"Sin is the monster we love to deny.

It can stalk us, bite a slice out of our lives, return again and bite again, and even as we bleed and hobble, we prefer to believe nothing has happened. That makes sin the perfect monster, a man-eater that blinds and numbs its victims, convincing them that nothing is wrong and there is no need to flee, and then consumes them at its leisure.

We've all been assailed by this beast, sometimes face-to-face, but all too often from a direction we aren't even preapred to defend, and it's only in recognizing the beast for what it is that we can hope to escape at all. In Jesus Christ we are forgiven and empowered to overcome sin, but opening the door and tossing the beast kitchen scraps of our character is no way to drive it off. Toying with an animal that is actually toying with us is a sure way to lose part of ourselves.

I was watching it happen to some friends of mine thea year I began writing 'The Oath'. As the rest of us just kept on praising the Lord, loving one another, smiling and trying not to be judgemental, some really good people walked stupidly, blindly into the jaws of sin. The tooth marks still show today, in ruined marriages and soiled ministries. The rest of us should have said something.

In 'The Oath', I tried to say somethign through a vicioous drama. I gave sin a form, an identifiable embodiment hellbent to comsume the hero. I chose an obscure, remote setting because sin shies from examination just as vermin flee from the light, and in this place, there are no rules. Denial is easy, and sin is protected. The consequences, of course, play out just as they do in so many real lives: we've all see friends, relatives, and fellow believers dragged out the door by a pet that got too big to control. Some have manged to come back, bleeding and bruised, hopefully healing and wiser. Some have never come back at all. And some of us have been there.

'The Oath' is a story we've all had a part in, to one degree or another. And years later, it still cries out the same warning God gave Cain: "Sin is crouching at the door, and it wants you, but you must overcome it." "

-- Frank Peretti
From the Introduction to 'The Oath' 2003