The Oscars

Were you shocked by the tone of the speeches at the Oscars last night? I felt deeply uncomfortable, almost sickened, with a sense of “wrongness”.  It was such a feeling of “no” as I heard those who would justify sin by pointing to God’s love and acceptance. God’s love does not imply acceptance of sin. He does not wink at wrongdoings, thinking they are kind of cute, like some cuddly little grandfather. I know we all long to be right, to be accepted just as we are. It just doesn’t work that way. God’s love does not cancel out his righteousness and as such all sin is disgustingly filthy to Him. Because I think we instinctively know that, we seek to “downgrade” sin and say the times have changed and what we thought was sin isn’t sin. Or we try to justify sin, saying that we were just made that way and there is nothing we can do about it. I see a consistent trend in our times to blame it all on DNA. I overeat because I have a thrifty gene. I am promiscuous because I have too many hormones. I drink too much because of my genetic structure and so forth and so on. The truth be told, all of us would like to be reassured we are basically good and in God’s eyes no matter how we are, we are “all okay”.

That just doesn’t match up with what I read in the Bible. Even if we have a proclivity to sin because of our physical make-up (we do live in a fallen world after all), that does not excuse us. Does that make the world seem unfair? Well welcome to a sinful world. Those are the consequences. Easy for me to say, right?

Wrong! Was I sickened by looking at the public display and self-seeking justification for their sins last night? I was. But the harder question is, am I equally sickened by my own sin and consequent justifications? Are not my sins in the same category? When I read Galatians 5:19-21 I feel sick when I see that sexual immorality is listed right next to idolatry (read my post on anger) and just shortlly before things like jealousy, selfishness, and envy. So while debauchery is condemned, so is hatred.

If I do not repent of my “pet” sins and yet find it easy to condemn others for those sins that don’t tempt me, there is something wrong. So, yes, the speeches at the Oscars bothered me a lot, not just because of the effort to make a wrong a right, but because I saw a reflection of myself in their attitudes. Strange that their darkness shone a light on my own sin. My prayer is that my disgust, nausea, sickness over sin, will continue to grow and lead me to constant repentance.