It got me thinking. Apparently cat fleas are fantastic breeders, the females lay eggs everyday. So if there is just 1 flea on the cat, it means there's a latent flea invasion in the house already. Now that's pretty nasty, and what's more, these parasites are extremely tough to kill - I speak from personal experience. If one lands on your skin, you wouldn't even know it until you start itching. And with old aunty eye-sight like mine, its difficult to even spot them, coz they are like tiny pin-heads. If at first squeeze you don't get it right and squash them, they are so quick to take off and land somewhere else. Man, they are bothersome alright. I don't know how the cats feel though. They don't seem particularly upset by the fleas, and merely keep scratching and licking away. I guess animals grow so accustomed to fleas it really doesn't bother them much anymore.
So is something that I call the Sin parasite which is peculiar to human creatures. No one likes to think, much less bother, about it. In fact a great many don't even realize its ingrained itself so deeply into the human psyche and precious few care to know the consequence of sin infestation in a human life. Like cats, we scratch at the surface and think it's nothing serious. The attacks come so often we grow immune to them, and just take it as part and parcel of normal life. After all everybody is prone to it at one time or another, in one degree or another, so it becomes ok, something that we just live with. Besides what's the big deal so long as we don't sin 'big-time' like murder, rape or rob. Thus it's perfectly excusable to tell a half-truth or a white lie for convenience (doesn't matter whose convenience). It's quite acceptable to 'take' some little stuff from the office, what's a pen or two every now and then, its not like I am stealing million $$ .
Someone once asked me, why are Christians always so hung up on sin, even the 'minor' stuff that doesn't really hurt anyone? You mean, God gets angry if I run the red lights at 3 am in the morning when there's no other traffic on the road? Gee, your God must be a pretty nit-picky God then. Can't He bend the rules a bit, after all He makes the rules, He can change them anytime what. Well, I am sure He can, but then He wouldn't be a very consistent God, would He? How could anyone trust a God who suka-suka 'moves the goal-posts' whenever just to let some people off the hook some of the time for some cases? We wouldn't even respect a human judge like that. I have also been questioned, "Why doesn't God bother to do something about all the evil and suffering that's going on in this whole wide world instead? Surely if He is ever so good, so just, so powerful, He should end wars, suffering, poverty and make this earth a happy happy place. To that, I say, don't change the subject - God who created the universe surely will take care of the universe His way His time. Right now, He's bothered about individuals like you and me. He's bothered by the attitudes of our hearts that aren't really bothered about Him. That's the bottom line about sin; not so much the mere wrongness of an 'act', but the underlying posture that says, "I will do things my way, anyway". Indeed we can be 'religious', obey all the rules and do all the right things, and still get it all wrong. I can sit the whole day in church and yet sin in God's eyes, if my heart isn't right with Him. In effect, being a Christian doesn't make me holier-than-anyone-else. It just means I am a saved sinner, all by the grace of Jesus Christ and the love of God. Many don't really care at all, "Who's got time for this sin, heaven and hell business, I am too busy living life on earth; as the Beatles sang, Let it be, let it be...I will cross the bridge when I get to it"...unfortunately by the time we realize there is no bridge connecting heaven and hell, it would be too late).
And so the spin about Sin goes on to this day. There's nothing new about it really; as was the case with Adam and Eve , we the present Tom, Dick and Harry, Sue, Ann and Mary, can easily find 1001 questions and reasons to doubt, disbelieve and disregard God. We are all apt to think - sin can't be that bad. Unfortunately the truth of the matter is not what we think, but what God has declared about it - that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23)No 2, 3 or 50 shades of grey about it, no glossing-over, no cover-up. God pulls no punches and no wool over our eyes. I can hear the protests 'Oh, that is soo unloving, so unkind. What kind of God is this?' - A God who is all Justice. My parents love me, but they have never spared the rod when I did wrong; and I have grown up the better for it. I have also never doubted their love in spite of their strictness, because deep in my heart, I know they were right punishing my wrongs. So why should we begrudge God His right to decree death as the consequence of all sin? In fact if we accept the fact that God is all holy, we should understand why He gets so hung up on sin. As the Bible puts it, what does righteousness have in common with wickedness; what fellowship can light have with darkness? If we choose to stay in the darkness of sin, automatically we are separated out of the light. If we are not with God, by default we are cut off from Him. Death after all is but separation from life, hell is but the absence of God; the anti-thesis of heaven. Death and hell are not God's original intention for mankind, His most magnificent creation. That's why He gets all hung up on Sin, because Sin separates us from Him and His blessings. Which parent wants to be separated from the kids they love? If as human parents, we want to give the best to our children, can we not understand how much more our heavenly Father longs and loves to keep us with Him, so that we can enjoy each other's fellowship together forever? Yet like my cats who don't realize how much blood the fleas suck out of them, we don't realize how much we lose when we choose to live without and apart from God - we die, though it may seem we are living fine.It's like serious flea infestation which apparently can lead to some pretty dangerous health issues eg skin allergies, anemia and transmission of tape worms. Fleas have even been suspected of being carriers of plagues. Looks like they aren't as innocuous as they seem after all, just like Sin.
My kids paid the groomers to get the cats completely cleansed of their flea problem.I guess cat shampoo works fine for cat fleas. But no way any human-concocted shampoo can cleanse humanity's sin. If all are sinners, then none of us can 'rescue' the other. That's why we need a Savior - Some One without sin to save all sinners. And there was only One sinless - He who came from God Himself - Jesus Christ, Son of God, made Son of Man to die for sinful man, so that all may live, released from the consequential punishment of death we were destined to suffer. But just as my cat
had to submit to and receive the cleansing from the groomer's hand, man must first want to put himself into the hands of Almighty God. That is man's problem, so let's stop blaming God or the devil; for God doesn't send us to hell, the devil doesn't have to drag us screaming into it either. We choose it, out of the freedom God gives to us, when we choose to ignore, excuse or reason away the Sin that pervades every human heart and reject the hand of Jesus Christ, God's given solution to sin.
My cats have gotten it good now. Unfortunately 1 session wasn't enough for them, since the fleas kept coming back. It's like facials I gather - once you start, you can't stop going for them. So now we gotta keep parting with our money bringing the cats back to the shop for regular 'overhaul'. Unlike my cats, the price for our cleansing was already settled in full ; 2012 years ago by Jesus Christ who
got hung up (literally) on the cross - His very blood provided the cleansing for the sin of all mankind. That's how really hung-up God gets on sin, for the simple reason He's all hung up on us.
"God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness
of God".. 2 Corinthians 5:21
"This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins"....1 John 4:20
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