The essence of sin is blind willfulness; it’s the wrongheaded belief that it’s okay to do whatever we like because it’s our life. We make the rules – or so we think. But if we’re really honest about it, we know that logic is flawed. As much as we’d like to, we cannot avoid the consequences of jumping off a cliff or any of its moral equivalents. We didn’t make the built-in moral, physical or social laws and as much as we’d like to alter them, we simply can’t. Sin distorts that reality. It’s a blindness and a short-sightedness that if not understood, will eventually kill us.
So this blind willfulness, this feigned ignorance to go along with a distorted reality gets us into all kinds of trouble – it gets us into the deep self-deceptions of sin.