HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 22, 2025 – The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is not convincing the world he doesn’t exist but convincing the world that sin doesn’t exist. In convincing the world that sin doesn’t exist, the devil created a disconnect between cause and effect, action and reaction, sin and suffering, crime and punishment. In so doing, he birthed the Age of Victimhood, whose motto is Thou Shalt Do Whatever You Want and whose symbol is an accusatory finger pointing at everyone and everything except back at itself.

When you take away the fundamental truth that the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned, you’re left only with lies, and you can’t make sense of your pain if you’re basing your explanation for it on lies. You also can’t find a solution for it if you’re blind to its cause. There is no pain and no suffering that can’t be explained by the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned, including pain that comes from tests and temptations, because tests and temptations are themselves a form of paying forward for the promised reward of a future pain-free existence, if you deal with the tests and temptations righteously, like Job did.

The most unpopular truth that will instantaneously lose you the most friends, listeners, readers, upvotes, etc., is the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned. It’s such a guaranteed buzzkill for anyone who’s not ready to receive it, Jesus didn’t teach it directly but instead used phrases like “the measure you mete is the measure you get in return”. Even in softened form, this truth irks and in some cases outrages people who aren’t ready receive it.

As I mentioned, the devil has been very successful in making us believe we’re all innocent victims. If we’re innocent, then there’s no sin. If there’s no sin, there’s no cause for guilt; if there’s no guilt, there’s no repentance; if there’s no repentance, there’s no turning back to God. And this ultimately is what the devil is aiming for – keeping souls alienated from God for as long as possible, until they reach the point of no more return.

I know that if you’re genuinely born-again, you eagerly embrace the truth that the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned. You don’t shun it; you don’t question it; and it doesn’t anger you. Instead (and perhaps strangely) it comforts you because it serves as a guide, like rumble strips along the side of the highway that jolt you into straightening your course back onto the road. You accept the unpleasant jolt as earned and so you willingly – even automatically – submit to it not because you’re masochistic but because you understand that God’s rod and staff are meant to comfort you through correction. They’re meant to comfort you.

They’re there to comfort you.

God corrects us by allowing us to suffer the consequences of our actions, and he does this because he loves us and wants us to come home. We can’t go home if we let sin separate us from God. And so he lets us know that the pain we feel is the pain we’ve earned, and he asks us to accept the pain, and submit to it, and get it over with, and learn whatever lesson we need to learn so that we don’t have to go through it ever again.

And he does all this for one purpose and one purpose only: to prepare our souls for Heaven.