Snowboarding and Sin

I think my snowboarding this past Saturday is gonna be a lot more profitable than I originally thought. I keep thinking of similarities between snowboarding and life itself. Well before I get into this post let me first clarify the title. I’m in no way saying that snowboarding is sin. Of course, like anything else, it can become sin if we let it come between us and God. But that is not the focus of this post. Instead, like the last post, I’ll be bringing out similarities between snowboarding and a certain topic. In this case that topic is sin.




While snowboarding this past Saturday I must say that I really enjoyed myself. Sure there were disadvantages like the cost, but I still had fun. I had plenty of falls, but really not a lot of pain associated with them. It’s kinda hard to get seriously injured falling onto snow. I know it is possible but it’s not very probable. Especially at the kind of speed I was going. Anyway on the trip home I felt okay. Sure there was a little pain (mainly from the backward falls) but overall I felt pretty good. Then came Sunday which meant traveling an hour to church, sitting in church for the services, and then an hour in the car back home. I had started to feel some aches but nothing unusual considering what I was doing Saturday. Then came Monday, and boy did I start feeling it. It seemed like every muscle in my body had been stressed by the snowboarding. From my neck all the way down to my legs, everything was sore. The effects came long after the fun was over. And once I had finished the fun, there wasn’t really a way I could prevent the effects.



The same is true in regard to sin in our lives. We may recognize some of the disadvantages to the sin beforehand, but it looks like it will be so much fun. So we go ahead and do it. And guess what? Sin is fun! That is a Biblical fact. It speaks of the pleasures that sin affords. But it also speaks of them as passing pleasures. Just like the snowboarding, the pleasures sin offers are very short term. They offer temporary enjoyment without a warning as to the effects that they bring. And many times the effects that we experience from sin are not merely temporal, many are eternal. Many times we are left with a scar on our souls that will be with us the rest of our lives. Sometimes, unfortunately, we unknowingly hurt others by our sins. And sometimes we may even cause another brother to stumble by the example he sees in us. After we commit the sin we have no control over the consequences. There is a saying “You can chose your actions, but you cannot chose the consequences.” Once that sin is commited, the results are out of your control. Yes you can repent, but even though David repented of his sin with Bathsheba, there were still consequences. The child had to die. Do you think it ever crossed David’s mind, as he sent for Bathsheba, that because of this sin he was about to commit, an innocent child of his would die? No the only thought on his mind was the passing pleasure it would afford. So it is with us. We view this thing that looks so appealing as merely something which may cause us a few problems later on. Many times we have no idea how drastically it will affect our life and the lives of so many others. May we each, when temptation comes, remember this truth “The actions we chose today, will affect the rest of our lives.”