The Allure Of Sin

There is a reason why the book of James demands that we must obey Scripture and not merely read it (James 1:22), as if merely reading about righteousness would infuse our lifestyles with it.  The unfortunate truth is that someone will not do the right thing just because he or she knows what the right thing is.  Knowledge does not guarantee action, and without action knowledge has not produced change where it is needed.  The point of knowledge is to learn about reality, and education can illuminate an area where a person does not live according to reality, with the realm of ethics being a crucial example.

In one sense, some people might have a far more difficult time succumbing to evil if they understood its depravity.  Recognizing evil for what it is can certainly bring an attitude of revulsion towards sin.  But nothing about having moral knowledge necessitates that one will act righteously--this is the nature of fallen human behavior.  An evil thing is in itself objectively repulsive, damnable, and depraved, but this does not erase the allure that sin might have for a person.  For some people, the evil of a thing might even be part of the allure.  A thing can be harmful and vile even if one finds comfort in it.

The idea that everyone would do the right thing if they only knew what set of actions is morally obligatory reeks of errors.  The assumption here is not only irrational, but it is also highly destructive--when people think that moral knowledge is all they need to be good, they can overlook or justify evils of their choice, misjudging their actions to be good because they truly (but perhaps mistakenly) believe they have right moral knowledge.  But even rational metaphysics and valid epistemology alone cannot make someone do the right thing.  To live rightly requires a decision of the will, not merely a recognition of the intellect.

Of course, apart from the intellect and divine revelation one cannot have moral knowledge to begin with [1], so it is untrue to pretend like one can intentionally do the right thing without the guidance of the intellect or moral revelation from God; otherwise at best one could do the right thing by accident.  Yet even perfect knowledge of God's moral revelation, on its own, is insufficient for living out a righteous life, since knowledge can be compartmentalized away from actual behavior.  Irrational and selfish people have the power to ignore what they do know in favor of their own delusions and preferences.  The solution, alongside practice of thorough rationality, is an orienting of the will towards what is good.  A person is not bound to make a choice that he or she does not want to, and thus the will might need to be redirected to desire what is right and true.  It follows that people need to not merely know something is sinful, but to also to come to despise it and see through any subjective allure that it may have.


[1].  Divine revelation is inescapably necessary for moral knowledge, with conscience at best amounting to a subjective and arbitrary tool, but understanding divine revelation is utterly impossible without the light of reason:
https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html