Sin revisited

I was at a church prayer meeting last night and we were praying for our town and that got me thinking about sin again. I know, I keep coming back to it!

There's a film called the Truman show in which the main character is brought up on a film set without actually knowing what is going on. He is living "real life" but everything and everyone around him are simply playing a role. Obviously, the film creates doubts in his mind and he finally wakes up to the deception, but one could imagine that this could deceive someone possibly for the whole of their lives.

How else can you explain the smiles and playfulness of children brought up on a rubbish dump, sifting rubbish for a living? It's not that they recognise the terrible situation they are in but choose to make the best of it- they simply accept as normal what they experience from day to day.

Isn't this how abusive relationships go on and on? The victim simply accepts as normal a way of life that looks deplorable from the outside.

I was struck again by what I realised in an earlier blog- the huge, ongoing and crippling effect of sin in our world. And what struck me hard was the fact that we are so used to living in a sin-sick world that we don't even notice how bad it is. Like families living on a rubbish dump in South America, we can't even imagine what a world without rubbish would be like. How could a person from a slum dwelling imagine the life of an Arab oil sheikh?

But life without sin is what we were created for and what we will experience after our bodies die, providing we have accepted the free gift of salvation that Jesus offers us. And life without sin is God's best for this world too.

In the words of Michael Jackson, someone who I don't think I have ever quoted before, "I'm starting with the man in the mirror!" Wish me success!  :-)