The heart of sin is lawlessness. This means that sin desires to recognize no will outside of its own. There is only one will, and Nietzsche is his prophet.
The cleanest shot to this result is, of course, atheism, but to think that this is the only way to get to that result is to greatly underestimate the ingenuity of will worship. If outside authorities are formally acknowledged, as they are for most people operating this way, they have to be kept at an appropriate distance. The distance necessary might be spatial, temporal, or eschatological, but the point of all of it is to “get away with stuff” in the meantime. The professing atheist is shooting the moon — he wants to get away with it forever. Rank and file sinners just want enough elbow room to get away with it now, and so they just put any day of reckoning out of their minds. Sufficient unto the day are the opportunities thereof.
The right response to this of course is to live before the face of God, the one in whom we live and move and have our being. He is the one who is going to throw every envious thought, every idle word, and every unclean deed into the fiery furnace of His holiness. You might think that this would be enough to make us straighten up and fly right, but in many ecclesiastical traditions, it is actually the basis that many use for getting away with other stuff, by which I mean to refer to the sin of morbidity. We can work with anything.
These dynamics are in play whenever human beings want to get away with stuff — it can be a gang of pre-schoolers who have wrested control of the situation away from an inexperienced babysitter, or it could be one of those parades we have periodically in our larger cities in celebration of anal intercourse, with floats and everything. It all works the same way. Offered the golden opportunity of getting away with stuff, any kid who reminds the others that mom and dad are coming back sometime will be violently shushed, and anybody who reminds the others that debauchery and face paint do not a civilization make will be promptly shouted down, and hauled off to have his incorrect thoughts treated with the appropriate FDA-approved chemicals.
Those who want to get away with stuff will read the story one way, and those who know that getting away with this kind of thing can never happen, not with this storyteller, will read the story in another way. One fellow is just sitting there, as pleased with himself as anything. He has had one course already, is slightly buzzed, has a full cup of wine in front of him, the serving girl is letting him grope her, more action to follow later, and he is in the running to get all of Penelope’s money. Me, I have read this book before, and all I can see is Odysseus limbering up his bow.
Some men, like brute beasts, understand only one thing, and that is the very thing that destroys them. They riot in broad daylight, and all they understand is the opportunity provided by their urges now. The problem is that we have a lot of Christians who do not go along with this, the problem being the way they don’t go along with it. They are discouraged by the blind impudence that surrounds them. They don’t participate, and good for them on that front, but they aren’t reading the story either. They don’t see the sexual eucatastrophe coming any more than the orgiastic fist drinkers do. We don’t share in their sins, but for some reason we want to share the story.