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SINETICS – CRACKING THE CODE ON SIN
Part 1
Ed Young
April 9, 2000
It is the age-old question. Are humans born intrinsically good with pure and righteous hearts, or are they born with a sin nature that if left unchecked will destroy their lives? B. F. Skinner and his boys believe in the former, that people are born basically good, but our southbound society eschews them and stains them. This is a popular ideology being taught in classrooms throughout our land. The Bible says the polar opposite. It says from cover to cover that we are made with a potential for greatness; however, human beings have the indelible imprint of a sinful, rebellious nature. We have a fatal flaw, if you will, of a sin nature—a natural tendency to transgress.
If you have any doubts about our sin nature, try this experiment: Have a baby. Well, you don’t have to have a baby. All you’ve got to do is take a quick tour of our nursery, and you can see the sin nature. I know babies are cute, cuddly, and all that, but they are little bandito sinners who can’t wait to advertise their depravity by being selfish, self-centered, and demanding. I sometimes wonder if social scientists and psychologists have ever had children because if they had, they wouldn’t be popularizing this propaganda. Who knows? Maybe the social scientists and psychologists are grandparents who have forgotten what kids are like.
That is probably one of the reasons it is not too popular to call it what it is anymore—sin. It is too harsh, too politically incorrect, or it will step on too many toes. We make Jim Carry-like contortions when we try to say the word. We can’t say it. We put our little spin on sin. Instead of saying, “I’ve sinned”, we say, “I’ve made a mistake. It was a misunderstanding. I was stupid. I was ill-advised. It was an oversight, a boo-boo. My bad.” Amazingly, we blame our backgrounds, circumstances, relationships, even genetics on sin. But it is not genetics, it is “sinetics”. We hear a lot about genetics these days—genetic engineering, genetic coding, DNA. I want to introduce a new term I have coined that answers the “why” of the sin problem: sinetics.
What is sinetics? It is that innate, contagious, southward propensity for evil that is within us all. Part of cracking the code is understanding sinetic engineering, how sin displays and portrays itself through our lives. Let’s face it. We are sinetically engineered for evil. We have an innate, rebellious code that, if not dealt with, leads to fatal consequences. That’s why we will be breaking down this whole process over the next two weekends.
Sin, no matter what the breed, always carries a consequence with it. You could be saying to yourself right now, “Why even talk about sin when we are going to transgress in one way or another before the end of the day anyway?” You have got a point. If you stay with me, I believe you could possibly change your position.
Let’s start with a couple of questions. What is sin? It is an archery term. It means missing the mark, falling short. The problem with this definition is that it fails to take into account that when the mark is missed, something else is hit—a spouse, a child, a co-worker, a career, a character value. It is missing the mark and hurting the heart of God. The Bible says that God hates sin. Do you know why? He loves people.
Here is another question: Why do we sin? This sinetic code can be traced back to the first homosapiens who “dissed” God—back to Adam and Eve and their “fruit foul-up”, their “produce problem”. Adam made a conscious choice to rebel against God and sin; thus, we have a negative nature that ultimately comes from him. We sin because we think we can do our own thing better than God’s thing. No one taught me how to sin. I just know how to manipulate, to cut corners, to subtly protect my ego. I just know how to do it. I wasn’t tutored in the subject.
Sin, no matter what the breed, always has consequences. The entrance of it into the equation of life brought death. Sin is always followed by a curse. Our sinfulness is proven by the fact that we die. Sin and death are joined at the hip. They are inseparably linked. Speaking of sin and death, during the Middle Ages, a group of theologians compiled a list known as the Seven Deadly Sins, which happens to be the subject of my brand new book, Fatal Distractions. They said there were seven areas that cause the majority of the problems in our lives. I truly believe that most of our hurts, habits, and hang-ups—about 90% of them—come from the seven deadly sins: pride, anger, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, slothfulness. In order to crack the code on sinetics, we need to know how they are engineered.
James 1:14-15 explains the sinetic coding. It says, “…each one is tempted when….” Let me stop there. We are all tempted. Temptation is not a sin. It doesn’t say if, it says when. It is tempting because sin is fun. If sin weren’t fun, we wouldn’t participate in it so enthusiastically. “…tempted when, by his own evil desire….” A passion in the pit of our stomachs. Desires are God-given. Without them we couldn’t function. Unless we felt the pangs of hunger or thirst, we wouldn’t eat; and if we didn’t eat, we would die. When we try to satisfy these desires outside of God’s will, that is sin. “…tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.”
These terms “dragged away” and “enticed” are hunter and fishermen terms. It means baiting a trap or a hook. Hunters and fishermen use bait to attract. In fact, the shelves sag at Bass Pro Shop with bait that hunters and fishermen use in order to capture and to catch different prey. They have made hundreds of millions of dollars off the whole bait thing. Bait appeals to our natural desires. It also hides the fact that along with it comes pain. I think about Lot. He would never have moved to the ungodly city of Sodom had he not seen the well-watered plains of Jordan. David—when he left for Bathsheba—didn’t see murder, the death of his child, and settling for second best behind Bathsheba’s curvaceous figure.
Verse 15 talks about when desire has conceived, it brings forth sin; and then when sin is full grown, it brings about death. Temptation is not the sin. The sin is when temptation and evil desire get together. What happens? Evil desire becomes pregnant, and it has a birth announcement: Sin. And when sin is full-grown, it brings about death.
Why compare sin with the cycles of life? Sin is like a baby tiger. This baby tiger here is a couple of months old. It is great, playful, fun. But you put about four or five years on the tiger, when the tiger is fully grown—Whoa!—a fatality can occur. He could tear someone apart. The same is true with sin. “You know, Ed, I have not experienced death.” Well, sin is not full-grown yet. You are still a baby tiger. You wait. Sometimes it takes two, three, four, five years, decades for sin to become full-grown. Sin is enjoyable for a season.
So temptation and desire get together, and desire makes the birth announcement called sin. When sin matures, it takes out an obituary: Death. Spiritual death. Sin causes that. We are sequestered from God. And also, physical death. But for those of us who are in Christ—while still dying—because we appropriated what Christ did for us on the cross—with His death, burial, and resurrection—physical death becomes a doorway into eternal life.
The book of Isaiah says that the wages of sin is death. Now, the reason some here feel so lifeless is because temptation and desire have been conceiving sin after sin, and your life is a cemetery of sin. You are pulling around a big ol’ hunkin’ hearse.
To illustrate what I am talking about concerning sin and death, let me describe a story to you. I am part owner of a boat, and I use the word “boat” liberally. I paid $200 for a part plastic, part Styrofoam, two-man bass buster complete with an electric trolling motor. I was fishing with a friend in the middle of a swampy lake when suddenly, the boat came to an abrupt halt. I could tell that we were hung up on something. We did what most experienced fishermen do—we started rocking the boat back and forth. I cranked the dial on the electric trolling motor. We began to paddle like Olympic champions. The boat was still stuck on something.
Although we had seen some huge water moccasins—I am talking about water moccasins so big they had goatees—I elected to jump over the side of the boat into the coffee black waters and feel underneath the boat to see what was hanging us up. I jumped in…felt around. We were literally impaled by a giant underwater limb that was poking a serious hole in our “expensive” boat. I called to my friend and told him we would need to get the boat off the limb, or it would sink us. He got on one side of the boat, I was on the other side, and we finally pushed the boat off the hang-up.
What would have happened if we would have stayed in the boat in the middle of the lake, cranking up the dial, trying to row, to rock off the limb? What would have happened? What would have happened if I had not thrown my toes over the edge and jumped in? I will tell you what would have happened. It would have been a disastrous day.
A lot of sub-surface sins are hanging us up. And these deadly hang-ups—seven of them that we have mentioned so far—have poked our crafts and are keeping us from progress. I would say, again, that about 95% of our hurts and hang-ups that we deal with have to do with the seven deadly sins.
It is one thing to understand the sinetic thing from James 1:14-15. It is quite another to go deep, and look and label these things that are dealing their deadly blows. For example: Pride. Do you have any pride? Pride is a basic breeder of human difficulty. You can’t say it without saying “I”. It causes us to belittle the seriousness of sin. It says, “I don’t need to hear about sinetics. I don’t need to curl my toes over the side of the boat, and go deep and look at the sub-surface issues.” It whispers to the over-spender, “You deserve it, even though your cards are maxed out.” It whispers to the alcoholic or drug addict, “Come on, one margarita, one joint, one pill.” It whispers to the controller, “If you don’t straighten up people’s lives, who will?”
Another one is anger. It erupts out of nowhere, on our spouse, our co-workers. Someone pulls in front of us on 635 or even in the church parking lot. Anger keeps you out, hung up on a limb. You don’t know what is keeping you hung up, what is causing you to paddle and not get off this limb. It could be anger.
How about greed? I don’t mean overt greed. I mean a true read on greed. You won’t get a read on greed until you go deep. “When I get a little bit more, I will stop. Then I will not want more.” There is always more. One more deal, one more car, one more boat, one more vacation home, one more dress, one more, one more…. We are never satisfied, and we look around and find out we are stuck, hung up. Luke 12:15, “Watch out, be on guard against all kinds of greed.”
Another one is lust. Don’t shift nervously in your seat when I talk about lust because that will be a dead giveaway that you struggle with it. Lust is not looking at an attractive guy or an attractive girl. That is natural. It is undressing them or having sex with them in your mind. Some date for lust. Some marry for lust. Some drop suggestive comments to test other’s lust quotients.
Envy—fixating on somebody else’s spouse, personality, portfolio, office…. You fill in the blank.
Another one is gluttony—taking too much food or drink. Some struggle with this, and this deep issue may be covering some even deeper issues of poor self-esteem, relational difficulties. Food satisfies us and kind of numbs us out.
The seventh one is slothfulness. The sloth is a creature that hangs upside-down for days. He is a slow-moving, tree-dwelling creature. This is neglecting important areas. Oftentimes, we are so busy shaking and baking and raking in cash that we give our family leftovers. It causes us to say, “I will deal with the seven deadly sins later. I will worry about sinetics later.” There is also eternal slothfulness that is really scary. Many here are one prayer away from eternity with Christ. Yet they say, “I’ll wait until tomorrow.”
Here is your homework. Jump over the side of your vessel into the coffee black waters. Feel those hang-ups. Understand the process of sinetic engineering, and label those sins. Because next week, we are going to see what we do with them as we crack the code on sin.