SIN: THE ENEMY OF THE HUMAN RACE
 
By A. W. Tozer
 
                 It is time the young people of this generation learned that there is nothing smart about wrongdoing and nothing stupid about righteousness. We must stop negotiating with evil. We Christians must stop apologizing for our moral position and start making
our voices heard, exposing sin for the enemy of the human race which it surely is, and setting forth righteousness and true holiness as the only worthy pursuits for moral beings.
 
                 The idea that sin is modern is false. There has not been a new sin invented since the beginning of recorded history. That new vice that breaks out to horrify decent citizens and worry the police is not really new.
 
                 Flip open that Book written centuries ago and you will find it described there. The reckless sinner trying to think of some new way to express his love of iniquity can do no more than imitate others like himself --- now long dead!

                 He is not the bright rebel he fancies himself to be, but a weak and stupid fellow  who must follow along in the long parade of death toward the point of no return.
        If the hoary head is a crown of glory when it is found in the way of righteousness, it is a fool's cap when it is found in the way of sin. An old sinner is an awesome and frightening spectacle. One feels about him much as one feels about the condemned man on his way to the gallows. A sense of numb terror and shock fills the heart.

                 The knowledge that the condemned man was once a red-cheeked boy only heightens the feeling, and the knowledge that the aged rebel now beyond reclamation, once went up to the house of God on a Sunday morning to the sweet sound of church
bells; makes even the trusting Christian humble and a little bit scared. There but for the grace of God goes he.

                 I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence.

                 Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization, but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.
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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.