2024 A.D.:  Leveraging our sinfulness and getting us to be or to feel too dirtied up to stand up for good against evil!  Should we reward that Satanic strategy?  Who can accuse the one that the Lord forgives?  For those who want out of the Devil's grip, it's prayer, confession, repentance, attempts to amend, and then re-engaging in the service of the Lord.  Maybe you'll bear the yoke the rest of your life, but you've handed the Devil a loss.  He's got nothing on you now!

     You've gotten an abortion.  Can you speak out about abortion then?  What if someone calls you out?  I once attended a church where a woman had asked to come up front and address everyone.  She confessed that she had killed her own child by having an abortion, now regretted it deeply and horribly, and hoped other women would think very long and hard before ever doing such a thing.  She talked about options she could have taken.  I only admired her as I sat listening for being so vulnerable in front of the whole crowd of her fellow church goers.  Strong woman for confessing so publicly.        

     You've committed adultery.  Can you speak out about the evils of adultery then?  Can you advocate against it?  What if someone exposes you as a 'hypocrite?

     You've done homosexual things, but now you're against it.  Or you never were really for it, or you experimented, or you were drunk, or you were victimized or you were the victimizer.  Dare you speak out that it is wrong?  Will you be shamed and excoriated publicly if you dare take a public stand against it?

     You are a drunk and a drug addict.  In fact, you have sold moonshine and drugs.  You purposely got people addicted to increase your profits.  Some people died or killed others purposely or accidentally because of their addiction, and you were their drug dealer.  Yes, you were an addict and your family and loved ones suffered.  Your kids were taken away.  You did jail time for it.  Can you come out strongly against drugs now?

     You took a bribe or were involved in corruption, now you want to speak out against it, but others that you were involved with will oppose you by any means, fearing that they too might be exposed?  What do you do?  Are you morally obligated to expose the whole mess so it can be ended?

     You spent years telling people why there is no God and why they are foolish to believe that there is one.  But you now know you were wrong.  How many did you mislead?  Are there souls that will spend eternity in Hell very largely because of you, or at least partly because of you?  Should you proclaim your new faith in Jesus, or will you look foolish?

     You were or still are physically beautiful or handsome, and fairly easily able to  entice others into sexual sin.  But now you've become aware of how evil that is, of all the harms that can result from such behavior.  Or the tables turned and now you have paid the price.  Illegitimate children, marriages you ruined, you caught a disease or you gave someone a disease.  How can you quit, how can you atone?

     You have a job, a job you need or a job that pays handsomely, but it requires you to do things that you know are evil or at least wrong.  You can't stand being part of it anymore.  How can you get out?  How can you atone for the evil you did?  How can you leave the lucrative lifestyle?  You will be shamed by the crowd that you would be leaving if you spoke out and then quit: they have turf to protect.  You would be portraying them as doing evil things for a living also, and they may know it's true but they won't tolerate that.  And they are your social connections, your acquaintances.  Your kids know their kids.  Your spouse is friends with their spouses.  This could lead to a huge loss of social status!  What do you do?

     You are one of the cool kids at school, part of the in crowd.  But how they live and talk, things they are doing, and how they treat others is not right and you know it.  But in some ways it's better to be one of the cool kids than someone the popular kids make fun of.  What do you do?    

      Someone has pictures or film or texts or recordings of you being wretched or evil or looking gross and ridiculous.  They can expose you.  Now you are being blackmailed, or shamed into being silent about something you should speak up about, or take action against.  You find yourself lacking the courage to just take action and have them imprisoned or exposed as blackmailers.  The humiliation you would face.  The shame!  

     You are a Christian and against homosexuality, but your child or someone close has become a homosexual or transgender.  How do you dare speak out that you are regretful of it and opposed to it?  Doesn't it also show that you are a bad mother or a bad father?  Are you condemning your own beloved child, or betraying them?  What if your TV or your books or magazines taught you that it was natural and OK for your child to be developing like this, and you listened to your TV or books or magazines, so you never corrected your children about it, so now they have their own barriers to getting right with God?  But now days you are not trusting your TV's teachings to overpower the teachings of your Lord Jesus.  What should you do?  Won't you be betraying your own family if you speak up?  Won't everybody point out that it was your own fault, at least partially, that your family member is gay and in spiritual trouble their own selves now?  Yet nowhere in the Bible does it suggest that gay is OK.  You have to stretch some vague misapplied scripture to the point of agony to even begin to justify that life style using scripture.  And now you want to live as an obedient Christian.  What do you do?

     You were big into facial tattoos and body modification, but times have changed and now you wish you hadn't.  Maybe you even feel like an outcast now as an adult.  But you are pretty much stuck with it for life.  It will be hard to reverse at the least.  So, do you pretend that you still like it to avoid embarrassment?  Do you tell your kids that it's great even though it might cause them to follow suit?  And do you try to get the next generation to do it too, so that you are not left out there all alone as decades pass and everyone comes to look upon it as a regrettable fad?  Or do you speak out about how you're feeling, perhaps talk about the ridiculing looks and words about your intelligence or your appearance?  How do you gracefully change your position and confess you feel you made a big mistake if that is how you've come to feel? 

     You...they...we...I...am in a fix, I am being squeezed in a moral vice, because I have been dirtied up!  In most cases it is my own fault  because I purposely and knowingly sinned...I am foolish or was stupid or did evil or can be evil at times, or I was very evil though now I am very sorry that I am or was  evil and want to be good.  But now pride, fear or shame of exposure and an instinct for self protection has me locked in a prison of bad likely outcomes, all of which involve me being shamed or punished, or imprisoned or I will cause embarrassment for my friends of loved ones if I take a stand for my new understanding of what is right and wrong.  What can I do?

     Satan must surely love it when we are staked out on the prairie in such prisons as these, usually prisons of our own making, unable to stand up and speak out clearly for our Lord's rules, teachings, and laws.

     But what if you speak out anyway?  Yes, what if you say heck with my image and reputation, and speak out anyway?  Doesn't the Bible say that there is no sin that is not common to man?  So with 8 billion people and around 2.3 billion Christians on Earth your sin is probably not a new and novel transgression against God's rules.  That doesn't make it more OK, but it means that some of the people that heard what you did may say in their mind, "Wow.  I'm guilty of that one too!"  Or perhaps they're guilty of some other more unusual type sin that is just as bad.  They may be moved to confess their own guilt, or perhaps they may be more likely to grant you some consideration for understanding and compassion in their own mind.  Some will be sitting on a sin they committed that is worse than yours!  Statistically, we know that.  They might even feel jealous that you got yours out in the open and they are still stuck with theirs.  And some who have thought about committing that same sin may hear your story of woe and regret, and decide firmly that they must never commit that sin.  You may cause some goodness to arise from your badness!   

     We are a 'belonging' of Christ and a slave of Christ and a soldier for Christ once you believe in Jesus and commit to Jesus and get baptized and begin to follow and testify and be impacting to whatever degree you attempt to be.  So, your job is not to be a finger pointer at people (except in certain specific circumstances) but rather an obeyer of the Lord's teachings and an opposer of the Devil's plans and ways. 

     You are in the middle of the fray right now.  You cannot let yourself become incapacitated against doing what you should do because you have sinned in the middle of the battle.  You admit it and move on in improved fashion, renewed in your commitment to not make such mistakes again, and knowing that none the less you'll have to answer for it later.  But you may have a lot of very great service to offer your Lord in capacities that He has in mind for you.  Shall you let your own intrinsic evil and the Devil's cunning plans render you inactive through such evils as you have committed?  No, make amends such as you can, warn others not to make the mistakes or commit the evil acts that you have.  Pray about it also.  But above all, press on.  God can remove us from the playing field at any time that he wishes.  Our life lasts as long as He decides that it will.  Regather yourself and re-engage.  Feeling too wretched to be a Christian servant?  Maybe you ought to, who knows, but apologize to God and soldier on.  God decides.  He knows how to remove an unfit soldier from  the battlefield, and only He gets to decide which of us sinners, sinners all, that He wants to remove if there are any.  

     Always try to do what good service that you can with the remainder of your life.  Your acquaintances probably don't have that high of an opinion of you anyway!  But shrugging out of your straight jacket without telling face saving lies, and assessing what you can do from that juncture on forward that is useful and good, then doing it is probably the best any of us can do at that point.  You can't always make amends, but should try. 

     But don't let the Devil have two wins over you just because he got one win over you.  With your guilty complicity the Devil got you down and dirtied you up.  But will you now allow him to keep you there?  Then you are letting him keep you from firing all of the arrows given to you by Jesus that are still left in your quiver that might have served the Lord in the great spiritual battle that's ongoing all over this world and in higher kingdoms than this one as well. 

     You are a sinner.  Maybe you are a very terrible sinner.  But you must redouble your efforts not to sin and you must redouble your efforts to serve your Lord who died for sinners such as you.  Did Jesus die only for such infractions as jaywalking?  He died to save people from the just desserts of even very ugly sins, if I read scripture correctly.  You are obliged to thank Him by actually continuing to give Him use of the life that you pledged to Him.  Honor God and fear His commandments.  This is the whole duty of man.  Scripture tells us that.  Love God with all of your heart, your mind, your strength, your soul.  And love your neighbor as yourself.  This is the Christian's duty.  Scripture tells us that also.  We are abysmal at it.   We are pathetic at it.  We are a disgrace in light of the unprecedented price that was paid for our souls so that we could have a personally unmerited chance at salvation.  But it's our job to do our job, and our job is service to Jesus, respect and honoring the Father who is even greater than Jesus, and honoring and obeying the Holy Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, that proceeds forth from the Father.  And we should keep doing our job even if we can honestly only say that our track record of Christian service thus far is horrible and pathetic.  Well then...improve it!  We should use our remaining time to improve it.  

     As I understand our Bible, the Devil cannot convict those who belong to Jesus, he can only accuse them.  A high price...the highest possible price...was paid to provide an obtainable pardon for our souls so that we need not be incarcerated into the Devil's legal system.  We cannot, however, escape the decisions and penalties that will be decided upon by God's legal system, which the Father decided would be administered by Jesus.  We Christians are always subject to Jesus' decision about us, as is just and right.  Our souls were purchased by His sacrifice if we have committed our soul to Him through the Christian process.  We are a purchased soul.  We must finish out our Earthly term of service as well as we can for Him.  Then one day we must and will stand before Him and...that is a momentous day.  None of us will get into Heaven by merit; of that we are already informed quite plainly.  So, He will determine if and how we will be recipients of His grace.  The books will be opened...the facts are all there and cannot be hidden.

     But, if you are "down" and you are guilty, don't decide to be "down and out".  Get up, in humility and apology and acknowledgement of your guilt, and fight on.  Your day of accounting will surely find you.  But don't let it include the sin of giving up and ceasing to serve and follow our Lord just because the Devil got you to give in and do evil.  There might be quite useful arrows still in your quiver.  But when our Earthly reputation among men never recovers because of some egregious thing we have done...well, that is just part of the punishment that we deserve and brought on ourselves.  That's a publicly visible reminder to others that we are a wretched sinner, which is exactly the thing that we really are.  Watching you receive your due punishments and ridicule may be what helps someone else avoid a grave sin they might otherwise commit.  And it may help someone whom you harmed to forgive you or at least heal.  But whatever the case, we deserve it and the best course is probably just to bear our yoke without cries that injustice is being done to us.  Isn't our punishment often less than we deserve even on this side of the veil?  And with Heaven being a place of perfection, if we are allowed to be cleansed and enter it then our punishment is certainly less than we deserve on that side of the veil.    

     Once a hidden abscess is lanced and laid open for all to see (though they gasp and cringe and recoil) good things can start to happen.  Sunshine and fresh air on a putrid, nasty wound begin to do their work and the agents of infection begin to die and the pussy liquids dry out and the flesh quits stinking and the body's processes for healing begin to do their work and the flesh begins to knit.  There will usually be a visible scar, its visibility and unsightliness varying with the extent of the size and location and nature of the original open wound.  But, an odious puss pocket that is not lanced and opened up to drain cannot be healed up in this manner, can it?  It's a hard truth of sinning.  Admit it, get it out, get it off your chest, and you have just stolen back the power from the Devil's hands.  Then you move forward and start addressing it all and putting it behind you, and pretty soon you are a warrior or a worker for Jesus once again.  You might be down rated a little or a lot.  You might be useful but with caveats and restrictions; that will be the Lord's call to make.  But hey, Jesus is allowing you to contribute to the team.  You'll have to deal with it all one day when you stand before the Lord.  But it's better to be able to show that you acknowledged and dealt with your sin and got the blackmailing old Devil out of your life so that you could go back to being of good use to your Lord and your fellow man.

     It would be a beautiful day if all of those in our government who somehow got themselves trapped in the goo were to suddenly throw off the secrecy and expose it all to the light.  I think that Americans would greatly forgive them, though they might remove them from office.  And we could clean out the rottenness and make a fresher better start.  But they are not some especially guilty group.  We are almost all that way.  All of America should throw off the Devil's yoke.  Who does it serve anyway, except the Devil? 

     And if you see or know someone who is going through their time of shame, remind them that everyone is a sinner, and that the bad thing they did might even overshadow all the good they've done in some cases...but it doesn't erase it.  Maybe you can help them take responsibility for their mess, repent of it, deal with it, and move forward..maybe you can help get them and whoever they harmed or hurt to be restored to being a useful and healed part of the body of Christ...to whatever extent that can happen.  And with repentance and forgiveness by the sinner, and with all the possible love and forgiveness and restoration and understanding others can provide, as is possible in many instances, some very bad things can be greatly overcome.