Earlier this week a friend published an interesting article, titled ‘Deconstruct Your Temptations’. In his words, “each of us are locked in [an] internal moral arms race” between our temptations and our faith, between the lure of sin and our love of God. His exhortation was that we interrogate our temptations, inspecting the lies behind them, “the sophisticated ruse to satisfy our primeval desires”—I really liked that last phrase. Resisting temptation, he goes on to say, is “making careful and informed decisions instead of acting on wrong beliefs.” Our struggle against temptation, he therefore concludes, demands some digging, to uncover the fallen reasoning we rally in support of sinful behaviour.

I heartily commend Wessel’s short encouragement. We must expose the shaky foundations of our sin. For my Honours Degree I studied John Owen’s Mortification of Sin, and regularly find myself meditating on that extended call for believers to kill indwelling sin. “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live,” so goes Romans 8:13. Amen. A much neglected part of the Christian life is—in the words of John Owen—pulling invasive weeds out of our hearts, uprooting the stubborn roots with sinful shoots.

More recently we’ve seen the deserved success of writers such as Timothy Keller and James K. A. Smith, both of whom have urged Christians to consider this matter. The former popularised the notion of “heart idols,” while the latter developed Augustine’s emphasis on our loves. Both Keller and Smith are saying something similar to John Owen: behind much of our sin lies faulty—or fallible, even fallen—reasoning and beliefs, alongside loving something more than God. And as my friend writes, “Just as it takes training to recognise propaganda for what it is, and to be able to separate out the lies from the truth, we must train ourselves to deconstruct our temptations, so that we can find where the lies and the true truths are.”

Sin Can Be Profoundly Unreasonable

However, I want to raise one supplementary point to Wessel’s post, which I’m sure he’d agree with wholeheartedly. And it’s this: sin isn’t always calculated and reasoned; sometimes it’s purely irrational. “I do not understand my own actions,” writes Paul (Romans 7:15). Then, a few verses on, he speaks about desiring to do good but finding himself—almost unwittingly—doing wrong (Romans 7:19). This can be traced back to Romans 1, the apostle’s extended exposition on our profoundly disordered desires. “Augustine’s experience of the workings of the will,” observes Carol Harrison, like Paul, “found the passions invading, dividing, and upturning the workings of the will in the face of its rational grasp of truth.” Most believers can confirm Paul’s and Augustine’s discovery, that we can’t always explain the temptation or decision to sin.

Earlier this year I wrote on this theme, “we’re beleaguered by spiritual sickness, a general malaise of the soul; morally, we’re unwell and…our psychological health is hampered by indwelling sin. Our behaviour, indeed our entire sense of self and the directions we decide on, is almost never purely rational or well reasoned.” Thus in his True Spirituality, Francis Schaeffer likened the human person to an iceberg. “Much of the self, therefore” I’ve written, “is submerged in dark and mysterious waters; some of which will, perhaps, forever evade our powers of perception. All of this means our sinfulness isn’t always traceable to some or other source.”

All of this is just to get to point that we won’t always be able to identity those roots (Owen), heart idols (Keller) or wayward loves (Augustine and Smith). To turn over something Ashely Null once said about sin, our minds justify what the heart loves and the will then chooses; only, our reasoning doesn’t always occur prior to our choosing sin and caving into temptation. Sometimes, we’re drawn to sin the same way that Frodo is entranced by the Dead Marshes—there is an inexplicable lure to do what we God prohibits. So instead of agonising over causes we must on occasion merely repent and put off sin, resist temptation. Furthermore, we must always seek assurance in the wonderful grace of God.