I recently re-read a book called The Oath by Frank Peretti. It came out several years ago and it’s long, but it’s definitely worth the time.

   If you’re not familiar with Peretti, he writes spiritual warfare thrillers and in this particular book, he tackles the issue of sin and personifies it as a dragon that devours those who dabble in it. All very interesting and scriptural, but that’s not the part that struck me.

   In the story, Peretti illustrates how sin actually changes people’s hearts by causing their hearts to ooze black goo as they dabble and sink into their particular sin – whatever that might be. But captivating as that might sound, still not the part that struck me.

   The striking part struck me because it was real – unlike a dragon flying around eating people or hearts oozing black goo. The part that impacted me was what happens to people after the goo appears and before the goo signals the dragon to come and eat the people.

   What happens between those two very allegorical things is that the people stop caring that they’re sinning.

   Somewhere between the time a person’s skin begins to exhibit a rash-type of stain over the heart and the time that the heart actually begins to gush black goo, the person becomes aware of his or her sin; often before that happens, they aren’t even aware that they’re doing anything wrong. Or, if they are aware, they’re content to have rationalized their sin for a long period of time. Regardless, once they become aware, they can then either confess their sin (spoiler alert: most don’t) or they can cease to care that they’re sinning and begin to blame anyone who dares to try to warn them that serious peril is about to ensue.

   Back to the dragon. We’re all familiar with scriptural references to the devil as a dragon and we know, again from scripture, that his goal is “to devour” anyone he can. But we don’t often think of the actual sin itself as the dragon which devours. We are told that sin can destroy us, but sometimes we have the idea that that destruction is defined by spending an eternity in hell. But what if it means something more?

What if the actual destruction is in going from caring to not caring?

   You’ve heard the warning “don’t pet that sin”. The implication is that we can dabble in sin until we think we’re in danger of being trapped and then pull back in time – no harm, no foul. But what if the trap is not the addiction itself, or the anger problem, or the gossiping, or the fill-in-the-blank? What if the death trap is the actual lack of caring whether we ever stop sinning or not?

   How terrifying is that?

   Why am I going on about sin today? I don’t know – just a book I read that made me think. And what does this have to do with a blog that primarily expounds on principles of success to help in achieving dreams and visions? Not much – if you don’t think that whatever can shipwreck a soul can also shipwreck a destiny.

   Not to worry. Just a thought.