“Stolen water is sweet,” Prov9.17 ESV
C. S. Lewis writes, “It is the stealing of the apple that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory. This does not palliate the stealing. It makes it worse. There is sacrilege to the theft. We have abused a holy thing.”
If this were not wicked enough, how terrible it is when a person not only finds the apple they have stolen to be sweet, but that the very act of stealing it would make it sweeter. Spiritual sins are worse than physical ones. Most people find compassion for the person who would steal because they are hungry but there is utter disgust over one who would steal just for the pleasure of stealing. Of all the sins confessed by Augustine, the one that plagued his conscience most was stealing a pear from his neighbor, when he didn’t even like pears. Most sins involve perverting some good thing given to us by God, but the greater sin is to find pleasure not only in the natural pleasure (sex, food, drink) but to find one's pleasure perverting it. 8/9/2008 ts
Just me trying to be honest with God.
