A Sin By Any Other Name!

Remember the words Shakespeare put in the mouth of Juliet to Rome - “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Ever thought about why that is true? The reason is simple – a rose called by any other name smells as sweet precisely because it is still a rose! Think further with me. I googled the phrase “ten stinkiest flowers,” and at the top of the list was a foul-smelling flower called the the “titan arum.” You may want to hold your nose as you read this.

Because its odor is like the smell of a rotting animal, the titan arum is characterized as a carrion flower. It is also known as the corpse flower or corpse plant. It grows in the equatorial rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia, and can reach over 10 feet in height. The flower gradually releases powerful odors to attract pollinators, which turn out to be, not honey- bees or hummingbirds, but insects which feed on dead animals or lay eggs in rotting meat. Analyses of chemicals released by the flower show the potent stench includes dimethyl trisulfide (like limberger cheese), dimethyl disulfide, trimethylamine (rotting fish), isovaleric acid (sweaty socks), benzyl alcohol (sweet floral scent), phenol (like Chloroseptic), and indole (like human feces). Whoa! I’m not making this up. Can you imagine sticking your nose down in that bloom, taking a big whiff, calling it a rose, and proclaiming that it smells “sweet”?! Not going to happen! Call a titan arum a rose or anything else you want, and it would still stink with a foul, industrial-strength stink.

Allow me to make a spiritual application. One of the devil’s most successful campaigns has been to rename sin. Think about it. Besides at church, when do you hear people use the word sin? The Bible calls drunkenness a sin, but it is not civil today to call a drunk man a drunk. Rather, he has a disease and is an alcoholic. Prostitutes are now call girls. Pornography is a form of free speech. Violence, vulgarity, nudity and profanity on TV and in movies is “adult” entertainment. Now one who habitually steals is not a thief but a kleptomaniac. There has been a radical shift in America in the way millions view behaviors which not so long ago carried a negative stigma of being immoral, illegal, illogical, sinful and wrong. Adultery is now called “co-habiting” or “hooking up”, and homosexuality is now gay. But wait a minute. Calling a rose a tulip doesn’t make it one. And calling sin by some other name or labeling a moral wrong as a legal right does not de-sin the sin or somehow magically sanctify it.

Call it reproductive freedom or a woman’s right to control her body or anything else you want, but abortion stops a beating heart and ends a human life in the womb. Human courts may decree marriage can be “same- sex” – but God’s decree will forever stand that marriage requires a he and a she (Genesis 2; Matthew 19:4-6). Words from the prophet Isaiah expose the absurd idea that renaming a sin or wrong somehow makes the sour turn sweet. His plain, simple, if controversial words just won’t go away – “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Giving sin some slick, sophisticated-sounding name does not make it right, even if it becomes legal and popular. Sin by any other name is still sinful. God help us speak the truth in love, but God help us speak the truth.

   -- Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN