Gods and Demons

God is Love is but one central attribute of God. God is Wrath is another as is God is Just (if we are prepared for a moment to lay aside the notion that his idea of just must conform to ours. We might grant that he has first divs on what constitutes just)Thus God is Love, Just and Wrath. No one attribute is more weighted in importance that the other. Any plan of his must be consistant with his being these three things (and many more things that he is). We can't arbitarily chose one attribute and say "the plan doesn't fit"Depressing?Your view:Man is born perfect at the very top of the slope. Because he is perfect God sits at the top of the slope with him. Then he sins. This causes him to slide down the slope - away from the perfection he had. Now if you take Jesus expanding of the law so that lusting after a woman is the same as adultery and anger with a brother is the same as murder then it is fair to say we have much opportunity to sin. But we can also do good. This tends to move us back up the slope towards God. We can't get all the back for we always have sin pulling us down.Then we die. Judgement time. God knows every good thing and every bad thing we ever did. He will know the attitude behind it too. We might suppose that one person giving $10,000 to charity with a view "that should get me a bit more up the slope" could actually be considered less 'good' than the other person giving the last $10 they had to a beggar because their heart simply went out to him at that moment. Whatever the aspects which influence things, God can weigh each and every one of all our actions 100% perfectly according to his Justice. Unlike our justice, not so much as an iota is measured or weighted incorrectly. His scales are perfectIt follows that judgement will see all the people who have ever lived positioned at various points up and down the slope. Each persons actions will have placed them where they are, the worst (according to Gods measure) nearer the bottom and the 'best' (according to Gods measure) nearer the top. Then God takes out his circular saw places it at the edge of the slope and cuts a straight line across it. The cut off piece and everyone on it falls away to Hell. The remainder and all on it go to HeavenThe question is: at what level does the cut off occur? Only he knows. It could be anywhere. But we know that his justice is such that the thickness of the blade on the saw is sufficiently thin so as to pass between all the people left at precipice (but who did just enough to make it into Heaven) and all the people at the edge of the bit now falling to Hell who just missed out.Depressing isn't the word:- that is not justice, that is a travesty of justice. Its one thing to put the score for a pass mark in a school exam at 40% and have 39.99999999% result in a fail. But this is Heaven and Hell we're talking about here. Eternal bliss for one and eternal damnation for another - all on account of perhaps a fraction of a sins difference between two people: the very last person to scrape into heaven and the one person who came closest but who just missed out.- no one knows how high up the slope the circular saw will do its work. How narrow is the narrow gate and how wide the wide gate? No one knows. This means God hangs the threat of Hell over everyone, tells them that doing good will get them in a narrow gate but doesn't even tell them how narrow it is. All whilst giving them no way to know whether they have done enough to pass - for no one knows where this line will fall. This should make (especially) old age or anything less than a sudden death a terrifying prospect. This is cruel and unusual psychological torture.My viewMan is born at the top of a slope. He hasn't committed any sin yet but he is a sinner (he has the ability to sin). God doesn't reside at the top of the slope alongside him - he resides infinitely far away because infinite distance separates God from sinners (for God is unable to commit sin). Then man begins his foray into committing sin and starts the slide down the slope. He can't help sinning and so slides faster and faster down. His good works aren't counted by God for anything and so they can't arrest his descent. The slope doesn't go on forever though. It terminates. Death arrives and man falls off the slope and lands in Judgment. Nothing has changed from the day he was born until the day he died which can bridge the infinite distance that separates him from God. Death locks him in the position he was born into: infinite distance separating God and man. All that his life has achieved is for him to have done things that deserve punishment.Just? Absoutely. Man was born a sinner and died a sinner and gets the wages of the sin committed. Wrath.But what about Love? Love is that which seeks for the welfare of a beloved. But it is not sentimental love. Love can take extreme measures to save the object of its love but it cannot ignore justice. It cannot ignire the sin that has been committed. Love in saving, must ensure that the attributes of the justice and wrath which the committed sin attracts are satisfied. So love offers to satisfy justice and wrath and pay the price itself. Justice and wrath accept the offer. But will the beloved?And if man rejects Gods love then love is satisfied too. True love wants to fulfill the desire of the beloved and if the beloved want to reject it then true love will honour the wishes of the beloved. It doesn't seek to force possession of that which doesn't want it. Perhaps it remains in the pain of forever being unrequited love. Or perhaps it does as we do - and allows the love to die. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

You are of course correct. As a consequence of no laws being broken society would be full of law abiding inividuals who would not dream of bring distress (via law breaking) to other people. Sounds like heaven. In the UK the right to suicide is denied and psychotically depressed individuals are coerced into protective custody. When patients are in psychosis they cannot make competant decisions (according to the Law). Could your god not have told him the results (after all the results of Adams actions were a known value to your god)? That would have given him more free will than denying Adam the relevant facts. If Adam went ahead after knowing the results then he deserved everything he got (not his children though, thats still a cruel act). I think I have you here. If your god did not put up a 'Do Not' sign up, if the demons were not there to tempt us into opening the 'door', if your god had not offered (tempting him as per a demon) Adam the choice, would not we still live in the Garden?Would all human experience be bliss at the right hand of yout god?It still ends up with your god doing all of this TO Humanity. It set the conditions of reality, it decided that we should be pushed to breaking point and then punished not just the offender (Adam and Eve) (or was it Lilleth?) but the children too.This is why I wonder about demons.They are just a by product of the hand of your god.Why does your god condemn people to lives of misery?

Does the Jewish faith have a concept of demons?

Its not hard to begin to get an inkling of heaven is it? And that's exactly what it will be like. And something has to happen to make that way. Something has to happen for us to be returned to the state that Adam was in prior to the fall. Only ever so slightly different. Whereas he had free will within Gods boundaries and was then enabled to chose against God, we won't be given the choice to go outside the boundaries again. For we were born outside the boundaries and can have all the experience we want of what it is like to live outside those boundaries. And he exposes us to a mechanism whereby we can escape from those boundaries and go back to his. That is what salvation offers - we should no more think this is all about being hell bound - we must also look at the other side, heaven bound. We must be brought to a place where we willingly relinquish the right to operate outside Gods boundaries. And he honours that choice and does everything necessary for that choice to become permanent reality And what do you think of my illustration of us being as incapable of expressing our free will healthily as is a depressed individual. All the free will of a damaged mind or an addicted nature. That we are in fact born addicts and have all choices coloured by that. Slaves to sin. He could have of course. But in order to make the choice a balanced on Satan would have had to have been permitted to up the stakes of his temptation to compensate. It doesn't matter where the level of knowledge was set at, balanced each way it had to be.Lets suppose that dead spiritual genes weren't passed on. That Adams spirit died in him and Eve alone. That Cain and Abel were born fresh and clean like Adam. Now they too must be given a balanced choice. Perhaps one would chose for God and have his choice sealed forever. And the other for evil and his choice sealed forever. And so on down the line.What you would end up with is some people in heaven and some in hell. Just like its going to be. It would be. But we wouldn't have had any choice in the matter. God would have had pets, not relational love of the type that makes it possible to be raised up above the position of pets. God is after relationship. because that is who God is: "let US make man in our image and likeness" The picture is Fathers and adopted sons: all loved as much as Jesus is loveed.Relationships is our most prized possession. That which brings us most joy is having loving, enjoyable relationships with others (and that which brings most pain is having unloving damaging relationships with other) We usually don't settle for less that loving relationships - even if we do we know we are missing out. Why should God settle for pets. Remember that it pains him too to see us like we are. The prodigal son went through the misery of his sin. His father suffered the pain of a lost son and was ever looking out for him to come back. God was after something monumnental. He decided that both he and we would have to risk all in order to gain all. This is not a game Larni - but it is played for the very highest of stakes. I'm not living a life of misery. Sure I suffer pain, hurt, disease and one day I might die a death of suffering. But it doesn't make my life miserable. The joy comes from knowing him personally. My father. Abba (Daddy). He offers a peace that surpasses all understanding. He assures me that all is going to be okay. I know this life is just a blip (albeit an important valuable one) and as soon as I close my eyes on this short time I will open them again and the first things I will see is him. Its monumnental in its enormity, at times when I ponder it I can help but catch my breath.And demons. God didn't make them that way. They went that way themselves. But because he is in overall control and knows every move they will make and every move he will make he can use them as a tool. Which is what he does. He used Satan to ensure Christ would be tempted, be rejected and be crucified. For that was a part in his plan.God uses demons desire to get us to break the law and allows them to express their bosses will in tempting us to trash the law to pieces in whatever direction we chose to travel along it. 'Good' people thrash it their way, 'bad' people thrash it in other ways. Whichever way we thrash it he will attempt to show us that that which we thrash is in fact good. And in doing so might end up convincing us that we are miserable sinners before himEdited by iano, : changed gives demons ability to allows them in last para

Yes, it does. The stories about demons are mainly in the Kabballah, which is not really a central part of most of Judaism. The Hachsids take the Kabballah seriously. The Zohar is the source of much of the stories about Demons. Although it claims to be much older, many Jewish scholars believe it was written in the 12th century.The demons in the Jewish religion were named for their 'misson', just like angels.The orthodox Jews, when the think of the 'afterlife' , then we are tortured by the 'demons' of our own creation, for up to a year. Then
either go to heaven or cease to exist.The belief in 'demons' in the jewish religion seems to be in a whole different order than the Christian religion. It is not very well defined (mostly), and there is not real agreement between the various Jewish groups about them. It really isn't fully part of the religion.. it falls between religion and folklore.

I contend this is untrue:If this was true your I wish your god would be honest with us as to why we must jump through hopes to get into a state of grace it threw us out of by setting us up for a fall.That is not a relationship, it is a selection process.Your god should love what it made and not punish the unworthy.Creating person after person and filtering the ones out who 'choose' the wrong thing (the 'wrong' thing being abitarily determined by your god don't forget) is a very cold way of drawing the 'right sort' to you.I'm sorry Iano, but nothing you have said gives me the slightest feeling that your god needs to do all of the things it does.But is this true?Your god is IN CHARGE. Why does it want humans to have free will? Does your god want something from a human that regects sin that it cannot get from anywhere else?This implies your god needs something from us.My perception of the xian god is that it could go on quite happily without us.Does it need a witness to creation?Could it be that people who surrender to it have some value to it?If this was true I can easily see the perpose of demons; the stick to goad us to your god.

Personal demons I can get behind.It's these xian in your face temptationmungers that the xian god lets run wild that get my goat (ha ha just noticed a hidden Pan reference....clever me).

Okay, lets look. I don't read a reason for it being untrue here - more a wish to understand why if true, he is he being apparently so difficult about it - ie: we have to jump through all these hoops? A question a springs to mind:Which hoops do you think we have to jump through? Like, specifically. My own contention is that there are none. You may have other hoops in mind, but just to head a common one off at the pass - God doesn't require that you obey any of his laws in order to come to: be born again / know he exists/ be saved / receive eternal life...(use whatever term you want here, if ever one applies then they all apply). You don't even have to obey any of his laws afterwards if you don't want to (that being said, you are more likely to...) A selection process occurs before any relationship. Well, bar those of begotten children who have no choice as to the family they were born into. As born we are not children of God, so we fall in another category. And every other non-familial relationship are
selected. God "wants that none should perish" - but that is not to say we will want to select him.
For a relationship to ensue, both parties must be...er..party to it. God wants you. He has selected you. The question is do you want him? It takes two to tango. If you do want him then have him you can. Its not difficult at that point of you coming to the point of wanting him. He will have woo-ed you to the point of considering him as a husband (another biblical picture of a Christian)But you can be sure the demons ain't lying idle at this point. "nah mate - not for you! Load off ol' poppycock that. You'll be like one of 'em judgemental critians (they can't spell very well these demons) spoutin' on bout yer lord n' god n all that shite. Yill look a proper wanker. Yer the boss, you know wots wots. Ye don't need all these handcuff. Pie in the sky!"Who needs God? Why? It needs repeating. You doing "right and wrong" has nothing to do with being saved. You will do wrong. You will score less than 100% no matter how hard you try to resist demons. God has given the required score should anyone want to go down the "if I behave myself and love another as I love myself" route to salvation. 100%. Nothing less is accepatable to him and there is nothing arbitary about it. God cannot have a relationship with sinners because that would mean he would be inconsitant with himself. He is Holy and can only deal with those who are (made by him) holy too. Anything less than 100% means a person is a sinner. That's what the Pharisees were trying to do - meet all the requirement - meet al the law. Score 100%. And Jesus (God) called them "white washed tombs - full of dead mens bones".Man needs a 100% score and there is only one person man who has ever scored 100%. His name is Jesus. And as much as the demons would try and convince you otherwise, he says that he can give you his perfect score card and that legally it is accepted by God - even though you didn't actually buy the ticket. The statue above the Old Bailey in London depicts Justice. It wraps a blindfold around her eyes. Justice is blind. Justice doesn't care where you bought the ticket. All Blind Justice cares about is: is it valid? Your contention at the start was that God wasn't after relationship. You've put up some general objections to God, none (that I can see) of which deal with issue of denying his seeking relationship with us.Seeking Larni. Not necessarily getting.Its late. I'll have a gander at the second half of your post when I get a chance.Night.

Good point. If I could see the reason for your god setting up a world specifically designed to try to get humans to fail I would feel a bit better about it (obviously) If we break any of your god's rules, bam!!Straight to hell. This is the same for a human, with no choice as to what world/rule set she is born into. The quote above applies to us exactly. Thats why I am confused. It is different to the selection process we apply to starngers who enter out social orbit. Yes you do, or bam!!Straight to Hell. If it withdrew from the world and took with it all the demons, could we not manage without him. If it closed Hell, and lets us all into heaven would it be so bad? This gave me bad dreams about Dick van Dyke Because otherwise I have no choice but to obey its will if I want to keep out of hell. I can have free will and choose to go to hell or I can submit to a greter authority and give up my free will and go to heaven. Yes it can. Your god can do anything. Your god is not. It can see everything. Sorry, I do go off on tangents don't I? What I mean is the you're explanations have not shown me why your god has arranged the world to work in the way it does.Why is it so interested in us that it offers us an either/or choice (where one choice is hell and one choice is a relationship with it.If it loved us in the way I am led to believe (from my secondary school R.E.) then the choice it offers is an unloving one: it is exactly like showing us an eternity of torment and saying..."do this or end up there..."Thats like telling a child:"I'm going to beat the shit out of you, unless you love me, but you better make sure you are telling the truth because I know all about you"That is (in a pretty blunt but hopefully clear way) my perception of the xian god and frankly it terrifies me.

Designed with the option to fail is different than plain old designed to fail. Option. Think option. It is a key.Your asked why it was that God asked us to jump through hoops to which I replied: Note that. No hoops. I even guessed at the kind of hoops you imagined it was we had to jump through: Nothing about obeying the law. Obeying the law is NOT required in order to be saved. To which you respond: We are born with a propensity to break a holy Gods laws. There is no 'if' about it. We are sure to do so. 100% guaranteed. God didn't create the situation whereby Adam HAD to sin but his Justice demands that he (and we as progeny) have to pay for our sin (it is ours - as your conscience will no doubt tell you whenever it is you listen). Justice is blind: it merely looks at offender "Did you commit the offence?" To which we reply "Yup" To which blind Justice replies "Death!"Blind. No option but to convict. That is God as Justice. But he is also Love too. Love knows what we did but doesn't care. The mother of a murderer loves her son even though he did it. She cannot cease to love her son even though she hates what he did. Love would give anything for the beloved. At least the purest love would (of which we have examples in our own world). If a mother could take the death sentence of a son who had committed murder so that he might go free then she would do it. Would she not?You know she would. Justice must be satisfied. The criminal must pay. God justice demands. The death sentence must be executed. But God loves to. And so he must stand in the place of the beloved if the beloved will permit it. Love cannot help but offer to do this - although it cannot force. The convicted can refuse the offer to have his own sin paid for by another. The question is whether blind Justice will accept the substitution. It seems that it can. Blind Justice is blind. It seeks and eye for an eye and it gets it. It doesn't care from whence it came. Justice wouldn't be satisfied. Our sin must be paid for. Its ours. It stands on our bill. The bill must be paid. We have the bill in our hand and justice asks us to pay. So we must. Unless there is an alternative. Love provides an alternative. You and me deserve Hell for what we do. Justice says that there is a price to be paid for sin (our own justice models that and you would no doubt agree with the concept). We sin - we pay the price. Our own justice might listen to appeals on the basis of poor upbringing and lack of education. Whilst the punishment will take that into account punishment still follows. Gods justice will take all circumstances into account and only punish for that which is truly ours. But punish it will. And why not? Does our sin not deserve punishment? Heaven is an escape from Justice. Being snatched from the jaws of what we deserve. Its not an either/or. Convicts haven't a leg to stand on. Their rightful place is imprisonment. The problem is thinking we are not convicts (hard to believe but it is true - examine your conscience for a while if you dare!) Omnipotence is a frequently misunderstood word. God cannot do absolutely anything. He cannot do anything which is inconsistant with himself. He cannot lie, or cheat or be perverted. He cannot make himself completely and utterly not exist and then make himself reexist again - for he wouldn't exist to make himself exist. The reason why such logic is inescapable is because it reflects God himself. We have logic because he is logical. Our sin can be as "far away from me as the east is from the west" (infinitely far when you think about it). Forgiveness choses to see the sin no more. Not because it has evaporated but because the price has been paid. Once justice is satisfied (price has been paid) then the sin is seen no more. The sentence has been served. The person has a clean slate. Their record is expunged. The accounts are balanced. That is how and only how sin can be forgotten. When the debt is paid - by someone. They never will I am sorry to say. If I thought they could I would spend 24/7 here. He is the one who will convince you. Not me. And so should it be. He will call through all manner of means, all over you life. You will not be intellectually aware it is God calling, but your heart will hear: and either accept or deny him. If your heart wants him then have him you shall. If it doesn't then you won't Because he is madly in love with you. He can come to this earth (look at a sunset and imagine the power and glory that made that (if you would permit the notion for a moment) then imagine the person who made all THAT (only made - it is not him) coming into THIS world). He let himself be killed and punished for you. He jumped through every hoop imaginable in order to make it possible for you to be reconciled to him. Even though you are an enemy of his.But he cannot force you to love him. And if you don't love him you will die as you were born. Hating him. You don't feel hate perhaps but let me assure you that you do. I'm 5 years a child of his and even now I hate him every day in all kinds of ways. Its that bad. Honest. It may be your RE teacher - but it is more likely you. You were born on a path to Hell. Blame Adam. God wants to save you from Adams choice. He wants that "none should perish" - not one. And he did what he could do. He cannot set aside his justice - for that demands payment for sin. But he can express love. And offer what it does as a gift. You can only ask a woman to love you Larni. You cannot demand it. God has the same problem. God is to be feared. But it doesn't have to be that way. Consider yourself an SS soldier. You are not Hitler, but you are fighting on the wrong side. You are welcome to fight on the allied side. But you must surrender yourself. You must hand over allegience. You do not have to follow any rules or regs. The surrender is unconditional - you do not have to follow any other condition than simply holding up your hands in surrender. He will not shoot a person who holds up their hands.And if you do hold up your hands then it was only a thought in your mind. He is the one who acutally lifts them into the air for you. He knows how difficult it is for you to surrender. Remember this prayer. It may be of use to you at some point.Lord I do not love you
I don't even want to love you
But I want to want to love youMe, I pray it often - even though I am going to heaven

That about somes it all up for me.Your god demands. For a crime he did not commit. Your faith directly inplies we (humanity) are base and born bad.As an aside from my current rant: I never understood the point of Jesus dying on the cross. Are you saying that Jesus (as a part of god) stood in for us (humanity) because the 'rules' of the universe dictate that we (humanity) must go to hell and that your god can stop that if we let him (by taking on the burden of sin)?Bofore I go on could you address this point?Cheers

Whats wrong with justice making demands? Justice says crime must pay. Seems reasonable enough to me. Which ties in nicely with... We do commit the crime. We are born sinners, which means we have the capability of sinning built into our spiritual genes (unlike Adam in pre-temptation times). This doesn't change the fact crime is knowingly committed by us. We are not left totally adrift. We are given a sense of right and wrong, a knowledge of good as well as evil. Conscience is a still, soft voice which tells us what choice we ought to take. And we choose to ignore it. Like addicts, over time it becomes harder and harder not to insert the needle of sin. We end up as junkies to it. When it gets very bad the consciences voice is stilled to the point at the most depraved behaviour imaginable becomes possible. Take a look around at the world.Point the finger at Adam if you like. But he didn't cause your sin. He made it possible for you to sin. it is your crime and mine to which Justice will apply itself. Blindly. You have it more or less. God IS justice. He shouldn't be seen as a judge who takes something external to himself (justice) and applies it then goes off in the afternoon for a game of golf having left his gowns back at the office. God is justice all the time. And being justice is blind and impartial: sin is doing something which breaks the Law and it presumes (correctly) that we knew what we were doing. His justice isn't blind in one sense: he was the one calling through conscience so was right there on the crime scene when we said "No! to each and every one of those calls. Thus He can evaluate all the circumstances and rule precisely on the severity of the sin.God is also Love. Again it should not be seen as a garment he picks up from time to time, dons, practices loving, removes the garment then is not loving. He is love all the time. Eqaully Loving as he is Just. He is also Wrath (against sin) in the same fashion. Justice demands that crime be convicted. Wrath demands that the crime be punished. Love cries out that the object of its love would suffer this fate. Just like Justice and Wrath are in a position to do what they must do about sin, Love too can apply itself to do what love must do. Jesus was Loves solution to the problem. If Justice and Wrath would be satisfied with Loves solution then that solution could be applied. And Justice and Wrath are satisfied with the solution.Sin is in a spiritual sense, molecularily entwined with us. Sin cannot happen without a persons spirit enabling it. A table cannot sin for example - for it has no spirit. Sin exists in the persons spirit. The way sin is punished is to punish the spirit that enabled it, that carries it. Now if you can separate the sin aspects from the persons spirit and transfer the molecules of sin over to another spirit then sin can be punished in that spirit instead. You need a persons spirit to do this - you cannot punish sin without it for there would be nothing to punish. No person - No sin.Justice doesn't concern itself with the persons spirit it concerns itself only with the crime that spirit has committed (similar to our own justice) Wrath punishes the person for their sin (similar to our own justice) Similarily, Love doesn't concern itself with the sin. Its focus is only on the well being of the beloved.Jesus is the person into whom God can place all the molecules of sin anyone possesses. And in him that sin can be tried (he was), convicted (he was) and punished (he was). In him, God can satisfy his love (for us), his justice (convicting sin) and his wrath (punishing sin). For all of these attributes of God must be satisfied.I suspect that if a person is damned then Gods love for that person must go eternally unrequited. But I don't know. It would make sense for that is the potential price you pay when you fall in love with someone.

This is all food for thought Iano and I think I am getting closer to an understanding of your belief.I will think some more and get back to you.Larni

OkayA few last thoughts to take with you then.Jesus is the legal, forensic mechanism that God uses to arrive at a verdict of "Innocent!" in the case of a person whose sin is tranposed into Jesus. But what of the mechanism that brings a person to that point?Before the verdict there is a trial. And life is that trial. God, as Love, attempts to present the evidence to us that we have indeed broken those laws. He attempts to show us that we are in fact sitting in the court room right now and attempts to let us hear the evidence being presented by the prosecutor. Our nature doesn't want to listen, Gods love keeps pointing this out to us. But we deny the truth of what he says. We reject what he says. We say things like "morals are relative and each man has a right to decide them for himself"."How do you plead?" asks Justice of us everyday. In our denial, our natural, sinful response is to plead "Not Guilty" We can go to our grave pleading "Not Guilty" if we chose. Then comes Judgement. Judgement isn't a trial. The trial is over on the day we die and all the evidence and pleas are in before the Judge. Only the verdict awaits. For Judgement is a verdict. And in reading that verdict the Judge will give all the grounds for why he arrived at that verdict. And there is only one verdict. "Guilty" And then will be handed down the only sentence that being guilty of the crime of sin can merit. "Hell"Alternatively, in the course of time we can come not to deny. As we cease denying we become more and more convinced that what the prosecutor is telling the Judge is actually true of us. We get to see ourselves for what we are. Criminals. All we have to do to be convinced is not deny. And it we cease denying what our hearts tell us is the case then we will be convinced of our guilt and will respond to the enquiry "How do you plead?" with and answer we feel compelled to give. For we have been convinced."Guilty, your Honour"And it is at that very moment that the mechanism of salvation is brought to bear. Our guilt is transferred to Jesus and the punishment due us is poured out on him. Our Judgement is pronounced."Innocent". We are released and set free. For "If the son sets you free you are free indeed."Of course, the court of law is only a picture. It won't appear like that to us in life. The "Not Guilty" pleas will occur a thousand times a day in all walks of our lives. And occasionally admission of guilt too. Every sin brings with it the opportunity for a plea. And every sin brings with it more pressure to admit guilt. Our denial must increase to repress the pressure to admit guilt. It is very, very serious business this sin.It didn't appear like a court to me before I finally admitted total guilt for it all - it only became apparent what was going on after I could see. It was then when began to come to understand what he meant when he said regarding the redemptive work of his Holy Spirit