Desensitized

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts (Hebrews 4:7).

I grew up in a small city. When I went away to college, I moved to a much larger city which had sounds in the night that I had not heard before--sirens, screeching tires, even the occasional gunshot. There were also new smells, especially the bitter odor of air pollution from the large factories scattered throughout the area. But in time, I grew used to these sounds and smells—eventually I could sleep through the night without noticing them.

When I got engaged, it was to a farmer’s daughter. The first night that I spent at her family’s farm was tough—there were sounds and smells that didn’t let me get a good night’s rest. The clanks of animal feeders, the sounds of the cattle, the smell of manure—all these things were strange and new, yet my fiancée and her family acted as if these were ordinary, unremarkable. Their sleep was undisturbed.

The more we are exposed to something, the less sensitive we become to it. People learn to ignore the noise of living by an airport or along railroad tracks; they adapt to living by animal confinements or factories. But we can also become deadened to sin. Back when I was confirmed, I was jolted by every curse word that I heard at school or read in a book; these days, I am still offended by coarse language, but it does not shock me the way it used to. I have become somewhat desensitized to it. In fact, our whole society is becoming desensitized to sin—we are constantly bombarded by depictions of homosexuality, and it gradually seems less offensive. We are constantly exposed to violence, to the point that video games routinely include the shedding of blood as part of the entertainment.

Each of our lives is like a house. Sin is the rain, the wind and the hail that gradually weakens the shingles that protect us from death by exposure to the elements. Every time that we go to Jesus for help because sin is ruining our lives, the carpenter’s Son comes and fixes our damaged roof. But what happens if we learn to sleep through the noise of the storms? What happens when our sins stop disturbing our rest? If we become desensitized to sin, we won’t think about asking Jesus for forgiveness, we won’t ask Him to come and fix our lives. If this happens, we place ourselves in danger, because eventually the constant wear of sin will strip away everything Jesus had given us to protect us, and we will find ourselves dying the death that comes from exposure to the chilling touch of sin.