The Most Pressing Issue in Your Life

Sin is the most pressing issue in your life.

It's not the oil change, the disgruntled employee, the raise, closing the deal, fixing the leaky sink, whether your team wins this weekend or not, date night with your wife, or even the cough you can't seem to shake.

It’s sin. It’s the thing that you can’t quite seem to say “no” to.

This week, Jesus uses really strong language. It’s the kind of language that doesn’t exactly jive with Jesus exclusively being the soft and gentle shepherd. 

If your eye causes you to sin pluck it out. Better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes and be thrown into Gehenna where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.

In other words, enduring the pain of plucking your own eye out and living the rest of your life with just one eye is less painful and less detrimental in the long run than continuing to tolerate sin in your life. 

Traditionally, the Church highlights seven deadly enemies of the soul or seven deadly sins. The seven are each different manifestations of the same mission. They want to destroy you from the inside out. 

As Jesus declares so directly these forces of evil cannot be dialogued with.They cannot be leveraged. And if you give them an inch, they will take a mile.The seven enemies of the soul are: envy, gluttony, lust, pride, anger, greed, and apathy. Let’s take a quick look at each of them and how to pluck it out of your life. 

Envy wants you to spend your life consumed by what you don’t have. Kill it with kindness toward all.

 Greed wants you to spend your life consumed by the accumulation of things. Kill it with astounding generosity. 

 Lust wants you to spend your life consumed by the pleasures on this world. Kill it with purity, dethroning pleasure from its desired place of supremacy. 

Anger wants you to spend your life consumed by wrongs perceived or real. Kill it with a patience willing to endure and a spirit committed to forgiving. 

Gluttony wants you to spend your life consumed by an endless need for more that cannot be satisfied. Kill it with temperance, taking all things in moderation to the point of goodness. 

Pride wants you to spend your life consumed by the need to be god. Kill it with humility, recognizing all good things as a gift from the Creator of all things. 

Apathy wants you to spend your life consumed by comfort, unwilling to do anything difficult. Kill it with the diligence to do the right thing even if it means sacrificing comfort. 

 Here’s something undeniably true: you cannot rise to the occasion of your life while also tolerating envy, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, pride or apathy. But you cannot help but rise to the occasion of your life with kindness, generosity, purity, patience, temperance, humility, and diligence. 

It's so easy to get consumed by what is merely temporal. But it's imperative to remember, you are an eternal being. And what has eternal ramifications is ALWAYS more urgent and more important than what is not.

Do the work. Surround yourself with grace. Root out of your life what is trying to kill you. And do not delay.