There's nothing unconventional about a convention of neonatal nurses, or mortgage bankers, or Boy Scouts, or forensic counselors, or scrapbookers, or insurance agents.

But what about a Lust Convention?

A syndicated sex columnist named Dan Savage has written a most unusual book, one that you will not want to use as a source of bedtime stories for your children or grandchildren. His book is called Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, and it contains the stories of a number of average American citizens as they gleefully commit each of the Seven Deadly Sins -- lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, anger, envy and pride.

Savage discovered that it was rather easy to find these sinners. In fact, he found that they were very conventional in their sinning -- conventional in the sense that they seem to enjoy gathering with large numbers of like-minded souls in conventions devoted to their favorite sins. Savage took part in a Lust Convention by attending a gathering of 6,000 wife-swappers. Gluttony was seen at a convention of hundreds of overeating members of the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance. For his chapter on greed, Savage watched mobs of avid gamblers frolicking in Las Vegas. For an exposé on anger, he joined gun fans as they blasted away in Texas.

" It's amazing," Savage told The Washington Post. "If you spent any time sinning in America, you spend a lot of time at conventions." (Peter Carlson, " Writer Dan Savage's Sins and Sensibility," The Washington Post, November 25, 2002, C1)

Gomorrah, here we come. Our acceptance of sin has become so conventional that we are now gathering in national associations to satisfy and support our desires. The Seven Deadly Sins have become the Seven Convention-al Sins.

How did we get ourselves into this mess?

Our downward slide did not begin at the latest American Lust Convention, but was well underway in the spring of a particular year around 1000 B.C., in the city of Jerusalem. We learn from today's Scripture lesson that this is the time of year when kings normally go out to battle, but one spring day the great King David decides to blow off his responsibility. Instead of leading his army into war, David sends his commander Joab and his officers to do this duty. While they are ravaging the Ammonites and besieging Rabbah, King David remains behind in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 11:1).

This is not a good sign. The slide into sin begins when David neglects his normal duties.

Late one afternoon, David rises from his couch and is walking about on the roof of his house. Here's another red flag: David rolls out of bed "late one afternoon"! Who does he think he is -- some kind of rock star, up all night at Ozzfest 2003? As he rubs the sleepiness out of his eyes, he sees a woman bathing, and he can't help but notice that the woman is very beautiful. Now it would be one thing to catch sight of a naked woman and then look away, but David does the opposite: He immediately organizes a full-blown Lust Convention.

First, he sends someone to discover her identity: Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite. Then he orders messengers to fetch her. Then he seduces her and impregnates her. With the organization and energy that should have gone into doing his kingly duties, David methodically commits at least five of the Seven Deadly Sins. He begins with the sin of sloth on his couch, moves into lust when he sees Bathsheba bathing, follows up with envy of her husband Uriah, acts on his greed when he sends messengers to fetch the fetching woman, and then covers the whole affair with the pride he feels at being an all-powerful king.

His deadly sins have now become conventional. They have become as organized and energized as a formal gathering of 6,000 wife-swappers. But what does it matter that a set of sins has become attractive, and easy, and acceptable to others? Sin is still incredibly dangerous.

We follow David on his downward slide whenever we neglect our duties and fall into sloth, saying to ourselves, "I've worked plenty hard, I deserve a weekend on the couch!" We slip into danger when we click onto Internet porn sites, deceiving ourselves into thinking that such pictures aren't going to poison us, or erode our relationships. We fall down when we look at our neighbors' spouses, or their luxury cars, or their speedboats, or their beautifully decorated McMansions … and allow ourselves to be filled with envy. We take the low road when we act on our greed, and gobble up people and possessions that we don't really need or deserve. And we hit rock bottom when we allow our pride to pollute every one of our actions -- when we deceive ourselves into thinking that we somehow have a God-given right to everything we desire. I know that I often feel hurt, or mistreated, or abused when things don't work out exactly how I want them to -- and these offenses can be as small as being forced to wait in a long checkout line at Giant Food.

Well, guess what: That's a sin. That's my sin, not Giant's sin. The sin of pride.

David's sense of morality had become so jaded, and his spirituality had become so lifeless, that he fell into the trap of wondering how his actions could be so wrong if they felt so right. His sins had become so conventional that he didn't feel a single stab of regret.

Are we in danger of going down with David?

The story in Second Samuel gets worse before it gets better. David calls Bathsheba's husband Uriah back from the front, and David encourages him to go home and sleep with Bathsheba. The king says, "Go down to your house and wash your feet" -- which means, well, you know what -- he wants Uriah to hop into bed with Bathsheba and then be fooled into thinking that her pregnancy is his own (v. 8).

But Uriah, being a righteous man, refuses to do this. Even though he is a Hittite, a mercenary without a drop of Israelite blood in his body, he says that he cannot eat, drink, and lie with his wife as long as his fellow soldiers are camping in the open field (v. 11). Uriah is more loyal to the Israelite army than David is, and so he simply sleeps at the entrance to the king's house until it is time for him to return to battle.

David ramps up his efforts to drive Uriah home to Bathsheba: He sends him a present, invites him to eat and drink in the royal house, and even gets him drunk (v. 13). But still Uriah refuses to go home.

Finally, David gives the order for Uriah to be killed. He writes out instructions for Uriah's death in battle, and David is cold-hearted enough to send this order to the commander in Uriah's own hands. Uriah dies, and David's sinfulness becomes truly unconventional.

This is the problem, you see, with tolerance of conventional sins. We think that they are manageable -- a little bit of lust, a smidgen of sloth, a pinch of pride -- but before we know it they get out of control and lead to damage, destruction, and even death. Even though gambling is now legal all across our country, transforming greed into a rather conventional sin, the damage done by this industry is impossible to ignore. Americans now spend more money on legal gambling than they spend on groceries, roughly $500 billion a year, and the destruction to individuals and families is heartbreaking. A middle-aged woman tells Today's Christian Woman magazine that over the course of three years, her gambling left her $30,000 in debt, with a 20-year marriage in shambles and four children who no longer trusted her. She hit rock-bottom through a conventional sin that had become completely unconventional. (Maxi Chambers, "What I Lost By Gambling," Today's Christian Woman, November-December 1996, 74)

You've heard of the "gateway theory," haven't you? Soft drugs like marijuana are believed to be the gateway to harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin. In the same way, conventional sins can be the gateway to unconventional sins. David's lust turned into adultery, which turned into deceit, which turned into murder. He spiraled steadily downward until he finally hit rock-bottom, confessed his sins, and returned to an authentic relationship with God.

We shouldn't have to fall this far. The challenge for us is to get a grip on our conventional sins, so that they won't become a gateway to the unconventional. This process involves keeping King David in mind, and resolving to remember our daily duties and responsibilities. It challenges us to put organization and energy into God's activities, instead of into sin conventions. It requires us to keep our morality sharp and our spirituality lively, so that we'll have an accurate sense of when we are slipping downward. And it demands that we repent and turn ourselves around before we spiral into damage and destruction.

Skipping towards God, instead of Gomorrah, is the way we need to go. Any other direction is bound to be deadly. Amen.

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