Sin And Self-Deception

When tempted, no one should say, 'God is tempting me.' For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown gives birth to death."
James 1:13-15

Desire ... sin ... death. All three are often described in purely external terms.

Suppose someone steals icecream on a hot day. "It was a hot day, and the icecream was good-looking. God allowed it to be here. How could I not desire it?". Since one has no freedom whether or not to desire the icecream, one presumably has no freedom whether or not to steal the icecream either.

Then the gravity of the act begins to sink in. One considers stealing bad, but one is also a thief. One says, "I do not approve of those thieving low-lifes. How could I accept them?" And then, "I am a theiving low-life." And then, "I do not accept myself." This is the process which James describes as something that grows. And then what we have is a person with a healthy body, a beating heart, a fully-functioning brain, but the person is -in an alternative understanding of the word- dead. Soon, all their will is going into forgetting the choices they have made or ignoring their priorities.

Is the sinner deceived by desire, sin, and death? Or do we have something much harder to understand ... is the sinner deceived by the sinner?

James is suggesting that the self is deceived by the self, but this is a hard thing to understand.

If a woman comes by my house looking for her dog, and I know the dog is inside my house, and I say, "I do not know where that dog is!" then I deceive the woman. But how is it that I can ask myself, "Where is that dog of my neighbors?" And then to respond falsely, "I do not know where that dog is!".

But this is what James is saying that we have all done.

James is not afraid to tell the person looking at the icecream, "The desire is not in the icecream! It is your own desire!". He is not afraid to approach the one who stole the icecream and say, "You stole the icecream, and God did not make you do it!" He is not afraid to find the person standing on the edge of the bridge and say, "You are the one throwing yourself into death!"

Part of the problem is blaming others and the external world. In order to stop running from oneself, one must be vulnerable and transparent to oneself. No one makes us sin. We throw ourselves into it.

A life lived by excuses ends in suicide of one form or another, but a life that admits its wrong-doing finds life abundantly.

Jesus is standing at the door and knocking. Sure enough, we can hide our heads under the pillows and say, "How would God want anything to do with me? I have no choice but to believe He could not!". Or we can recognize that we have a choice to make.

We can say, "I don't know how God could love someone like me, but I believe He does!". We can say, "I am allowing myself to be tempted, and I will choose to say 'no'." And we can say, "I'm not going to desire that."

As soon as we realize what we can do, the choice is as simple as recognizing what we want and who we want to be.