You godless pagans will sometimes say helpful things. For example:
“The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from rping all I want? My answer is: I do rpe all I want…I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.”
This is super helpful. You’ve taken a lot of pressure off me. I was bracing for a real challenge to the biblical account of human nature. Turns out you just confirmed it.
The scripture told you that your desire is for wickedness all the time. You responded, “Nope! I don’t want to murder anybody.” Your ego tells you that lacking desire for a particular sin makes you a good person. That same ego hasn’t gotten around to asking, “What about the sins I want to do?”
Like, lying? Or stealing? Or impatience? Or selfishness? Or hatred? Those are the sins you defend, excuse, and rename while congratulating yourself for not being a serial killer.
You’ve admitted that the only thing keeping you from breaking into houses and stealing stuff is a lack of desire to commit burglary. Desires change. You are one impulse away from a life of crime.
We backward, simple-minded religious folks believe that our desire is for wickedness all the time. We don’t trust ourselves to want righteousness. Like you, we’re one impulse away from a life of crime. The belief that God is watching and judging is a safety net that keeps us from believing we’re great people because we don’t currently feel like murdering anyone.
“AHA! I got ya, John, you jerk!!! If you need a god to tell you to be good, you’re not a moral person!!!”
So…nothing I’ve said so far has sunk in? That’s a sign of a seared conscience. I can’t help you understand so I’ll finish up talking to the Christians.
Christians: Don’t be fooled. The pagans have a lesser god telling them how to behave. It’s called the ‘law’ and it punishes them when they sin. They bluster about doing good because they ‘don’t want to be bad,’ but they’re lying. They do not refrain from crime because they transcended evil through pure enlightenment. They refrain because prison sounds unpleasant. They fear the consequences of doing evil. Their pride doesn’t let them see it.
(Proverbs 16:2) All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord.
