A conscience works like our immune system does. You can bolster your immune system, drink tea, eat vitamin C, exercise. Most of the time it keeps the bad stuff out. If you don’t take care of yourself your immune system is not as strong.
But every now and then a disease comes along that can make your system attack itself (AIDs, all other auto-immune diseases).
Likewise, some sins or bad ideas can make your conscience attack itself unnecessarily. Like legalism or any other socially acceptable sin. And you don’t even know that you’re being slowly killed.
i suppose that makes us all each others doctors, with the task/problem of (mis)diagnosing, and then trying to figure out which doctor (friend, family, church, etc.) to trust...?
ReplyDeletelegalism is so crazy. the power it has entrenched in self-righteousness is pretty much overwhelming... a good desire (for righteousness), but as usual, a poor choice of venue (ourselves) that channels/funnels into unnecessary, inappropriate and sinful actions. whether conscious of it or not, we are in control of molding our conscience. ( i know i should've used "aware", but it seemed appropriate here, since i can't sleep and it's almost 1 am)
wait, so, who is being killed slowly here? you or me? i bet it's me.
and is the conscience attacking itself here? i would question where legalism or any other socially acceptable sin comes from... perhaps from society/culture, but we still get the choose to appropriate it. and we as people create society thereby creating legalism, etc... maybe?
i would encourage more navel-gazing (a euphemism) to rectify/avoid this "don't even know you're being slowly killed" stuff.
i should test it myself first. i'll get right back to you on that.