Understanding the wages of sin: the Reverend Steven Craft denounces commonly heard lies used to justify sinful behavior, and explains why accommodating sin is bad for our country as well as for individuals.

The 62-year-old Reverend Steven "Stevie" Craft is a Baptist preacher, a former chaplain at Missouri State Penitentiary, a father of four, and a grandfather of four. He says that he was called to do Christ's work from the womb, but he did not heed this call until he was 33. By that time in his life, he had suffered through drug abuse; he had spent time in jail; and he had watched friends and family members who had lived lifestyles similar to his own all die.

He then embraced God's call and got his Master's in Divinity, specializing in Religion and Social Justice. He is now working toward his Doctor of Ministry. His voice is sonorous and his message powerful. And he will soon be on the lecture circuit for the John Birch Society, preaching (because that's what he does) about social lies--not "misconceptions," not "disinformation," but lies.

One of the lies that he brings to the forefront is the lie of "moral relativism," the lie that says "morals don't matter." In making his point that morals do matter, he reminds us that the Founding Fathers made it clear that our country and our way of government and even our individual freedoms will only survive and flourish as long as our country remains moral. This is true because society-wide immorality and, worse, moral apathy pave the way for amoral people to distort our political system and to take over the reins of government--a process that the reverend is already seeing happen.

Reverend Craft blasts the popular modern credo, "I'll leave you alone to do whatever you want to do, as long as you leave me alone to do my thing." That credo, he says, is being spouted by people all over the United States--especially by the young--and shows that immorality is already morphing into the dangerous state called moral apathy.

He also takes to task those who would try to "call good works evil and evil good." He is especially unstinting in his condemnation of those who "interpret" the Bible to justify their toleration or advocacy of sin. Among those at whom he directs his pointed opinion are those people who say that we must accept public homosexuality and homosexual marriage because Jesus said, "Let he who among you who is without sin cast the first stone." In other words, those people claim that Jesus is saying that no one has the right to judge anyone else.

Reverend Craft says that people making those claims are "interpreting" the Bible, and they are wrong. He says that Jesus was not saying, "Don't judge sin!" To get that message out of the story, he asserts, one has to take the quote about "casting the first stone" completely out of context.

In the biblical story where Jesus makes that comment, a group of people have brought to Jesus a woman who was caught in the act of adultery and was to be stoned to death (yet the group did not bring the adulterous man as well), and the group tried to trap Jesus and get him to say something that either contradicted the Old Testament or that contradicted Jesus' own words. They were trying to make a hypocrite out of Jesus. But Jesus merely admonished the people to consider their own sins and not be hypocritical when penalizing others for their sins.

The entire story is about hypocrisy. Jesus did not say, "Don't judge sin." Reverend Craft added, people are right if they say everyone does have a "wicked heart," but our goal in life is to escape sin and seek salvation in God, not to revel in sin. "God does love everyone, but his love is for the person, not for the sin. He loves murderers, but not murder. God loves adulterers, but not adultery; and God loves homosexuals, but not homosexuality." Reverend Craft is adamant that in all cases where someone tries to justify sin biblically, the person is wrongly "interpreting" the Bible.

He is also adamant that crimes (those actions still considered morally wrong by our society, ones that society deems bad enough to punish) are commonplace in our country because of "moral relativism" and societal hypocrisy. Our youth, he said, get mixed messages from society about morals. In our country, we put men in jail for having sex with young boys, yet in Washington, D.C., the Man-Boy Love Association has an official lobbying group. Likewise, we put people in jail for rape, battery, and murder; yet we fill children's heads with images of gratuitous violence on television.

He also believes that liberals intentionally sponsor immorality and try to elicit controversy so that Americans divide into groups according to ideology, "language, ethnicity, and social economics." Liberals plan to "divide and conquer." They intend to stop us from considering ourselves first and foremost as Americans--to keep us from uniting and thwarting the disassembling of our constitutional republic. In fact, he sees the division of Americans into self-serving groups as causing the disassembling of our republic, as each group tries to manipulate our country's laws to suit its own ends.

"The wages of sin," he says, "is eternal death." This can be true individually or of a country, and so we need to push a "moral reawakening" in our country to save ourselves.