Oh, God, How We Hate It

I have seen it in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps.  I’ve seen it at my own campfire, in the campfires of friends and family, and I’ve seen it in every church, in fact, I’ve seen it in all churches everywhere.

Not only have I seen it, but I’ve lived it, sometimes in spades.  “It” is not invisible; “It is easy to spot.  Every time I see it, it’s repugnant to me.  I detest it and hate it with all the capacity I have to hate and then some.

What “it” is, is plain old-fashioned, rock-ribbed sin.  I hate it because I see what it does to me and everybody else.  Sin is the great Apollyon, the great destroyer.  Apollyon appears as one of Homer’s Sirens, singing an enticing Siren song, an angel of light, but underneath the melody is the hiss of a serpent’s tongue, flitting past poison-packed fangs.

I’ve seen what this rock-ribbed Apollyon can do to human bodies and I hate it.  Its venom carries all kinds of diseases when some step across the God-ordained bounds of purity.  We can’t say He didn’t warn us; all we have to do is read Romans 1:26-27 and learn of the physical effects of lust gone wild.

I’ve seen people so drunk they can’t think and I hate it.  I’ve seen their arms and legs so filled with the poison they betray their owners, flailing here and there.  I read of drunken hands and feet that can’t control cars and others die.  There’s a word for it—disgusting.  Contrary to what we see on TV and the old, tiresome routines of Foster Brooks; there’s nothing funny about a drunk in real time. Besides, they reek and I hate the smell.

I’ve seen Apollyon’s venom course its way through the arteries of Christian marriages, its poison destroying Christian couples and Christian families the old-fashioned way, one drop at a time with droplets so potent it’s in the family veins for a generation or two or three.  Drop by drop, a sarcastic word here, a blow-up temper fit there, a grudge held just below the surface erupting from time to time and the poison has done its wretched wicked work.

The venom destroys other personal relationships.  I’ve experienced what words packed with poison can do to the human spirit and I’ve dished out the same verbal venom, using words as guided missiles honed in on putting a gash in the human heart.  Verbal venom spat out by Apollyon; she’s a willful woeful wordsmith who wounds so badly the syllabic sting lasts for years.

I’ve experienced the divine discipline that may come from God’s chastising hand as He’s taken me to the divine woodshed for a spanking that hurts deep, each one designed to correct me back onto the path of the abundant life.  I’ve experienced it, and while at the woodshed, I’ve hated it.  As Hebrews 12 says, the discipline is no fun, but once back on track, there’s a harvest of peaceable fruit.

Oh, God, how we sinners hate sin’s effects, but love the temporary pleasures sins bring.  Apollyon looks so good, she feels so right, but to dance with the she-devil in the pale moonlight leaves us with ash heap lives.

We’re a walking bundle of contradictions.  (Rom. 7) We’re putty in her hands; she renders believers weak, sniveling, and how we hate her for it when we look at ourselves in the mirror the next morning, realizing how much we’ve lost.  No believer has a natural immunity to her charms: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. . . If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His word has no place in our lives.”  (I John 1:8, 10)

Apollyon wreaks havoc with my testimony for Christ; while I waltz with Apollyon; no one but God knows the difference between me, a dancing fool of a carnal believer and Joe Unbeliever on the street; I “walk as men.”  (I Cor. 3)

While dining with Apollyon, I make the witnessing of another believer that much more difficult when the unbeliever says, “I knew a Christian once and was he ever  . . . .”  The carnal believer, like the player who breaks curfew, hurts the team.  Such is my collateral damage of unintended consequences.

We learn from the Bible that God hates sin too and for the same reason we do—we’re both outraged and sick to our stomachs by what Apollyon can do and does do to human beings, God’s special creation, intended to be the king of the earth, meant to have dominion over the planet, but because of Apollyon, he can’t even have over himself.

I hate sin because it crushes the what-might-have-beens of life.  There are those (too many) believers who could have enjoyed the abundant life had they not made the choices they did and wound up where they did. Sometimes the choices Apollyon sets before us, that, when made, are so life-altering, we can’t get back the years; we can’t reclaim the health now ruined; modern medicine can’t get it back, the health, the energy, they’re gone and gone forever.  Adam, east of Eden, could never go back.  He could hit no delete button and the effects of his rebellion would be gone.  He had no cosmic eraser.

I see why the psalmist wrote, “You that love the LORD, hate evil.”  ( Ps. 97:10)  This is a ruined planet spinning through the universe carrying billions of lives Apollyon has damaged and destroyed.  Oh, God how we hate sin!

And in despair, the carnal believer, come to his senses, cries, “Oh, God, what might have been!”

Dr. Mike Halsey,
Pastor, County Line Church