GOD IMPLIES THAT TEMPTATIONS ARE SINS
The Church says desire for sin is not a sin. It's a sin if we give in to any degree. But if the heart lies, as the Bible says, you may not see how much you are behind the desire. Jeremiah the prophet wrote something about the human heart being deceptive above all things. People do sense however that there is more to at least some of their temptations than they think and that they somehow let them in or fed them.
People who blame themselves and others for how they are tempted soon suffer burn out and end up doing terrible things. They give up on being better. They do not feel happy when they are "forgiven" by God or the priest. They feel they are frauds. Religion is to blame and cannot get out of it by lying that it does not tell anybody to treat temptation as a sin.
Christians say that Satan is tempter and not God. Satan seduces us to sin. The letter of James says that God has nothing to do with the existence of temptation for God wants us to obey and to love. It squarely states that nothing outside of you tempts you – you make it tempting. Temptation is you tempting yourself so it is a sin. A temptation is not a temptation unless you let yourself think about giving in. An urge and a temptation is not the same thing.
Wanting to do bad apparently does not show we are bad but that we are conflicted. But that is saying we are bad in another way – we have a struggle. Do we want that struggle? Do we feed it? Maybe we don’t realise how much we are behind the struggle. If sin is so terrible which it has to be if God is endless infinite love and goodness then this is a very serious matter and is a recipe for spiritual paranoia.
Some thinkers feel that a totally out of character change
in a person such as the person who always worked to save lives and who suddenly
kills somebody in cold blood only seems to happen but in fact they have been
unnoticably changing over time so their decision was not sudden but spread out
perhaps over several years. Most of us think of a decision as something we go
for right now as opposed to something being spread out and made over months as
opposed to in a moment. And the decision is in some way incomplete until the
action is done. This tells us that temptation to do evil is definitely itself
evil when it is a sign that you are gradually choosing an evil such as murder.
Suppose Satan is tempter. When God lets Satan or anybody tempt us he is as bad
as they are. He supplies them with the power to tempt which is the same as doing
it himself. It is actually worse when he gives Satan the telepathic power to
cause sin which we do not have for then that power is not necessary at all. It
follows that if God cannot tempt then he cannot be an accomplice in it.
Temptation to sin refutes the existence of God. It is mistaken to imagine that
God would not tempt but would become a willing accomplice in it. The intent is
still the same despite the outward differences.
The doctrine of God has been a remarkable success when it comes to destroying
people with guilt. Millions, especially in the Catholic brands of so-called
Christianity, have been gripped by the mental malady of scrupulousness. This
kind of religious madness makes them imagine sins where there are none and feel
guilty all the time.
The Church proposes that one solution is to tell them that temptations are not
sins. The scrupulous know fine well that the Church is trying to dodge attacks
from the psychiatric profession which is why they are strangled by neurosis.
The Church says that involuntary desires and temptations towards sin are not
sins. But it also says these desires are still bad which is why they are sins if
deliberately entertained. So it follows that if you would rather be dead by a
decree of God (who has the right to take your life) than alive to experience
these temptations, only then can you escape the experience unscathed by sin. The
desires and temptations are not sins then. But if you would refuse to consent if
God wanted to take your life to rescue you from these temptations, then you
consent to be alive for the temptations. You are choosing to be tempted which
makes you a sinner. You are then no different from a person who entertains the
temptations except you are sneakier which is worse. So unless you love God
perfectly which no person can manage, if temptation does not cause you to sin
one way it will another.
The Church believes that temptations deliberately walked into are sins for you
could avoid them. So if your boss won’t stop tempting you to look at dirty
pictures you have to leave the job no matter how well-paying it is! The Church
should act more like a religion of misery so that people would know what it
really is!
