I Plead: Be Righteous, Wherein: I ask: What is sin? In a relative world!

Note by Marc Aupiais


For the first time in ages I returned to Catholic forum CAF and decided to discuss things to help people. Someone said they hung out every Friday night with friends who got completely drunk, and had a number of beers with them. They played video games at these events.


My response was: these were seemingly teenagers, illegally drinking alcohol, playing violent likely video games, and likely having lewd talk as drunkenness creates.


Drunkenness always has an effect on our ability to avoid sin, and being around drunks, drinking with them, joking with them, encouraging their behaviour? It sounded not only occasion to sin, but in fact encouraging and peer pressuring his friends to sin. A whole bad situation with a bad bunch.


Ephesians 5 I believe says: have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness but reproach them: show them to be what they are. And throughout the bible says bad company corrupts and "birds of a feather flock together", and "avoid the way of the mocker".


Jesus did associate with prostitutes, with tax collectors: but he never drank excessive amounts with them. He never spent his days discussing football with them, or hanging for hours among prostitutes.

It seemed I was the only one in the forum to even consider looking at what the bible said: it was labelled "student lifestyle" etc. Some said the friends were losers: most said: "have a good time", and "what events you may miss if abandon good friends who will soon abandon drinking".


Except people don't abandon drinking. And drinking excessive amounts is itself a mortal sin. Sitting around a friend playing Russian roulette. Or killing a baby: would be immoral surely? Drinking is a Mortal sin: it is the killing of a soul.


When we routinely associate closely with the sinful, when we routinely surround ourselves with sin, our senses are dulled to it. Our true vision, or the other world, our otherworldly memories and truths of heaven: fade, and we are dulled into a vast sleep, gradually and truly destroying the wooden log in the river, which is our soul tossed upon the rapids of time and space. least we forget, we are timeous, in that ever changing river: temporal and human! Not Just Yet Aeviternal, even as Our Rational Soul IS!

Drinking among drunks: well that's like putting a juicy stake in front of a starving person. It is peer pressure. This person is spending their Friday nights wasting away with bad influence friends, in South Africa where so many die from Alcohol, drugs, drunk driving, and drink related rape resulting in HIV.


And what do respondents in a Catholic forum say: either that their friends seem unwholesome, or to go for it.

Whenever Jesus was around sin he stood against it, or removed himself. The bible says: "have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness".


Sadly, the advice for this person, who could be studying or making good influence friends: was to enjoy playing video games and drinking.


The sort of friends who lead astray: bad company corrupts good Character: do not be lead astray- to quote the good book- the bible.


And yet, the advice is not to remove from the situation? The advice on a Catholic forum?


Jesus said: you are either with me or against me. The Book of Revelation likewise says of the Lukewarm: the lukewarm will be sent to hell.

We must be in the world and not of it. And that means not partaking in or promoting evil, not associating with it. Helping widows and orphans in their distress- the helpless innocent vulnerable, and NOT being polluted by the world (St James in the Bible book of James).


The apostles note how the Christians stopped attending orgies, how they separated from their past lives through morality. Not through associating with evil: as the bible says: "light can have nothing in common with darkness", and "focus on all things good and true and nobel".


How we live our lives makes us Christian. Religion is always striving to be the most good, perfect: we can be for God. I sin, but I try not to sin: this is my motto.


Yes, one or two people sometimes take precedence to God in my life: always the same two- but I try to be good. I try to fight for what is right.


And a good person must remove themselves from bad situations.


A saint doesn't hang out at the local club or bar, or strip club, or casino. A saint is separate. A saint does not obssess over immoral television shows, and scandal. A saint lives a separate existence. A saint does not act as though fornicating, or be excessively passionate and public in kissing- this is scandal- the gravest sin: of encouraging others to sin. And a saint- DOES NOT hang out playing video games and getting "smashed".


Woe, warning, beware: "the devil prowls like a Lion"- says Saint James. And "the Mature in faith do not think themselves safe", least they fall. We are not safe, or out of darkness, we walk, and walk, and walk: tirelessly in the dark dark dusk, unto dawn, we are the night watch of this world of ours. We aim at dawn and serve the King of the Dawn, the Emperor over the sea of time and fate!

Why does sainthood matter? Because a saint is just another word for someone who made it to heaven. And the word means separated by God.


Separate! Holy! In Heaven!


If the standard is to try out in this audition, with out very very best- and note the parable of the gold coins or old english "talents". It is not about talents, in the modern sense from an Americanism: it is about what is given a man. And that for every little thing we are given: God expects a return, least we be sent to hell.


Do not trifle with the eternal things of God, nor with your Aeviternal soul. DO NOT give the devil a foothold, dear sheep of God! Fight with all your might! Conquer every sin! Fight! Because the road is windy, and the path is small: few ever find the route unto salvic heaven. And if you don't like God's presence, or his path and behaviour: remember: Heaven is His Kingdom, His Presence: already among the moral on Earth.

For Jesus, when he preached, did not preach faith but judgement, and hell fire, he preached love certainly, especially in response to a question, but he firstly preached repentance from sin, and this is indeed love, as Saint John Says in the bible, in his epistle: "This is Love, to follow the commands of God", and "he who continues to live in darkness has never known God".

Our religion is not trifles, or possessions, reputation, sensuality, fame, gregarious pursuit. Our religion is Holiness: the separation and difference without which- I assure you, without which the Apostles, and the bible assure you: YOU WILL NOT ENTER HEAVEN. Whatever religion you possess or claim to hold unto. C.f. Lumen Gentium XVI, and the church's clarification on the dogma: "extra Ecclesium, Nulla Salus" (Outside the Church, No Salvation).