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Biblical Studies Journal Volume 3, Number 7

November 23, 1999

Why Would Anyone Want To Do It?

(A Carrell's Corner Article)

When the sixth floor of the School Book Depository building of Dallas, Texas was opened as a museum, many people had a first time opportunity to see the room from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired the bullets which took the life of President Kennedy some twenty-five years ago. When a father was explaining the historical significance of the museum to his son, the little boy asked the question, "Why would anyone want to kill a president?" What a good question! Why indeed?

When I read about his question, I began to ask myself some other questions. The papers told us of a sixteen year old girl who called 9-1-1 while her mother was being raped, and I asked myself the question, "Why would anyone want to violate the body of another human being?" I read further of the continuing drug "busts" that are taking place in our city, and I asked myself the question, "Why would anyone want to ravish his own body and mind with such devastating substances?"

When I began to formulate an answer, I couldn't help but notice a common thread running through all of these seemingly isolated instances -- men want to do these things because of the blindness and darkness of sin! Sin has a way of blinding our eyes to the ultimate outcome of our own behavior.

When we ask the question, "Why would anyone want to end up in prison, or end up with a ravished body, or end up with a devastated life?" the answer is simple -- ''No one wants to end up that way!" But sin doesn't allow us to think of the ending up phase of our misbehavior. It thinks only of the here and now, the gratification of our own immediate lusts. It is totally blinded to the after effects, the tomorrows that will come, the lives that will ravaged.

It was said of Moses that he "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."  Sin is "for a season:" -- then you pay the price.

    -- Gene M. Carrell

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