I worship God. I mean that sincerely. I utter words of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication with what I believe is genuine reverence. My lips move and the language of faith comes out— polished, rehearsed, sometimes even heartfelt.
And then I walk away from that moment of worship and within hours sometimes minutes—I'm cursing. Rage-quitting while playing video game. Muttering words under my breath that would make the version of me singing hymns earlier sick to his stomach. Slamming fists on desks. Letting anger boil over into language that has no business coming from the same mouth that just praised the Most High.
I'm not talking about occasional slip-ups. I'm talking about a pattern. A rhythm. A daily contradiction that I've lived with so long it almost feels normal. Almost. Because it isn't normal. And deep down, I know it. And that knowing—that quiet, persistent, uncomfortable knowing—is what keeps me from being completely at peace with my own hypocrisy.
Everyone Struggles. That Doesn't Make It Okay. Everyone struggles with sin. I've heard that phrase more times than I can count. Pastors say it. Friends say it. Christian books say it. And it's true—Paul himself wrote about the war between flesh and spirit, the things he wanted to do he didn't do, and the things he didn't want to do he kept on doing. That's Romans 7. That's the human condition post-Fall. I get it.
But here's where I have to be honest with myself in a way that goes beyond comfortable theological clichés: knowing everyone struggles doesn't absolve me of mine. It doesn't make my cursing less profane. It doesn't make my rage less destructive. It doesn't make the gap between my Sunday self and my Tuesday-night-gaming self any less real or any less damning. Universal struggle is not universal excuse.
The fact that every human being wrestles with sin means I'm not alone in the fight. It does not mean the fight doesn't matter. If anything, it means the fight matters more—because if we all share this battlefield, then the way we conduct ourselves on it defines not just our character but our witness to a watching world.
Let me be specific, because vagueness is where self-deception lives. I game. And when I game, I transform. Not into someone unrecognizable—into someone too recognizable. The mask comes off. The social filters drop. The carefully curated image of the composed, faithful, spiritually-minded person dissolves, and what's left is raw impulse, unfiltered emotion, and a tongue that has absolutely zero interest in holiness in that moment.
A bad play happens. Someone on my team feeds. The lag spikes at the worst possible moment. I lose a ranked match I should have won. And suddenly the air around me turns blue with language I wouldn't use in front of my mother, my pastor, or—here's the gut punch—my God. Except He's there. He's always there. That's the part that makes my stomach turn. Not that I cursed. Not that I raged. But that I did it before His face and barely flinched.
R.C. Sproul taught me something—or rather, God taught me something through R.C. Sproul—that has haunted me in the best possible way. Coram Deo. Two Latin words. Before the face of God. Living every moment of every day consciously aware that you stand in the presence of a holy God. Not metaphorically. Not symbolistically. Actually. Right now. As you read this. As I write this. As we game. As we eat. As we argue. As we curse under our breath thinking no one heard. He heard.
Sproul didn't invent the concept—he recovered it. He reminded the modern church that the Reformation wasn't just about theology; it was about presence. The realization that all of life is lived coram Deo—that there is no secular corner of existence where God's gaze doesn't reach, no gaming lobby too insignificant for His attention, no muttered curse too quiet for His ear. And when that truth lands—not as doctrine but as reality—it changes everything. Or it should.
I remember watch a Q&A session, a recorded lecture, or an anecdote shared by someone who knew him—where R.C. Sproul was visibly tempted to say a bad word (he did not say it but he exprerss he tempted to say it nevertheless). The context escapes me now, but what stayed was the image of this man, this theologian, this teacher who had spent decades writing and speaking about the holiness of God, feeling the pull of a curse word rising in his throat. And he didn't say it.
Now, I don't know what was happening internally. I don't know if his heart was pounding, if his jaw clenched, if he silently prayed, if he simply bit his lip and redirected. I don't know the mechanics of his resistance. But I know the result. He held. The word didn't come out. And I sat there listening to that story thinking: How?
How does a person get to that place? Where the temptation is real—because it was real, he was human, he felt the pull—and yet the resolve holds? Where the awareness of God's presence is so thick, so immediate, so consuming, that the profanity dies before it reaches the tongue? How did R.C. Sproul live coram Deo in a moment where I would have failed without hesitation?
The Long Way I Still Have to Go I'll be honest: I'm not there. Not close. I'm the guy who sings "Holy, Holy, Holy" on Sunday morning and screams profanity at a screen while playing call of Duty or Battlefield on Sunday night. I'm the guy who posts Bible verses and then rages at teammates in a game lobby. I'm the guy who knows what coram Deo means intellectually and lives as if God's gaze has a blind spot conveniently located over my gaming chair.
That gap between knowledge and obedience? That's not a gap. That's a chasm. And I've been staring across it for years, wondering if I'll ever build a bridge. Sproul spent decades soaking in the holiness of God. Writing about it. Teaching it. Preaching it. Living it—imperfectly, I'm sure, but with a trajectory that was unmistakably upward. He didn't become the man who could resist temptation overnight. He became that man through years of studying the Word of God. Years of repentance. Years of returning to the cross. Years of letting the reality of God's presence sink deeper and deeper until it wasn't a concept anymore—it was breathing.
I'm at the beginning of that road. Or maybe I'm a few steps in and keep tripping back to the start. Either way, the destination feels impossibly far. But here's what I'm learning to cling to: the distance doesn't disqualify the journey because sanctification is not instant coffee The theological term for what I'm describing—for what R.C. Sproul walked through, for what every believer stumbles through—is sanctification.
Not justification. That's instant. That's the courtroom declaration: not guilty, covered by the blood of Christ, declared righteous on the basis of His finished work. That happens once. That's settled. Sanctification is different. Sanctification is the long, slow, painful, beautiful, agonizing, non-linear process of being made holy in practice. Of having the reality of your justified status worked out in your daily behavior. Of your tongue learning to match your theology. Of your anger learning to submit to your worship. It's not a light switch. It's a forge.
Metal doesn't become a sword by being spoken to nicely. It becomes a sword by being placed in fire, hammered on an anvil, quenched in oil, and repeat and repeat and repeat until the impurities are gone and the edge holds.
I am in the fire right now. I have been for years. And some days the hammer hits and I think, Surely I'm done by now. Surely this is the last swing. And then I curse at a video game and realize: no. Not yet. More fire. More hammering.
Someone reading this might say: Then stop calling yourself a Christian. If your lips worship and your lips curse, you're a hypocrite. Jesus said "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Your cursing reveals your heart. Repent or stop pretending. And I hear that. I take it seriously. James didn't mince words: "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be." This should not be. Agreed. Fully. Without reservation.
But here's where I land: acknowledging that this should not be is not the same as being able to fix it instantly. Conviction is not the same as perfection. The fact that I know it's wrong and sinful—that my conscience burns when I curse, that I feel the dissonance between worship and rage—that conviction itself is evidence of the Spirit's work, not evidence of its absence. A dead conscience doesn't flinch. Mine flinches constantly.
The question isn't whether I'm perfect. The question is whether I'm moving. Whether the trajectory, however slow, however stumbling, is toward holiness rather than away from it. Whether each failure drives me deeper into repentance rather than deeper into despair or—worse—indifference.
You see, I'm not R.C. Sproul. I may never be. But I'm learning a few things about what it means to fight this war: First, the battle is fought in the moments before the word leaves the mouth. By the time the curse is on my tongue, the war is nearly lost. The real fight is in the half-second between the anger rising and the anger being expressed. That's where coram Deo lives—not as a theological abstraction but as a split-second decision: God is here. Right now. In this lag spike. In this loss. In this frustration. He is here and He is holy and I am His.
Second, I cannot fight this alone. Sproul didn't resist temptation through sheer willpower. He resisted through years of discipline, community, prayer, and dependence on the Holy Spirit. My rage-quitting and cursing are not willpower problems—they are worship problems. I worship the win more than I worship the Win-giver. I love victory more than I love victory in Christ. Until that ordering changes, the symptoms will persist.
Third, gaming is not the enemy—my heart is. I could quit gaming tomorrow and find another arena for my anger to manifest. The problem isn't the screen; it's the sin nature that the screen exposes. Removing the trigger doesn't kill the disease. It just relocates the outbreak.
Fourth, repentance is a lifestyle, not a event. I used to think repentance was something you did once—after a particularly bad episode, after a blow-up, after hitting rock bottom. I'm learning it's something you do constantly. Hourly. Moment by moment. The moment the curse forms in your mind, you repent. The moment the rage rises, you repent. Not with dramatic tears and long prayers—sometimes just a whispered ''forgive me Lord God'' and a turning back.
Fifth, I am not disqualified by the struggle. This is the hardest one to believe. The enemy whispers: You curse and you call yourself a Christian? What kind of worshipper are you? God is done with you. And the gospel whispers back: The kind of worshipper who keeps coming back. The kind who keeps repenting. The kind who knows he has nowhere else to go.
Peter denied Christ with curses—and was restored. David committed adultery and murder—and was forgiven. Jonah ran from God—and was used. The history of God's people is the history of broken people being slowly, painfully, beautifully made whole.
Jesus quoted Isaiah: "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." That verse used to terrify me because I thought it described me perfectly. And maybe it does. Maybe my worship is lip-service while my heart rages and curses in the back room. But I'm starting to think there's another reading. What if the desire to close that gap—to have heart and lips aligned—is itself evidence that the heart isn't as far as it fears? What if the very ache over hypocrisy is the fingerprint of a heart being drawn closer?
A heart that is truly far from God doesn't ache over the distance. It doesn't care. It curses freely and worrows not. The fact that I mourn the gap between my worship and my rage—that I hate the contradiction—that I long to be the kind of man who lives coram Deo in every moment, including the ones with a controller in my hands.
I'll say it again because I need to hear it: I have a long way to go. I will probably curse again. I will probably rage-quit again. I will probably stand in church on Sunday with hands raised and then sit in my chair on Wednesday night with fists clenched and words I regret spilling out.
But I will also repent again. And pray again. And try again. And look again at the cross, where the only perfect worshipper shed His blood for the man who worships with his lips and curses with the same lips and knows it and hates it and keeps showing up anyway.
R.C. Sproul's moment of temptation reminds me that the battle can be won. Not perfectly in this life—but really. Genuinely. Incrementally. The word doesn't have to come out. The rage doesn't have to win. The presence of God can become so real that the profanity loses its grip. I'm not there yet. But I'm on the road. And the God who began this work—this slow, grinding, beautiful, excruciating work of sanctification—has promised to complete it. I'm counting on that promise. Because without it, I'm just a man with divided lips and no hope. With it, I'm a man with divided lips and a Savior who is patient enough to make them whole.
The Christian life is not a sprint to perfection. It's a marathon through a battlefield, and the only way to lose is to stop running. If you've ever worshipped with one breath and cursed with the next—you're not alone. The gap between who we are and who we're becoming is where grace does its slowest, deepest work.
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Faith