Giving Birth To Sin: James 1:14-15

"14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death" (James 1:14-15).

With the world, I grieve over the latest actions by ISIS--more than 120 people killed in Paris. 

Shortly before that, 224 people died on a Russian jetliner.


And a month prior, over 90 people died in Ankara.

Their psychopathic route to destruction will have no end.

What a sad illustration of James 1: 14-15. Militants, sucked into jihadism by their own evil desire gave birth to sin which led to death on scales we haven't seen within my lifetime.

It's so easy to point the finger at these radicals. Heinous, unscrupulous, and narcissistic, to be sure. Their deadly objectives, though, can point a finger to us.

We are like the people described in Philippians 3:19. "Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame." 

A leading hashtag on twitter boasts about how proud woman are about their abortions. We, as Christians, have certainly been confronted with the transgender issue. An underground movement still exists that claims it is normal to have adult/child sexual relations. We've accepted marijuana as legal. We eschew any mention of God in our laws. Blacks are angered that whites are distressed about Paris. Whites despise Blacks because of actions like the Baltimore riots. Does anyone love a Muslim these days? Do we remember that not all of them are militant?

Many of our actions start out innocuous enough. And extra piece of cake is fine. Done too often, overeating leads to gluttony. We ooh and ahhh over celebrity status, then do things to achieve our own status--even if it's evil.

One sin always leads to another. For centuries, we've jettisoned truth, and the end result are horrible acts like Umpqua, Ferguson, Paris, the European migration or the Nazi Holocaust.

The only good found in these actions is they give us a foretaste of hell, an eternal place far worse than any of these awful situations.

We must find our moral compass. That only comes from living a life Christ ordained for us.