Playing Down Sin

“Look at the shrines on every hilltop.  Is there any place you have not been defiled by your adultery with other gods?  You sit like a prostitute beside the road waiting for a customer.  You sit alone like a nomad in the desert.  You have polluted the land with your prostitution and your wickedness.  That’s why even the spring rains have failed.  For you are a brazen prostitute and completely shameless.  Yet you say to me, ‘Father, you have been my guide since my youth.  Surely you won’t be angry forever!  Surely you can forget about it!’  So you talk, but you keep on doing all the evil you can.” [Jeremiah 3.2-5]

We have become so good at playing down our sin.  And yet we fail to see that that is exactly what Israel and Judah did that Jeremiah called them out on here!  Even when the normal spring rains failed to come, which was an obvious understood judgment against the sin of the people, they claimed to be alright.  They had not only refused to acknowledge their sin, but went so far as to say they were good with God.

Are we today ignoring obvious signs of judgment (perhaps explaining it as scientific phenomenon)?  Are we declaring without substance that God is our Father in spite of our brazen rebellion and unfaithfulness?

I think so.

Father, forgive me for lying to myself and others that 'all is well' when terrible things are going on all around me.  LORD, I have embraced so much that is not Godly and in so doing have been so unfaithful to You.  Please forgive me.