Bible to the devil’s wiles and his shrewdness. But when he gambled on his ability to unseat the Almighty he was guilty of an act of judgment so bad as to be imbecilic.

Any wisdom he had must have deserted him at the time of his first sin, for surely he grossly underestimated the power of God and just as grossly overestimated his own power and ability.

It is surprising that the devil in his shrewdness is able to give so many people the idea that sin is something to be proud of.

On the contrary, no act is wise that ignores remote consequences and sin always does that. Sin sees only today, or at most tomorrow---never the day after tomorrow, next month or next year.

Death and judgment are pushed aside as if they did not exist and the sinner becomes for the time a practical atheist who by his act denies not only the existence of God, but the concept of life after death as well.

The sinner is not really the bright rebel he fancies himself to be, and does not realize that he is only imitating others like himself, now long dead. When will he comprehend that he is actually a weak and stupid fellow who must follow along in the long parade of death toward the point of no return?

One of our great tasks is to demonstrate to the young people of this generation that there is nothing stupid about righteousness. To do so, we must stop negotiating with evil.

We Christians must stop apologizing for our moral position and start making our voices heard, exposing sin as the enemy of the human race and setting forth righteousness and true holiness as the only worthy pursuits for moral beings.

I have no doubt that historians will conclude that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

---A.W. Tozer

In Christ

Bro. White