Comfortable Sins

We Christians can be pretty harsh when it comes to sin. "The Bible says that homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God, so ..." and we press ... hard. We have certain sins that are the nail we keep pounding, so to speak. Sure, it's often because it's the nail that's standing up, so to speak. Abortion wasn't much of a topic of conversation among believers before 1973 because we all understood it was wrong. Homosexual behavior wasn't ever seen among believers as not a sin, but we weren't writing and preaching on it much before the latter part of the 20th century because everyone else knew it was a sin, too. So we really hit the "biggies" hard. Sexual sin, adultery, murder, stealing ... you know what I mean. The big ones. We give no quarter.

There are, however, other sins, no less sinful, but certainly less. They're less because, well, we probably indulge in them ourselves. They're not the same level of evil that we see in what "those other folks do." This is us. So if we gossip or tell a fib or cheat on our taxes or ... well, you get the idea ... it's not a big deal. We won't be flooding the Internet with our moral outrage over those things. They're more ... comfortable sins.

I see two primary problems with these comfortable sins. First, our hypocrisy is showing. "The Bible says that your sin is evil, so we're calling you on that. Oh, sure, the Bible says that my little sin is also evil, but I'm giving me a pass on that one." Hypocrisy. This is the kind of thing that makes the heathen blaspheme because of us (Rom 2:24). When our words and our deeds don't match, we surrender the right to speak about their sins. Second, if we're holding this tenuous line of "This sin is unacceptable but that sin isn't so bad," we'll find that the line moves. Without moorings, it drifts. After awhile the closer "unacceptable sins" have been embraced as "acceptable" and then "comfortable sins." Eventually we end up embracing all but the worst, and those don't look all that bad. For many Christians, for instance, pornography has gone from evil to "What's really wrong with it?" to "I do it from time to time." This drift eventually leaves us with a "debased mind" that embraces all manner of sin, calls good evil, and encourages inventive sinning (Rom 1:28-32).

What about you? What are your comfortable sins? Perhaps it's greed or gluttony. Perhaps it's disrespect or dishonesty. Maybe it's envy or malice, slander or insolence, pride or apathy. Maybe you have your own set of them. I'm not talking about the sins you do that you struggle against. Those aren't "comfortable." It isn't hypocrisy to say, "This is a sin and I know it because I struggle against it, too." I'm talking about the ones you do that you defend. "Nothing wrong with that." "I can covet if I want to. That's not a bad thing." "Gentleness and respect is for sissies, not true believers." "Lust isn't always a bad thing." We have them and often we're so comfortable with them that we don't even see them. Apathy, worry, selfishness, lust, a love of comfort; it's a long list, I think. Do you have them? Do you see them? If the goal is perfection (Matt 5:48), then none of us should endure comfortable sins in ourselves. We do so at our own peril.