Chapter 8, The Enemy Within (Pt 1)

Anyone who's been fishing knows that you can't drop a naked hook into the water and expect a fish to impale himself on it.

The hook "has to be decorated by a worm or a fly or a spinner or a plug...to be desirable, attractive, alluring" because the "bait doesn't just invite--it seduces" (91; italics in original).

This is what our flesh does to our emotions when it tries to hide the consequences of sin underneath it's pleasures. If we are attracted to and desire the seductions of sin, we will impale ourselves on it's consequences.

This is where your imagination comes in. Your flesh "wants you to dwell on and savor [sins] until you can't stop thinking about them, until you start plotting and scheming ways to make the fantasy a reality" (92). It succeeds "when it makes you forget or ignore or not care about the hook whose dim outline you see beneath the feathers and flash of the lure" (93).

If you begin to imagine sin as pleasurable, desirable, alluring, attractive than your emotions you're hooked because "once the [emotions] are enticed, the will soon follow with its happy consent" (93).