"For the entire Law is fulfilled in in this one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."—Gal 5:14

A deadly process.

Added on by Lucas Necessary.

"Wait, you drove to see her while you were drunk? Seriously? That's horrible and dangerous, you could hav—"  "OH SHUT THE **** UP, I should have known you'd judge me. Like you're perfect. Everyone's driven drunk. It wasn't that bad."

That's from a conversation I had with a Christian in my past. This person had a billion good qualities of stunning magnitude, but refused to address this particularly strong fondness for drinking to excess. Satan has a flowchart to deceive us. First, he hooks us with a sin. But he needs us to think that it's normal to sin. To do that, he gives us friends who do the same things, because bad company corrupts good morals. He wants us not only to practice that sin, but to give approval to those who do; to feel more comfortable letting loose with them than being around the saints. (Rom 1:32)  Consider this escalation of thought: 

My friends drink, so I'll try it, too. -> You know, everyone drinks a little. -> Everyone likes to let loose and party with friends. -> Everyone gets drunk. Everyone drives drunk. -> Wow, my friends don't criticize me for this! No wonder I hang out with them. They're compassionate. You're not. Get out of my life.

That escalation can occur with anything. Everyone watches porn, right?  Everyone cusses, right? Everyone sleeps around, right? 

Because we go down that process of thought and are so desensitized toward sin, we fail to have the proper response toward it, whether it is our own sin, or sin in others. We minimize it, justify it, or ignore it and go on our way unaffected by it—or so we think it has no effect. We look at those billion good qualities and feel proud of our spiritual accomplishments and tell ourselves, "This outweighs that sin I'm keeping—that's what grace is for!" 

God says, "And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." (Mt 24:12) Our love for righteousness grows cold.  We exchange the truth of God for a lie, and become liars seared in our own consciences. We become dead men walking. Don't let that happen to you. Nip it in the bud.