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the grain of my own nature, parts of me still backslide.

Today's world bombards us, Christians or not, do-gooders or not, with the temptation to be "do-badders." Let's take a slice of 1950s morality and say, for the sake of argument, that the following things are wrong and sinful: Pre-marital sex, homosexuality, drinking, drugs, adultery, pornography, lying, murdering, raping, stealing and working on Sunday. (I'm being somewhat facetious here.) Now going through that list, think of those things in relation to modern media. In Hollywood, everyone has sex before marriage, being gay is cool and gets you your own TV show on Oxygen, drinking is commonplace, drugs are what the cool people do for recreation, adultery is fine because "we're in an open marriage", pornography is two clicks away, etc., etc. I literally could go on for days. This same media-driven world gives very little play, if you will, to the do-gooders, the Christians, the upright in the world. The only time you hear about Christians is when someone in a public school is in trouble for praying at lunch or passing out salvation tracks in study hall. The only time good will to men is considered is at Christmas and maybe Easter. The only time it's cool to mention God or Jesus is if you are including them in a brief nod during an Oscar acceptance speech or after winning the Superbowl. I know I'm being minimalistic to a degree, but I also know I'm not too far off the mark. The point of all of this is, it's hard, if not impossible, to live a Christ-like life in a Christ-less age.

So in conclusion to my too-long dissertation here I say, when I'm faced with the temptation to lie, to lust, to envy, to hate, to be apathetic, to judge others, to (fill in the blanks), I know only this; no matter how much my heart may want to flood uphill, my nature can only obey to the gravity of the sin within it and I pray for God's sovereign hand to gently lead me higher. A mere thought from God was enough to part the waters of a sea, so I can trust fully that God can deal perfectly with the tiny trickle that is my humanity.

Learn more about this author, Esmerelda Q. Culpepper.
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