The Progress of Corruption

Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin
Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

4. The Progress of Corruption
Mesillat Yesharim: “If a man is allured by the things of this world and is estranged from his Creator, it is not he alone who is corrupted, but the whole world is corrupted with him.”
One moral misstep leads to another.
Sin yields more and more sin; each episode of sin gets triggered by trouble from the last.
Sin is a plague that spreads its contagion.
People rarely commit single sins.
Unarrested, sin despoils even its own agents, eventually causing the very death of the soul.

History Echoes
Sin is both fatal and fertile.
Like cancer, sin kills because it reproduces.
Victims of crime are dangerous because they are unlikely to exercise self-control in their attempt to get even.
Most people believe they are a victims and are merely returning fire, never firing the first shot.

Motives, Contexts, and Causes
People have long memories and short fuses when it comes to grievances.
Injustice enrages people and makes them vengeful.
Those who have been abused are more likely to abuse others.
It is easier to chose the short-term stress reliever, that puts long-term stress on our hearts and bodies.
Human beings want security, and our main problem is that we seek security in the wrong places and in the wrong ways because we fail to trust God to take care of us.
Unbelief produces anxiety which produces pride and sensuality.
“The heart wants what it wants.”
The human heart, when it ignores God, turns in on itself, trying to lift itself, please itself, and ends up debasing itself. When we want God’s gifts without God, we end up sagging and contracting into a little wad.
Motives may be mixed, making it difficult to discern them.
There are also social contexts to consider. Society must take some of the blame for sins committed because of injustice and abuse.
Even if we could understand all the motives, contexts, and forces, we would still not be able to fully understand why a certain sin was committed.
Failure to blame people for their sins is dehumanizing. In the Soviet Union the concept of blame disappeared and people were no longer treated as fully human.

The Great Law of Returns
Paul called this “the mystery of iniquity” (2 Thess. 2:7)
At the bottom, the heart wants what it wants, and it has its reasons that even reason does not know.
“The heart is sinful and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
People not only reap what they sow, they also sow what they reap.
George F. Will: “America’s slide into the sewer is greased by praise.”

Other Causes?
Secrecy fertilizes evil.
God created us to live Shalom and to please Him, but we mysteriously live against the purpose of our existence.
Satan does not take any ground that we do not give him.
Satan seduces only those who want to be seduced.
Sin is not only personal but also interpersonal and suprapersonal.
Sin becomes a living, powerful force with a life all its own.