Based on our Saturday Sabbath Bible study of today, I synthesized the following ten (10) stages of sin (for one type of sin, or category of sin):
- Doing one or more bad things before the age of knowing sin, & before personal responsibility for sin.
- Love the sin, and the doing of the sin.
- Feel guilt & shame from doing the sin
- Feel tormented & frustrated by grudgingly, reluctantly refraining from the sin.
- Happiness, joy, relief, and thanks for having avoided doing the sin.
- Hate the sin, and flee from the risk of doing the sin.
- Perfect, sin-free day (24 hr. period) for the sin
- Perfect, sin-free periods longer than 24 hrs. in time, then interrupted by 1 or more incidents of the sin (ie. lower & lower risk of the sin).
- Stages 2 to 8 of the above sinning process spreads more & more from one or a few categories of sin, to apply to more and more different sin categories.
- Sealed by God, raptured to Heaven, and changed by God for all eternity into a sin-free child of God.
I suggest that these 10 steps for sin apply equally well to True Christians, Born Again Christians, luke-warm Christians, new converts to Christianity, cults, pagans, agnostics, apatheists, and atheists.
In my life, I am currently in either Stages 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9; depending on the various sin categories. I am working, praying, and hoping for my first sin-free day (Stage 7) for all sins and all sin categories. I wasn't always this way.
Luke-Warm Christian
Prior to Feb. 2017, I was a luke-warm Christian who did my fair share of sinning. I was chronically stuck in Stages 2, 3, or 4 (depending on the sin category). I have made significant progress since then by learning about Born Again Christianity, and choosing to be baptized as a Born Again Christian.
I chose to eliminate many chronic sins from my life. Some sin categories disappeared "cold turkey", leaving me without a fight, with no struggle, with no remorse.
Other sin categories eventually left me alone (ie. Vaporized out of my life) with more difficulties, with more fits and starts, with occasional backsliding into old sinful habits, then gradually achieving longer & longer periods of sin-free bliss for that sin category.
Today, I am still triggered to sin again for some sin categories at my chronically favorite sins by certain people, places, or activities. Frustrated about chronically falling into old sinful habits in spite of my weak, imperfect will power, I finally decided to seek help through prayer to God for strength to resist, and a spiritual hedge around me to keep me far from my favorite sins. I immediately learned that when I prayed for strength to resist my favorite sins in this manner on a preventative basis, I was 100% successful in avoiding that sin.
For example, when I decided to go to the grocery store, I was at risk of gluttony to buy junk food. Recognizing my decision to go grocery shopping would put me in great danger of the sin gluttony, I prayed all the time I was driving to the grocery store. After I parked my vehicle in the grocery store parking lot, I again prayed one last time before getting out of the vehicle. For some unknown reason, I didn't pray while inside the grocery store. I noted that I sailed right by all of the sinful opportunities in the grocery store aisles and displays. After I exited the store and was again seated in the vehicle, ready to leave for home, I noted I had been sin-free from gluttony. God had truly hedged me in. I praised God and thanked God again and again. I started the vehicle and went home with a smile on my face.
However, when I absent mindedly forgot to do preventative prayer on other occassions, I often fell into the gaping, wide open pit of sin I had previously dug for myself during my previous 60 years of luke-warm Christianity, and satanic "do as thou wilt".
Pray preventatively, achieve perfection. Forget to pray for strength, I get backsliding into my chronic sin habits.
Anti-Sin Toolkit
Unknown to me at the time, God was responsible for providing me with many opportunities that prepared me for my future life as a Born Again Christian, and Overcomer (yet to begin, but coming soon, I hope).
For example, having been a Professional Engineer for 41 years, a Management Consultsnt for 32 years, and training thousands of people in many different industries, I had many opportunities to discover, practice, and create a toolbox of methods for quality assurance in manufacturing, engineering, design, high tech industries, treating dysfunctional behaviours in industrial organizations, and achieving business excellence.
These techniques helped me help others to achieve better quality products, less employee frustration & more job satisfaction, better profits, and better customer satisfaction.
I now see that these same methods and techniques can be used to fight sin too.
These methods include, but are not limited to:
FMEA (Failure Mode Effect Analysis)
FTA (Fault Tree Analysis)
PPS (People Problem Solving)
7STC (7 Steps to Change behaviours)
FFA (Force Field Analysis)
5W (5 Whys?)
MP (Mistake Proofing)
SPC (Statistical Process Control)
6S (6 Sigma)
I believe that my ability to better understand why I continue to sin in some stubborn, chronic sins, this will help me to more quickly eliminate those few remaining sin categories our of my life.
These tools are man's ways, not God's Word. However, did God lead man to create these as specialized tools to aid the implementation of God's Word?
Satan is all about chaos and destruction.
These quality assurance tools of man are all about minimizing death, destruction, loss, and chaos. These tools are about holding back entropy and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I therefore conclude these tools are against Satan and Satan's goals.
Could I, should I, rely exclusively upon God's Word and prayer for eliminating the few remaining sin categories in my life? I don't know, perhaps that would be better. I haven't yet started to use any of these valuable, effective tools (unknown reason for my procrastination). Perhaps that is why I procrastinate.
Are these quality assurance tools a form of legalism, another Pharasidic system of burdensome bureaucracy, a potential millstone around our necks? Possibly, I'm not sure. Today, I see these quality assurance tools as temporary scaffolding that helps during the construction process of a sin-free life. Once that sin-free life has been constructed, the scaffolding used to construct can be removed, exposing the God-build structure in all its beauty and glory. Ugly, yet useful scaffolding is only a temporary measure, a means to an end.
In the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3, 5, and 6), Jesus said that the poor in spirit, and the meek will inherit the Earth and the kingdom of Heaven; and those that hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled. I see that these quality assurance tools could help.
Jesus said that some evil spirits could only be removed by prayer and fasting. Perhaps the same is true for deeply engrained, chronic sins.
If you have troublesome sin that is difficult to get rid of (eg. drug or alcohol addiction, porn or sexual addiction, smoking, dietary addictions, gambling, etc.), I am willing to freely share my knowledge and tools with all who seek relief. Feel free to contact me, leave a comment below, or share your struggle, so others can know, learn, and not feel so alone in their struggle against sin.
By analogy and anecdotal evidence, and with God's help, we can learn how to become sin-free, just like Enoch, Noah, Job, Jesus Christ, and others. Just because everybody (except Jesus) sinned in the past, this doesn't mean we are helpless, and must continue to sin forever. Perfection is possible.
Every Saint has a past, and
Every Sinner has a future.
Sin= Manufacturing Defects
So you can better understand this analogy, and the possible uses for the tools listed above, I propose the following true case study. For example:
In the 1970's, the Big 3 Auto Manufacturers (GM, Ford, Chrysler) had about 85% of the N. American car industry market share. Quality was lousy, customers complained, and switched to competitors, but they were just as bad, so every 3 years the wayward customer returned to their original supplier, so round & round they go; buy GM, swith to Ford, then switch to Chrysler, then back to GM. Others saw it as pointless, and stuck to the devil they knew and stayed loysl to their chosen auto manufacturer.
The Japanese developed higher & higher quality cars since 1948, when the USA experts when to Japan to teach them how to improve. The Japanese were excellent students, and in 30 years, they had passed their USA teachers. NBC did a television documentary "If Japan can, why can't we? to expose the problem, and recommend solutions.
I suggest poor quality manufacturing is similar to sin against God's Commandments.
Wanting to learn from the Japanese, and obtain high quality and low, low import prices so as to maximize profits, the Big 3 started buying auto parts from Japanese auto manufacturers, and the Japanese auto parts suppliers.
In one case, Chrysler bought thousands of engine cam shafts from a Japanese supplier. When they received the first shipment, Chrysler carefully inspected every cam shaft. There was not one defect in thousands of cam shafts, as indicated by the typical Go-NoGo gauges; an impossible miracle for N. American suppliers. Surprized, they brought out the more accurate micrometers. In fact, the micrometers measuring to 1/1000 of an inch showed every cam shaft was perfect, and exactly the size; exactly at the central target (ie. Ideal) measurement on the blueprint. Only when they got out air gauges accurate to 1/10,000 of an inch could they find any variation in the dimensions.
The cam shafts were perfect, all of them.
The cold, smug, arrogant parts suppliers of N. America saw, but didn't believe their eyes. They thought it was a trick; a cruel joke. However, it was true. Perfect.
When the most accurate measuring devices were used, and the most sophisticated statistical analysis was calculated, it estimated that only 1 bad cam shaft would occur in approximately 5 years of production at maximum capacity. Chrysler was amazed, and scared.
Within 10 more years of continuous improvement, the Japanese error rate had dropped to one defect in 40 years of production. Since the Japanese manufacturing plant had an economic and physical life expectancy of just 20 years, it was virtually impossible to make a bad one in the entire life expectation of that manufacturing plant. It was perfect..
Something changed that day. People woke up from a long sleep, and realized that the Japanese students in quality had passed the complacent, slumbering teachers from USA. USA realized it had lost its way. USA had become an apostate manufacturer, barely giving lip service to product quality and customer satisfaction.
God must feel the same way today about our chronic sins as N. America automobile customers felt in the 1980's about the chronic manufacturing defects.
Back to God
Today, we gasp at the sad statistic that 94% of so-called Christians are luke-warm; a Christian in name only. Occasional lip service is the most that God receives from most Christians. Worse, most non-Christians and non-secular people ignore God completely. Only a tiny minority believe perfection is a goal, let alone trying to achieve that goal.
The Bible tells us:
- God does not want to be the #1 thing in our lives (ie. First among many things). God wants to be the ONLY thing in our lives.
- The one and only thing to focus on is to love God.
- If we love this world and the things in it, we hate God.
- If we love Jesus, we will do God's Commandments.
- We must be Born Again to reach Heaven. That means us as individuals must be allowed to die spiritually so that we can be reborn spiritually in Jesus Christ, to do God's will, not our old, flawed, sinful will.
- We must learn and grow as perfect in Christ, leading sin-free lives.
Perfection isn't easy to achieve, but God doesn't command and expect impossible things.
Of the 10 Steps for Sin shown above, at what stage are you currently at? How long have you been sleeping or stuck at that Stage? Do you have any plans or desire to move to a better stage, a more perfect level? If not, why not?
Please share your comments below.
