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HOLY HATE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 14, 2025 – Hate is getting a bad rap these days, but it shouldn’t. As born-again believers, we need to hate as much as we need to love. The two are not exclusive, hate and love, but rather different expressions of the same passion for God. If you don’t hate sin, you don’t love God.
Sin is another word that’s been getting a bad rap lately. The same people who talk smack about hate also dis sin, if they mention it at all. For the hate haters, sin doesn’t exist, at least not to them. I guess if you claim something doesn’t exist, you can’t be held responsible for it.
But we know only too well that sin exists because it was sin that once separated us from God. We were all deeply acquainted with sin, we born-again believers, and so based on our former deep acquaintance can stare sin straight in the face and call it what it is. We have no problem identifying sin or calling sin “sin”. We don’t look the other way and pretend it doesn’t exist. We don’t call it “a lifestyle choice” or “born that way”. We don’t dismiss it as a “product of his or her environment”. We don’t promote it as “progress” or “cultural expression”. We don’t give sin medals. We see sin for what it is and have no problem calling it out. We have no problem hating sin. In fact, hating sin is one of the chief characteristics of a born-again believer.
If we don’t hate sin, we don’t love God.
Allow me to state for the record that I hate and I hate unapologetically. I hate with a passion and a fervor, and I let my hatred burn where it ought. There’s a firepit in my soul that God made especially for my holy hatred. There I tend my hate and let it burn. I don’t quench it. I don’t deny it. I let the flames rise freely and steadily and hot, as God intended.
But it’s sin I hate, not people. This distinction must be made and held tightly – it’s sin I hate, not people: the sin within people, the sin done by people, the sin condoned by people. I don’t brush sin off as not my concern. I’m not cold to sin. I’m not indifferent to it. If you sin anywhere near me, don’t expect me not to hate your sin. Don’t expect me to embrace your sin and celebrate it. Don’t expect me to soothe you in your sin. Expect me to hate your sin and to call it sin. The same everything I give to loving God, I give to hating your sin.
We born-again believers need to revel in our holy hate for sin. It’s another way of expressing our love for God. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t hate or that your hate is wrong. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is not a blithe byline but a core Kingdom doctrine. Note that it’s “hate the sin”, not look past the sin or lightly rebuke the sin. Hate is what is called for when it comes to sin: Hate, pure and strong; hate that is God-sanctioned and God-fueled, the kind of hate that drove Jesus to overturn tables in the temple.
Love the sinner, HATE the sin.
Nothing less will do.
WE ARE NOT SINNERS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 29, 2025 – Just a quick reminder that you cannot be born-again and at the same time be a sinner. To be born-again means to be washed clean of your sins. You can’t be washed clean of your sins and at the same time live in a state of sin, which is what it means to be a sinner. You cannot obstinately, purposely, willfully, unrepentantly, perpetually, and with full and conscious intent choose to live in a state of sin and at the same time have God’s Holy Spirit in you. That would be a spiritual impossibility.
To be born-again means to be washed clean of your sins and to have God’s Holy Spirit in you. When this happens, when God’s Spirit is in you and all around you, you’re no longer a sinner—you can’t be, because sin and God’s Holy Spirit cannot occupy the same spiritual real estate. You’ll still have the capacity to sin while you’re on Earth in a human body, but having the capacity to sin doesn’t make you a sinner: It makes you human.
If people tell you (or worse, insist) that you’re a sinner (which I’ve heard from many a preacher), tell them they’re wrong. Tell them you’re born-again and in right-standing with God. Tell them you cannot be genuinely born-again and at the same time be a sinner. You can be tested and fail (we’ve all, except for Jesus, failed some tests), you can be tempted and fail (we’ve all, except for Jesus, failed some temptations), but these are short-term failures that you put behind you once you repent.
And if you’re genuinely born-again, you don’t delay repenting once God has brought your failure to your attention. You don’t hide from repenting: you crave it. You don’t resent that you have to repent: you embrace it with all your heart and soul. Repenting brings you back into right relationship with God, which is the only place you want to be as a born-again believer. For us, right relationship with God is our spiritual Home.
We born-again believers are not sinners. We do not identify as sinners, and we are not defined by sin. Again, just having the capacity to sin by virtue of still having free will doesn’t mean we’re sinners: It means we’re human.
GUARANTEED BUZZKILL?
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.
HOW THE DEVIL EMASCULATES GOD’S WORD
They have filled the land with violence and have returned to provoke me with anger…. Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eyes shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them….
I will recompense their way upon their head.
CHARLO, New Brunswick, January 22, 2024 – The quote above is from Ezekiel (8:17-18/9:10), where God explains what he is about to do to his own people, and why. As with everywhere else in the Bible, God does not mince his words. He is not afraid to offend Ezekiel’s sensibilities: He simply says what he means.
Most Christians no longer say what God means. They’ve been trained by the devil to sugar-coat and even compromise God’s Word so as not to offend or hurt people’s feelings. For example, Christians are now watering down what love means to include sinful acts, again for the sake of not hurting people’s feelings or risking “alienating” anyone.
But we as born-again believers are not in the business of being nice or popular; we are not trained by the devil. Prophets of God should never sugar-coat God’s Word so as not to hurt people’s sensibilities. Our job is to represent God and to speak his Truth as he reveals it to us, no compromise.
And God’s Truth is at time intensely hurtful. It’s meant to be. God uses emotional and physical pain as a way to get people’s attention – to snap them out of their sinful delusions. He also uses pain as a reward for ungodly behavior (as evidenced in the opening quote) and as a test. Allowing people to experience pain is part and parcel of who God is. We can’t expect to go through this life, whether as a sinner or a saint, and not experience some level of emotional or physical pain.
In other words, God doesn’t shy from doing what needs to be done. His justice, like everything else about him, is perfect, and sometimes his justice requires the swift, mass, and fatal infliction of pain even in his own people as their due reward. You cannot sugar-coat this reality or you risk offending God. Yet as we see in the watering down of the meaning of “love”, many Christians have no problem offending God as long as people still like them.
I have zero problems offending Christians if the choice is between speaking God’s Truth and not hurting someone’s feelings. In fact, my consistent choice to offend Christians by speaking God’s Truth has become my calling card. Most pastors caution that we should be speaking God’s Word in “love” and “grace”, again with an eye not to offend or alienate, but I don’t see any attempt by God, in Ezekiel or elsewhere, to water down the description of what he intends to do to his people. The unadulterated Truth of God is that pain is part of love and that pain is part of grace. To deny that reality is to speak the lies of the devil rather than God’s Truth.
The devil scores points when we bend and twist God’s Word so as not to offend. He’s taught even God’s people to do this and continuously whispers in our ear to act “in love”, after having redefined love as meaning “good feels” rather than evidence of God’s presence. But when you reduce God to good feels and restrict his prophets to not hurting anyone’s feelings, you emasculate them. Misrepresenting God and his Word is not acting in love; it’s supporting and promoting sin.
We cannot, as born-again believers, tolerate the misrepresentation of God and his Word, any more than we tolerate any other sin. We call it sin and refuse to participate in it. Our job is not to mollify people’s sensibilities but to speak God’s Truth boldly and as he gives us permission and instruction to speak it. It is the greatest of all privileges to be a prophet and child of God, to be called his people, but it’s not a free ride: there are equally great responsibilities in being such. I’m not saying you should set up a soapbox in the middle of a pride parade and start railing against sin – no. That is not the time or place to speak God’s Truth. But if someone in a space designated as God’s House demands that sin be tolerated, you have an obligation to speak God’s Truth, and that obligation is to God.
God has no problem obliterating even his own people if his justice calls for it. That is who God is. As his prophets speaking his Word in Truth, we need to remind “those who have ears to hear” that God is revealed as much in Ezekiel 8 and 9 as he is in John 3:16, and that the same God of John 3:16 will not hesitate to Ezekiel 8 and 9 you, if you have it coming.
I tell you all this because the devil certainly won’t, and the devil has infiltrated all denominational churches, emasculating the pastors and their congregations by watering down God’s Word. This is not what Jesus had in mind when he said we should become eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake. Jesus modeled what it is to be a child of God, and if you’ll recall, he was his boldest and hardest hitting when speaking God’s Truth to those who should have known better. There was zero compromise and zero sugar-coating in his confrontations. Jesus had no trouble revealing that side of himself or that side of God when circumstances called for it.
Neither should we.
CANADA’S CHASTISEMENT AND CALL TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 11, 2023 – They wanted a godless nation, and now they’re getting one.
Canadians, I mean.
The majority of Canadians have kicked God to the curb, and God doesn’t stay where he’s not wanted.
But in his place, demons are pouring in, wreaking havoc wherever they roam.
And yet these same Canadians who kicked God to the curb and are now plagued by demons can’t figure out why their country and their lives have gone downhill so fast.
If you tell them it’s because of earned rewards for sin (which I tell them all the time), they laugh. They instead point to “climate change” causing the floods and fires and droughts and heat waves. They point to the surge in immigrants and refugees causing a host of worsening issues, from lack of affordable housing to problems getting a family doctor or even a seat on public transit. They claim that the recent uptick in urban violence is because of untreated mental illness and a lax justice system. When I tell them the worsening weather and surge in immigration and increasing violence is their reward for sin, they laugh at me again. They think if they can outlaw gas-powered vehicles, scale back the number of people pouring into the country, and hire more doctors and law enforcers, their problems will be solved.
But trying to stop the rewards of sin by looking the other way is like trying to heal a fatal disease by numbing its symptoms. The disease persists and worsens. As long as Canadians refuse to acknowledge and repent of their sin, the rewards of sin will continue.
When a nation is under chastisement, living conditions quickly and noticeably deteriorate. The currency devalues and the cost of food and housing doubles or triples while wages stay the same or even go down. Homelessness, drug abuse, disease, illness, and suicide increase exponentially. The air becomes unbreathable from wildfire smoke. Whole regions are flooded with “biblical” freak storms. Crops fail. Infrastructure fails. Marriages fail. Insect populations displaced by the fires move into populated areas they hadn’t been before. The populace suffers in every conceivable aspect of their lives – both public and private – with no relief in sight.
Scripture says that God chastises those whom he loves, to bring them to their spiritual senses. He does this by letting them feel the consequences of their actions. Scripture also warns that the reward of sin is death. When a population is under chastisement, the conditions they experience are a precursor to what is to come if they continue to refuse to turn back to God and double-down on their sin. ‘Once in a century’ floods, wildfires, drought, and crop failures become the norm rather than the exception. The flood of immigrants and refugees becomes an unstoppable deluge. Suffering increases exponentially, the way that cancer metastasizes and proliferates in a body, pressing on nerves.
The only way out of this dreadful situation is full national repentance, but we know that’s highly unlikely in a country that’s officially declared itself “secular” and “religiously pluralistic”. So it’s up to Canadian Christians to go all-in for God, to put God front and centre in their lives, like Jesus did. If enough Christians living in Canada did this, God would lessen the severity of the chastisement.
The decision to go “all-in” for God has to be made on an individual basis. We know that Abraham bargained with God to stop the destruction of Sodom if there were only 10 righteous souls in the city. I’m not sure how many righteous souls God would require in Canada to lessen the chastisement, but I’m guessing it would be in the hundreds.
Hundreds doesn’t sound like many in a population of 40 million, but keep in mind that Sodom couldn’t even cough up 10 righteous souls in their hour of direst need. God only knows how many Canada would be able to produce, given the fallen state of its denominational churches and the tolerance for sin that characterizes most Canadian Christians these days. God also only knows how much more time we have before chastisement turns into judgement.
Regardless, Canadian Christians need to put their shoulder to the wheel not just for the sake of their failing nation but for the sinners struggling in it. Our job isn’t just to live righteously before God, but to call sin sin and to show sinners the way out of sin.
Sadly, what’s happening to Canada is also happening to other former Christian nations. Even the United States, with is gargantuan Christian majority, is not escaping God’s chastisement. Not surprisingly, those states with the lowest percentage of declared Christians are suffering the most.
God’s chastisement is real, just as its mitigation through righteousness is real. We can’t stop people from sinning (even God can’t do that), but we can stop ourselves from sinning and we can show sinners the righteous way to live by living righteously – that is, by living openly more righteously than we’ve ever lived before. This is within our range of ability. This we can do with God’s help.
We can go all-in for God, like Jesus did.
Because going all-in for God is not an exception to the rule; it’s our calling.
ESCAPING GOD’S HOLY CHASTISEMENT AND FINAL JUDGEMENT
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 6, 2023 – When I was first born-again and started reading the Bible, I was shocked by how coolly the holy angels condoned God’s wholesale destruction of entire cities and nations. I remember thinking that the angels were cold-hearted and almost robotic in how they stated the suffering was deserved. I remember wondering where God’s mercy was in these cases.
But as I grew as God’s daughter, I came to understand the connection between sin and holy judgement, sin and holy chastisement, and holy chastisement and holy judgement. I came to understand that holy judgement is definitive and final, and that after it’s been decided there is no going back, whereas holy chastisement leaves room for repentance and renewal and only occurs after God’s repeated and increasingly urgent warnings have been ignored.
Holy chastisement is God’s last-ditch effort to get people to turn back to him. It may be delivered on an individual basis or spread across an entire region or nation, but it’s purpose is to stop sinners in their tracks so that they reevaluate their lives and turn back to God before it’s too late. When God is chastising individuals, they may experience extreme financial problems, relationship meltdowns, employment implosions, etc. Nothing will go well for them; they’ll feel that their lives are entirely out of control and there’s nowhere to turn for help. When God is chastising people collectively, he usually delivers it through natural disasters or plagues. But again, the impact of the event on each person within the collective is so extreme, they feel that everything is beyond their control and no-one can help.
Most of former Christendom is now under God’s holy chastisement. It’s mainly coming in the form of extreme weather events like floods and heatwaves that are being described as biblical in scope and intensity, but it also involves wars, wildfires, double-digit inflation, plunging standard of living, mass non-Christian immigration, insect invasions, widespread “turbo-charged” disease, family and societal breakdown, and rampant sexual deviancy. Climate change, of course, along with the usual suspects of racism and capitalism, have been fingered for blame for these events, but their real cause is widespread unrepented sin.
Some of us suspect that these plagues are contrived (manmade). But even if they are contrived, they’re still being permitted by God, which means they’re being allowed for a purpose. God needs people to feel the full consequences of their actions so that the shock of the pain will give them a chance to turn back to him before things get much, much worse. God is the only one who can help them once they’ve reached the chastisement stage. In other words, it’s either repent or suffer the inescapable and earned final consequences.
God’s holy judgement is the time of annihilation. When his holy chastisement is unsuccessful at getting either an individual or a collective to stop sinning, God has no choice but to render a final judgement of “guilty” against these people. His perfect justice demands that he do so. If God were not to condemn in these cases, he would be in violation of his own justice.
The full-scale destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (other than for Lot and his family) is probably the best-known instance of God’s condemnation of a collective, but the Flood was also a judgement against everyone except Noah and his family, as was the total annihilation of entire cities and towns by the armies of the children of Israel under the command of Moses and Joshua. God instructed his armies not only to burn these places to the ground, but to slaughter every man, woman, child, and animal in them, to spare none. Nothing was to be left but a smoldering heap. Their bloodlines were to be obliterated.
God renders a similar judgement of guilt on individuals, even among his own people. We see the same instruction to utterly destroy given to the angels in Ezekiel 9 and throughout the book of Revelation. In each case, God has warned his people of imminent destruction if they don’t turn back to him, but they double down on their sins, ignoring his warnings and cursing him for his holy chastisement. This leaves God no choice but to follow through with the intended annihilation of all unrepentant sinners.
Scripture says that God chastises those whom he loves. Chastisement leaves room and time for repentance, but there is an urgency about it that should never be dismissed. Even born-again believers can find themselves on the receiving end of God’s holy chastisement if they go astray. We should thank God when that happens to us – THANK God, not curse him, not grumble, and not blame the devil. We should thank God for his chastisement because it means he loves us and there’s still time to get right with him. We should thank God and do whatever he’s telling us to do or endure whatever he’s asking us to endure because ultimately, he has our best interests at heart – not his best interests, our best interests. God does everything he does for us.
As former Christian nations spiral ever downward in every conceivable way, we need to remind ourselves that we, as God’s children in right standing with our Father, don’t need to suffer the chastisements meant to bring sinners to repentance. God doesn’t want us to suffer those chastisements. He will always give us a way and means to avoid them and we should follow his guidance and avoid them. We don’t get spiritual brownie points for choosing to suffer what God doesn’t want us to suffer: We only get suffering that has no redeeming purpose. So if God tells you to leave a place because it’s under his chastisement, leave it. Again, you don’t gain any reward for choosing to suffer what you haven’t earned. The only one who gained a reward for suffering what he hadn’t earned was Jesus, and we’re not Jesus. If God advises us to leave, we need to leave.
God had Noah build the ark to escape the flood, and he sent angels to rescue Lot. God always looks after those who love him, even during times of chastisement and judgement. God knows his children and is known of them. He keeps us safe in his secret place, but it’s up to us to do what he says when he says to do it. We cannot defy God’s guidance and then expect to be rescued at the last minute. That may work once, when we do it out of ignorance, but it won’t work twice.
If you love God, stay in right-standing with him and do whatever he says, without complaining and without delay. That’s the only way you’ll escape his chastisement and final judgement.
THE CULT OF TOLERANCE
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, July 20, 2023 – A sentiment being expressed more and more among Christians in relation to sinful behavior is “I have no problem with what consenting adults do.” In other words, even morally repugnant acts are shrugged away by Christians as “personal choice” rather than sin. In other words, sin is being tolerated by Christians.
As born-agains, we cannot tolerate sin. We cannot stand back and not form and express an opinion about sin. We cannot stand back and say “everything goes”, because we know that when “A” is permitted, “B”, “C”, “D”, “E”, etc., will follow, as we’re seeing now in our streets and schools and public libraries. The genie doesn’t come just part-way out of the bottle; the opened can doesn’t let out just one worm: the genie escapes the bottle entirely and all the worms slither out.
Tolerance is not only a gateway to sin but also a sin in itself – it’s a form of intellectual and moral slovenliness. The tolerant say: “I don’t want to offend anyone because I don’t like conflict” and “I’m too lazy to think deeply enough about this issue to form an opinion, let alone express it” and “I know God condemns this, but I don’t want to be disliked or banned or fired, so I’ll just tolerate it.” Instead of bowing down to God, they bow down to the spirit of tolerance.
Tolerance has grown to cult status in recent years. In fact, the cult of tolerance has for the most part replaced Christianity. Christians are being scolded by the world to be tolerant, and they’ve meekly taken the bait. Entire congregations now tolerate what for thousands of years Christians condemned as sinful. The altar of tolerance has replaced the altar of God in most churches; you’ll know the altar of tolerance by the rainbow flags draped over it.
Again – we cannot tolerate sin. We cannot look away and say “they’re consenting adults” or “what they do behind closed doors is their business”. As born-again believers, calling out sin is our business. We do not have the luxury of not calling out sin. We do not have the luxury of not wanting conflict, of not wanting people to dislike us for our beliefs and expressed opinions, of not condemning what we know God condemns. As born-again believers, we stand in the Spirit of Truth, so naturally we’re going to be in conflict with those who bow down to the Spirit of Lies.
Tolerance of sin is tacit acceptance of sin, which is why tolerance of sin is itself a sin. Yet calling out sin as sin does not mean we have to attack those who are sinning. Our job with regard to sin is simply to label it as sin rather than as a personal choice between consenting adults. Our job with regard to sin is to call it sin, avoid it, and teach others to avoid it.
Being a born-again believer is not a popularity contest. Jesus warned us we’d be hated and also likely cast out, banned, black-listed, and imprisoned for our beliefs, and oh, how right he was. Regardless of the consequences, we cannot stand hand-in-hand with the cult of tolerance. If we’re hated for speaking God’s Truth, then let us be hated. Embrace the hate and soldier on.
ON PRIDE AND THE NORMALIZATION OF SIN
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 29, 2023 – The devil works hard to convince people he doesn’t exist. He does this because if people don’t believe he exists, then morals are relative rather than absolute, which means there can be no such thing as sin.
And if sin doesn’t exist, then people don’t have a moral compass to guide them when they’re tempted. Not having a moral compass, they fall prey to any kind of persuasion, including being convinced that what was once considered sinful is now just a personal preference for those who were “born that way”.
In other words, sin is rebranded as natural, normal, and healthy.
The normalization of sin is a process that begins with eliminating the devil, which the devil himself is only too happy to initiate. Each soul he convinces that he doesn’t exist becomes his by default, because a soul that doesn’t believe the devil exists is a soul that doesn’t believe God exists, and anyone who doesn’t believe in God is by default the spiritual real estate of Satan. That the captured soul doesn’t believe Satan exists is just icing on the cake for the old snake, who finds the irony delicious.
The image above is from a “pride” parade in Toronto a few days ago. It doesn’t need commentary but it does stand as a fitting representation of the fallen spiritual state of what used to be known as “Toronto the Good”. The devil’s obviously been busy in Toronto to bring it to the point where middle-aged men can, not only metaphorically but literally, parade down a street to the cheers of hundreds of thousands of onlookers. Yes, public nudity is still illegal in Toronto, but it seems that laws only apply to those who won’t comply with the global agenda to normalize sin.
Men who exposed themselves in public, especially to women and children, used to be promptly arrested and then named and shamed to deter other men from doing the same. Yet here we are, supposedly on our way to peak social progress, and Torontonians have less decorum or motivation to protect their women and children than primitive jungle tribes, who at least have enough self-respect and respect for their fellow tribespeople to wear a loincloth when they’re out in public.
The rebranding of pride has turned it into something we’re supposed to admire and celebrate rather than avoid and shun. Until just a few decades ago, pride in anything but your country or in the hard-earned accomplishments of yourself or your loved ones was considered vanity and the mark of an immature mind. Pride was not admired. In fact, pride was not only not admired, it was considered a sin, and a deadly one at that: one that presaged a great fall. Only vain and frivolous people paraded their pride and they were justly ostracized and condemned for it.
The rebranding of pride has turned the notion of pride into something else altogether. This is the devil’s doing, and the general public is lapping it up. If you’re reading this, you know what “pride” now stands for; there’s no point in my going into details. Let me just say that “pride” as it’s understood and used today is just as sinful as pride always was. That aspect of pride has not changed.
“Pride” was the sin that got Sodom obliterated. And if you think history isn’t repeating itself, think again. Former Christian nations are being set up for annihilation through the overspreading of “pride”, especially among children through the educational system (which includes story hour at public libraries). A whole generation is being brainwashed and groomed into accepting “pride” as natural, normal, and healthy. If you wonder how Sodom could have devolved to the point where Lot’s house was surrounded by locals banging on the door and demanding that Lot hand over his guests for, well, “Sodom-izing”, you have your answer. To the people of Sodom, who were raised believing that what they were doing was natural, normal, and healthy, Lot was the one who was perverse and out of line.
Sound familiar?
God gives the devil permission to turn everything upside-down because testing is required for his good purposes. God needs to see whether you want what he’s offering or what the devil’s offering, whether you embrace his version of reality or the devil’s. The majority, unfortunately, are choosing the devil’s version, as is witnessed by the nearly wholesale support of “pride” across former Christian nations.
I had a discussion earlier today with a self-identified Christian woman who’s allegedly against men exposing themselves to women and children but has no problem otherwise with “pride”. She didn’t see the connection between her support of “pride” and the consequence of men being empowered to expose themselves in public or dress up as caricatures of women to read lasciviously to children. She seemed to think these were two different kinds of “pride”, but really there is only one “pride”, and it’s the same “pride” that got Sodom wiped off the map.
Pride in all its forms and guises needs to be outed for what it is, not sugar-coated and heavily made up to pretend it’s something it’s not. Rebranded sin is still sin. Sin cannot be virtue. The devil cannot be God.
As born-again believers, we are obliged to pray for those who are bound by sin, but we cannot in any way align ourselves with their sin. We can’t support their expression of sin, which means we cannot support or participate in “pride”. We cannot rebrand sin as natural, normal, or healthy because it’s none of those things. Sin is today what it always has been – a fast track to death and a sure way to separate yourself from God.
And as a former “pride” supporter turned born-again believer, I can tell you there is no worse state of being than separated from God.
THE NORMALIZATION OF SIN
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, November 10, 2021 – One of the best ways to get an eye-roll out of an unbeliever these days is to mention the word “sin”.
The devil and his hordes have been working overtime to make the concept of sin seem old-fashioned and laughable.
They’ve almost succeeded.
I don’t need to list all the ways they’ve done it. You already know. Popular culture has been the main vehicle, along with the infiltration of mainstream churches not only to pervert the Gospel message, but to corrupt the existing ministers and/or install their own corrupt ministers.
The fall of Christendom through sin didn’t happen overnight; it happened over the course of centuries. The Middle East fell hundreds of years ago, but in Western culture, the fall has been more recent.
How does sin become normalized? Spiritual sickness is presented as a good thing, as something that should be accepted, even admired. It’s presented as courageous, as a core truth that Christianity has cruelly suppressed. Spiritual sickness is rebranded as freedom.
As born-again believers, we know that true freedom can only be found in whole-hearted submission to God. But in the new normal of sin, submission to God is equated to slavery. You can’t be free and a slave at the same time, so obviously you need to free yourself from God. The fastest way to do that is to throw off everything that is condoned by him.
Where once there was marriage, there are now multiple “partners”. Where once there were children born of marriage, there are now children born of single mothers or aborted by them. Where once elders were honored and cared for, the elderly are now warehoused in state institutions to be drugged and chemically slaughtered.
Meanwhile, those who should be institutionalized are not only let roam free, they are given the reins of power.
Sin didn’t go away because we stopped believing in it. It grew and spread and deepened and solidified and gained a stronghold over us until everywhere we looked there was only sin (only we couldn’t even legally call it sin anymore… we had to whisper the word and slink off to the darkest corners of the web to search for those few souls who still knew that sin not only existed but had become Lord over former Christendom…).
The normalization of sin wasn’t imposed on Christendom. It was presented as a temptation. No-one can be forced to sin or to accept sin as normal. It’s a decision of the will.
Sin is always a choice that is made knowing it’s wrong but choosing it anyway, trying to justify it with what appear to be reasoned excuses. These usually come dressed up in terms like “social justice” and “equity” and “modern” and “progressive” and “victim”. Eve had no grounds for blaming the serpent for deceiving her, other than that she permitted herself to be deceived.
She permitted herself to be deceived.
When you accept sin as the norm, you are permitting yourself to be deceived, just as Eve permitted herself to be deceived. And like Eve, you will suffer exile from all that is good and holy while you wallow in that which is rancid and evil until it coats you and penetrates you and is absorbed so deeply into your being that you can no longer tell the difference between you and sin because there is no difference.
When it gets to that point on the societal level, sin has been normalized.
We are at that point.
We can’t come back from this, as a society. There is no coming back from sickness that has progressed this far. Not from this sickness. The only cure is that which was applied to Sodom and Gomorrah, or to Noah’s age.
But, you say, God can heal every sickness, no matter how seemingly hopeless.
Yes, he can, but only when the sick cry out for help.
I hear no such collective cry from former Christendom. Curses I hear, but cries for help are few and far between and growing fewer by the day. Individuals can come back from end-stage spiritual sickness – I am living proof – but not whole cultures, unless, like Nineveh, they all repent in sackcloth and ashes.
Repent is another one of those words that, like sin, brings on the eye-rolls.
The genius of the sin temptation is to rebrand sin as a virtue, so that anyone who tries to help the sinner find his way back to God is labeled as evil.
It’s all upside-down and backwards, former Christendom today, though this should not be surprising to us, considering that the world’s chief aim and accomplishment is the normalization of sin.
LOVE THE SINNER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 23, 2015 – One of the easiest ‘sin traps’ to fall into is forgetting that God loves everyone equally, no matter what they do or say.
He doesn’t love what everyone does or says, but he does love whoever is doing the doing or saying.
We need to remember this hard-core fact when we find ourselves repulsed by something someone has said or done. We need to separate the horrible thing from the person doing and saying it. We need to separate the sinner from the sin.
“Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
“Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
“Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
To do this, it helps to see the sinner as you. It helps to remember that you, at times, also say or do horrible things. It helps to remember that you hope not to be condemned even despite your screw-ups. It helps to remember that God shows mercy to you.
Knowing this, we must also acknowledge that:
- God loves the Muslim suicide bombers who blow up children.
- God loves whoever was responsible for 9-11.
- God loves the guards at the Nazi concentration camps who flicked the gas switch on.
- God loves Judas Iscariot.
This is the God we serve. Our God isn’t someone who hates those who hate him or who hates those who do horrible things. Our God is someone who loves all people equally, even those in hell and those on their way there.
Jesus told us to be perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect.
God loves us.
All of us.
All of the time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Years ago, when I was an atheist, I went to an abortion clinic. Because the clinic had received so many bomb threats, the front entrance was permanently barred and people had to enter through the rear gate. An armed security guard stood watch. As I went to enter, a man self-identified as a minister and separated himself from the small group of anti-abortion protestors who held permanent vigil there. He quickly moved towards me and tried to push himself between me and the gate. I pushed him back and the security guard intervened. As he was being hauled away, the minister yelled over and over again that I was a sinner and would go to hell if I had an abortion. I yelled back words that aren’t fit to print here, but you get the idea. There was no love lost on either side. What I remember most about this encounter was that it was with a minister and that his eyes were full of hate. That pretty much summed up my impression of Christians in those days.
Today, being born-again, I understand the loathing that the minister must have felt when he saw me make my way to the abortion clinic gate. I understand his hatred of what he assumed I was about to do, and I also understand how his hatred for abortion could spill over into hatred for me. I get it. It’s easy to do, hating the sinner as well as the sin. It’s a classic sin trap.
That’s why we must always be on our guard against it. Come Judgment Day, it’s probably not the big sins like theft or adultery or even abortion that will condemn us in God’s loving eyes, but the sins that slip under our radar, disguised as holy outrage.
“Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
“Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
“Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 