"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Sin is not only about dramatic crimes; it is the quiet pull of the heart away from God and others, and the way we deceive ourselves about it.
These eleven stories about sin and temptation, retold in our own words, come from films, television, history, legend and ancient fable. They show how temptation disguises itself, how habits pull us back, and how the capacity for great good and great evil can live side by side in the same person. Each ends with a takeaway for sermons or reflection.
Stories in this collection:
- "Maybe It Matters More": A Lesson From Casualties of War
- The Stone in the Fountain: "Christ Has Not Penetrated"
- "Just When I Thought I Was Out"
- Painting Jesus and Judas: A Famous Legend About Leonardo
- Hitler the Painter
- Auggie Wren's Christmas Story: Glory and Shame Together
- The Man, the Boy and the Donkey
- The Poisonous Paradise of the Cave of the Lighted House
- "They Don't See Me Coming": The Devil's Advocate
- "We Have to Turn Off the Porn": A Lesson From Friends
- "What Have I Done?": The Self-Deception of James Henry Hammond
"Maybe It Matters More": A Lesson From Casualties of War
The 1989 film Casualties of War, directed by Brian De Palma, is based on a real incident during the Vietnam War. A squad of American soldiers kidnapped a young Vietnamese woman from her village, abused her and later killed her.
Michael J. Fox plays Private Eriksson, the one member of the squad who refused to take part. As he struggles with what his comrades have done, he confronts them.
They are behaving, he says, as though the constant threat of death means that nothing they do matters any more. Because any of them could be killed at any second, they act as if they can do whatever they like. But Eriksson thinks it is exactly the other way round. Precisely because they might be dead in the next moment, they have to be extra careful about what they do. Maybe it matters more than they know.
In real life, the soldier on whom Eriksson's character was based reported the crime, and the men responsible were court-martialled.
Takeaway: Pressure, danger and the crowd can make us feel that ordinary morality no longer applies. But our choices always matter, perhaps most of all when no one seems to care. We are accountable for what we do.
Source: Casualties of War (1989), directed by Brian De Palma.
The Stone in the Fountain: "Christ Has Not Penetrated"
In the film The Godfather Part III (1990), the ageing mafia boss Michael Corleone meets a cardinal named Lamberto. Corleone tells him that senior officials at the Vatican bank, and even an archbishop, have been involved in a huge fraud.
The cardinal walks to a fountain in the courtyard and lifts a stone out of the water. The stone, he says, has been lying in the water for a very long time, but the water has not penetrated it. He breaks it open to show Michael that the inside is completely dry.
The same thing, he explains, has happened to people in Europe. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity, but Christ has not penetrated. Christ does not live within them.
Takeaway: It is possible to be surrounded by faith all our lives, in church, at home, in our culture, and yet remain untouched inside. God wants to give us "a new heart" (Ezekiel 36:26), not just a religious surface.
Source: The Godfather Part III (1990), directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
"Just When I Thought I Was Out"
In the same film, Michael Corleone is trying to free his family from its criminal past and make the business legitimate. He wants out of the violent underworld that has shaped his whole life.
But every time he seems close to escaping, a new generation of gangsters drags him back in. In one famous moment of frustration, he cries out that just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in.
Takeaway: Many of us know that cry. We long to be free of a habit or sin, only to find ourselves drawn back again and again. Paul felt it too (Romans 7:15–25), and found his hope not in his own strength but in Christ.
Source: The Godfather Part III (1990).
Painting Jesus and Judas: A Famous Legend About Leonardo
A popular legend. There is no historical evidence for it, and it does not fit what is known about how Leonardo painted the Last Supper.
According to the story, when Leonardo da Vinci began his great painting of the Last Supper, he decided that every figure, the twelve apostles and Christ himself, would be painted from a living person. The model for Jesus was to be chosen first.
Hundreds of young men were carefully studied in the search for a face that showed innocence and beauty, untouched by the scars and signs of a life of sin. At last, after weeks of searching, a young man of nineteen was selected. For six months Leonardo worked on the figure of Christ, the central character of the whole painting.
Over the following years he continued the work, choosing suitable models one by one for each of the eleven faithful apostles. A space was left for the final figure: Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed his Lord for thirty pieces of silver.
For weeks Leonardo searched for a man with a hard, callous face, a face marked by greed, deceit, hypocrisy and crime, the face of someone who would betray his closest friend. After many disappointments, word reached him that such a man had been found in a dungeon in Rome, sentenced to death for a life of violence and murder.
Leonardo travelled to Rome at once. The prisoner was brought up out of his cell into the sunlight, and the painter saw before him a dark, swarthy man whose long, shaggy, unkempt hair hung over a face that seemed to speak of viciousness and ruin. At last he had found his Judas.
With special permission, the prisoner was taken to Milan, where the painting was being made. For months he sat before Leonardo each day at the appointed hours, while the artist patiently transferred to the wall the face of the traitor who betrayed the Saviour.
When he had finished the last stroke, Leonardo turned to the guards and told them they could take the prisoner away. But as they led him off, the man suddenly broke free, rushed back to the painter and cried out, begging him to look closely. Did he not know who he was?
Leonardo, who had studied that face every day for months, looked at him carefully and replied that he had never seen him in his life until he was brought out of the dungeon in Rome. The prisoner lifted his eyes to heaven and cried, "O God, have I fallen so low?" Then he turned back to the painter and told him to look again, for he was the same man Leonardo had painted years before as the figure of Christ.
Takeaway: Although the story is a legend, it carries a sobering truth: sin, left unchecked, can disfigure a life. But the opposite is also true. In Christ, a life marred by sin can be renewed into his image (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Source: Traditional legend; author unknown.
Hitler the Painter
The US Army's art collection, now held by the Center of Military History, includes four watercolours of wartime scenes painted early in the twentieth century. Most art critics think they are unremarkable; the historian William Shirer called Hitler's art crude, stilted and lifeless. Their significance lies in the signature in the corner: "A. Hitler".
Adolf Hitler's name is a byword for evil and brutality. Yet before he became a dictator he made his living by selling paintings and postcards. As a young man in Vienna he dreamed of becoming a great artist and applied to the Academy of Fine Arts, but despite a flair for drawing he was rejected.
Marylou Gjernes, a former curator of the army's art collection, reflected that this side of Hitler was something nobody expects. It seemed strangely out of place, she said, and even frightening. If someone capable of such enormous evil could also have this gentler side, who could say that the same mixture is not present in all of us?
Takeaway: Evil is not confined to monsters who are completely unlike us. The same human heart can create and destroy. That is why every one of us needs God's grace (Jeremiah 17:9).
Source: Reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, 1 June 2002.
Auggie Wren's Christmas Story: Glory and Shame Together
Paul Auster's "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story", first published in The New York Times and later used to close the 1995 film Smoke, begins with a writer named Paul who has been asked to write a Christmas story for the newspaper. He has no idea what to write. His friend Auggie, who runs a cigar shop in Brooklyn, says he knows a great Christmas story. If Paul buys him lunch, he will tell it.
The story, Auggie says, is about him. One day he was behind the counter when he noticed a young man at the back of the shop slipping a magazine inside his jacket. Auggie shouted, and the thief bolted for the door and ran off down the street with Auggie in pursuit. As the boy ran, something fell out of his pocket onto the pavement. It was his wallet.
Auggie gave up the chase and picked it up. Inside was the young man's driving licence, with his name, Robert, and his address, and nothing else except three photographs. One showed him as a little boy standing beside his mother. Looking at it, Auggie felt his anger drain away. This was just a kid from a poor neighbourhood who had probably struggled to get by all his life. He decided not to go to the police. Instead he took the wallet home and put it on a shelf, where it sat for months.
Then it was Christmas Day. Auggie had no family and no friends to celebrate with, and he was sitting alone at home when his eyes fell on the wallet. Why not, he thought; he would go round and give it back. He took the subway to the address on the licence, a shabby building in a run-down part of the city, rang the bell and waited.
After a while he heard shuffling footsteps and an old woman's voice asking who was there. When Auggie said he was looking for Robert, her voice filled with joy. Was that Robert? She had known he wouldn't forget his Granny Ethel on Christmas Day. She opened the door, and Auggie saw that she was very old and almost completely blind. Before he knew it, she had flung her arms around him, saying she knew he wouldn't disappoint his old granny.
What was he supposed to do? He had nothing better to do that day, so on an impulse he played along. Yes, Granny, he said, it was Robert. He could tell from her face that she knew perfectly well he was not her grandson. But she lived alone and longed for company, so she decided to play along too.
She welcomed him in, and for the rest of the afternoon Auggie pretended to be Robert. He told her he had a good job now, that he ran his own shop and that he had met a lovely girl he was going to marry. Every piece of news brought a smile to her face, and she said that was fine, Robert, that was just fine.
When Auggie offered to make lunch, he found the cupboards almost empty. So he went out to a nearby shop, bought a cooked chicken, bread rolls and some salads, and brought them back. The old woman produced a couple of bottles of wine she had put away, and the two of them sat down to a real Christmas dinner. They spent a warm and happy afternoon together, he pretending to be her grandson and she pretending to believe it.
Later, Auggie went down the hall to the bathroom. There, stacked against the wall, he noticed half a dozen brand-new cameras, still in their boxes, almost certainly stolen goods that the real Robert had stashed there. Auggie had never owned a camera, and suddenly he wanted one very much. The old woman was blind, he told himself; she had no use for them and would never know. He took one.
When he came back to the living room, she had fallen asleep in her chair. He let her sleep, washed the dishes and tidied the kitchen. Then he picked up his coat, tucked the camera under his arm and quietly let himself out.
A few months later he felt so bad about stealing the camera that he decided to take it back and apologise. But when he returned to the flat, someone else was living there. He never found out what had happened to the old woman, and he guessed she had died. The camera he stole that Christmas became the one he used every morning to photograph the street corner outside his shop. Years later, telling the story to Paul over lunch, he still felt the sting of guilt for what he had done.
Takeaway: The story captures the human condition. In a single afternoon Auggie gave a lonely woman the gift of his presence, and stole from her. Each of us is capable of extraordinary kindness and real selfishness at the same time. That is why we need grace, not just good intentions.
Source: Paul Auster, "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story", The New York Times (1990); Smoke (1995).
The Man, the Boy and the Donkey
A fable of Aesop.
A man and his son were taking their donkey to market. As they walked beside it, a passer-by laughed at them. What fools, he said, to walk when they had a donkey to ride.
So the man put the boy on the donkey. Soon they passed some men, one of whom grumbled about the lazy youngster who let his poor father walk while he rode. So the man made the boy get down and climbed on himself.
They had not gone far when two women passed. One said it was shameful for that great lazy man to ride while his little son trudged along on foot. Not knowing what else to do, the man pulled the boy up in front of him, and they both rode.
As they entered the town, people began to point and jeer. When the man asked what was wrong, they said he ought to be ashamed of himself for overloading the poor donkey.
The man and the boy climbed down and thought hard. At last they cut a pole, tied the donkey's feet to it and carried it on their shoulders. Everyone they met laughed at them. When they reached the bridge into the market, the donkey kicked one foot free, the boy dropped his end of the pole, and in the struggle the donkey fell over the side. With its feet still tied, it drowned. An old man who had followed them shook his head: try to please everyone, he said, and you will please no one.
Takeaway: Peer pressure is one of the strongest temptations. If we live to please everyone, we will lose our way. Paul wrote, "If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ" (Galatians 1:10).
Source: Aesop's Fables.
The Poisonous Paradise of the Cave of the Lighted House
In southern Mexico lies the Cueva de Villa Luz, the Cave of the Lighted House. The path to it winds through lush rainforest full of tropical birds. Inside, the cave is fed by underground springs, and streams of water flow through it, alive with tiny fish. There are spectacular rock formations and shimmering pools.
Everything about the place seems inviting. Yet the air inside is laced with poisonous gases, including hydrogen sulphide. Stay too long without protection, and the beauty of the cave could kill you.
Takeaway: Temptation is like that cave. It presents itself as beautiful, inviting and life-giving, but its air is toxic. "Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed" (James 1:14–15).
Source: National Geographic, May 2001.
"They Don't See Me Coming": The Devil's Advocate
In the 1997 film The Devil's Advocate, Keanu Reeves plays Kevin Lomax, a successful young lawyer in Florida, happily married and, at first, a man with a sense of what matters. Then he is offered a dazzling job with a powerful law firm in New York.
He and his wife move to the city, and Kevin is gradually seduced by the atmosphere of greed, sex and power that surrounds the firm and its charismatic owner, John Milton, played by Al Pacino. His marriage begins to fall apart, but he barely notices.
As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the film is about more than the age-old struggle between greed and goodness. Its plot is far more sinister. Milton is no ordinary boss. He is the Devil himself, a being who has come to despise God and to live for nothing but his own satisfaction.
Late in the film he reveals his strategy for seducing humanity. He sharpens human appetites until desire becomes powerful enough to split atoms. He builds egos as big as cathedrals and connects the whole world to every eager impulse. He coats even the dullest dreams with fantasies of money and gold, until every person aspires to be an emperor, to become their own god.
And while everyone rushes from one deal to the next, he says, no one is watching the planet. The air thickens, the water sours, and still the pace gets faster and faster, with no time to stop and think about the future at all.
Then he mocks Kevin for underestimating him. People never think of him as a master of the universe, he says; he is always a surprise. That is his great advantage, and the thing Kevin has missed all along: they don't see him coming.
Takeaway: Temptation rarely looks evil when it arrives. It usually looks like success, pleasure or self-fulfilment. "Be alert and of sober mind" (1 Peter 5:8).
Source: The Devil's Advocate (1997), directed by Taylor Hackford; illustration by Scott Higgins.
"We Have to Turn Off the Porn": A Lesson From Friends
This story discusses pornography. We describe the episode in general terms and without explicit detail.
In a 1996 episode of the American sitcom Friends, often remembered by fans as the one with the free porn, Joey and Chandler discover something strange about their television. Somehow, without paying for it, they are receiving a pornography channel.
Neither of them has subscribed to it. They decide to leave the television on that channel all the time, worried that if they switch it off they might lose it.
As the episode goes on, the rest of the friends drop in and react in different ways to what is playing in the background. It is played for laughs.
But the episode ends on a telling note. Joey and Chandler compare stories about their day. Chandler says that he was at the bank, and the attractive bank teller, strangely, did not invite him to have sex with her in the vault. Joey says something similar happened to him: a woman delivered a pizza, took his money and simply left, without any of the suggestive lines he had come to expect.
As they talk, the two of them slowly realise how warped their thinking has become. They have started to expect real people to behave like the characters on the screen. And they agree: they have to turn off the porn.
Friends is only a sitcom, but in its light-hearted way the episode tells the truth. Pornography trains us to see other people not as people at all, but as objects that exist to satisfy our desires. Over time it changes how we see the real people in front of us, and it dehumanises both them and us.
Takeaway: Jesus warned that lust begins in the heart and the eye (Matthew 5:27–28). What we watch shapes how we see others. Sometimes the wisest response is simply to switch it off.
Source: Friends, Season 2, "The One Where Dr. Ramoray Dies" (NBC, 1996).
"What Have I Done?": The Self-Deception of James Henry Hammond
This story involves slavery and sexual abuse, including of children. We describe it without graphic detail.
Few stories show the human capacity for self-deception more starkly than that of James Henry Hammond. In the decades before the American Civil War, Hammond was a wealthy plantation owner in South Carolina who enslaved hundreds of people. He served as a congressman, as governor of the state and later as a US senator, and he became one of slavery's most outspoken defenders.
He was also a man who used his power to satisfy his own desires, whatever the cost to others. According to historians, including his biographer Drew Gilpin Faust, in 1839 Hammond bought an enslaved woman named Sally and her young daughter, Louisa. He forced Sally into a sexual relationship and fathered children with her. Later, when Louisa was still only a child, he did the same to her.
His abuse did not stop with the people he enslaved. Hammond also sexually abused his four teenage nieces, the daughters of his wife's sister and her husband, the powerful Wade Hampton II.
Eventually his actions caught up with him, at least in part. Hampton learned what had happened and used the threat of exposure to damage Hammond's political career. For a time Hammond's wife left him. His public reputation suffered, and his plantation was struck by disease, with many enslaved people and animals dying.
What is most astonishing is how Hammond saw all this. In his private diary, he poured out his self-pity. It crushed him, he wrote, to see everything he owned so blasted around him: his slaves, his cattle, his mules and his hogs. Everything that lived around him seemed to be under some curse. Great God, he cried, what had he done? Never was a man so cursed. What had he done to deserve such a fate? No one showed him the slightest indulgence, he complained. Nothing was overlooked, and nothing forgiven.
In the very pages where he lamented his losses, he showed no recognition of the terrible wrongs he had done to Sally, to Louisa, to his nieces and to all the people he held in slavery. He listed the human beings he enslaved alongside his livestock, as his possessions. He could see only his own suffering.
Hammond's diary is a chilling reminder of how blind the human heart can be to its own sin. We are all capable of excusing ourselves while blaming God and others for our troubles.
Takeaway: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). We need God to show us our sin, because we so easily hide it from ourselves.
Source: Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (LSU Press, 1982); Hammond's diaries.
Final thoughts
A soldier's conscience, a dry stone, a gangster's cry, a legend about Leonardo, a dictator's watercolours, a stolen camera, a drowned donkey, a poisonous cave, a smiling Devil, a sitcom channel left switched on and a slaveholder's diary. These stories do not flatter us, but they tell the truth about the human heart, and point us to our need of a Saviour.
For further reading, Sopranu reviews The Godfather (1972), a film about power and the corruption of the human heart, and The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois.
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins" (1 John 1:9). Which story speaks most honestly to you?
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These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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