I Cordially Invite You to Sin Against Me

It seemed to begin in earnest with reality shows. Oh sure, it was a thing already there, always lurking, hiding in the world’s oldest professions and creeping out like the snake it is to infect all parts of our lives. When you’re invited to sin with open arms, the temptation you face is made stronger by the fact that sometimes a person is tempting you with all their actions. It begins to feel like a victimless crime if the victim asked for it.

 

Why reality shows? Because those people signed on for the cameras, for the scrutiny, and ultimately for the ridicule. And if you ridicule someone who asked for it, in the privacy of your own home, who does it hurt, really? So you did, and you do. You judged their hairstyles, their walk, the way they laughed, their five extra pounds, the way they related to the world. Anything you could ridicule, you grabbed onto with both hands. You called it a “guilty pleasure.” It was a sin.

 

Eventually your scornful nature stopped feeling bad about it, stopped listening to that check in your spirit. Everyone does it, and you find like-minded scorners to show yourself that you’re in good company and everyone does it. You were, after all, invited. The monster fed is a monster that grows, and your scorn spills over to anyone that opportunes themselves. “Hey, if they didn’t want to be ridiculed, they shouldn’t have ---.” Guffaw.

 

If they asked for it, what’s wrong with that? For that matter, what’s wrong with sleeping with a hooker, or looking at porn, or taking up a willing one-night-stand? You always think a sin of this nature is to fight against Satan’s attacks on you, and that it’s about… you. If the person wanted it, it’s you who is the tempted, therefore it’s you who is the victim.

 

You were cordially invited to sin against someone, and you cordially accepted the invitation. Why a certain person may feel inclined to put themselves in a position to be victimized is varied and complex. It usually comes from places of previous victimization, deceptions, possessions. In other words, they have had a breakdown of their identity. Somewhere who they are has been decimated or twisted, and they are now acting out a part handed to them. Every sin invited and sin accepted against them is an affirmation that this twisted picture of identity is an accurate one.

 

The sins of scorn, sex, and porn are related, because it accepts a rotten and objectifying view of a human being. It makes the person less human, to become a toy for your pleasure and amusement.

 

How can this affect anyone if you’re at home alone? Well, it never ends that way and that’s that, but that’s the ending. There are spiritual laws (Luke 6:36-38) and let’s say: you are certainly not praying for that person and, in a way, praying against them. “For of the abundance of heart his mouth speaketh,” Luke 6:45. In spite of your beginning intentions, it starts to come across towards people in your own close circle. They notice.

 

“What I say on the internet is the internet.” There are people behind those memes, those 80s hairstyles, the “retarded” memes, the people you communicate with that you think are idiots. Humans whom God loves, and in spite of what they say, have soft and breakable hearts.

 

If God singled one person out and thundered loudly “I love her, do not sin against her,” would you ever dare make fun of her or look at her naked, even if she by her actions invited you to do so? I would hope you’d be too afraid to touch that, and move on to the next. But God feels that way about all of his lost children. He called us to be a witness, not one of the rabble tearing people to shreds and body parts. The world laughs at us for this reason. They know our hypocrisy and crack it open. To take the Lord’s name, that he gave you, in vain is a terrible witness.

 

Christians argue ad nauseam about theology, but when asked what was the most important commandment to follow, Jesus made it clear. “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ‘You have answered correctly,’ Jesus replied. ‘Do this and you will live.’” Luke 10:27-28 (NIV) Jesus made it simple, in the most difficult commands ever.

 

Broken people will invite you to sin against them. An engraved invitation to sin is still sin. Whatever a person says or thinks about themselves, or how they present themselves, is not an excuse to go against God’s laws and His desires for that person. Every one is one whom God puts forth, and Jesus uttered through his actions on the cross, “I love them.” He has an identity for them. We should all be more reverent to others in light of this knowledge.