It Is Not Ok

Preliminary Readings
OT reading from I Kings 11:1-13
NT reading from Romans 7: 7- 13

I am here today to write to you about one thing that I realized. From the passages been read, I believe that we look somehow different from those figures, namely Paul and Solomon and I just kept asking why. Is it because that we live in a different context, with that long list prefixed to it namely the historical socioeconomic and political one, or because of something else.
The question is what happened to us? I am not going to get into the details about the passage from Romans 7 I read about Sin because it takes time to put it in its context and the argument Paul makes here and also because it is not my purpose. Yet, the main word remain, Sin.
What I realize through my humble experience in life that when Sin attacks us, it attacks the most solid and powerful grid that we think that we have. I sincerely believe that studying theology empowers us, even if we look at the matter from a superficial level so please bear with me. It empowers us in the sense that we get into more than one field altogether: philosophy, psychology, rhetorics… and what I have in mind now is both rhetorics and psychology. To put it in the simplest way, the danger of studying theology is that you become clever.
The whole thing seems to start well. And then something happens. You grieve, you mourn. For God's sake why did I do that? But life goes on and we need to stand and to proceed and unfortunately not all of us ask how to stand. Those of us, and I insist of us, say: ye know, it is true that I have sworn once and long time ago that I will live faithfully with God's help, power, and grace. But I am human and it is natural that I stumble. For Solomon for example, with his ongoing process of legal or illegal marriages if want to put it this way, he would say: well, it could be true that I should not have done this but it was with someone very special. I will thank God for his blessing that he sent me the right person to help me up. If we were capable to see it as a movie, I would picture it this way. Solomon, armed with his wisdom and knowledge, going in life and unaware that there are electrical ladders that take would him either upstairs or downstairs. He stumbled, naturally, and took the one leading downstairs. After he realized that, that is the mourning and grieving stage, he lost a precious moment to jump up and up and up. That ladder was leading him into a swamp. But then he said, see at least it was with someone very special, so he was clever to work it out or to theologize it out, but in the wrong direction. I believe that what happened with Solomon is that, as we say in Arabic, he was not able to see farther than the tip of his nose…he could not calculate the future coming…. Now I am taking Solomon as an example. What was wrong with Solomon was that he could not say one clause: It is not OK. What was wrong with Solomon that he did not realize, that all things were lawful for him, but all things were not expedient. Solomon could not realize that all things were lawful for him, but all things edified not. What happened with Solomon was that Sin attacked his wisdom, his heart.
My simple message for you today is that along this long journey of life, look carefully because most of the times you need to cry out loud: it is not OK.