My soul, never laugh at sin's fooleries, lest thou come to smile at sin itself. It is thine enemy, and thy Lord's enemy.
Interpretation
Avoid trivializing or mocking sin, as it may lead to accepting it.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon warns against the dangers of treating sin lightly. By ridiculing what is fundamentally wrong, one may inadvertently develop an affinity for it, thus distancing oneself from one's moral values and the divine perspective on sin as an adversary.
In practice
In a sermon to warn against the dangers of trivializing moral failures.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.
It's about me, or people wouldn't be so anxious to keep me from knowing about it. The absence of information is information. ~ Ender
Failures are infinitely more instructive than successes.
No one would look at an infant baby asleep, and say 'What a lazy baby!' We know sleeping is non-negotiable for a baby. But that notion is quickly abandoned.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.
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