Guilt

In the United States and many parts of the world, it is considered prudish to have less than seven sexual partners.  No longer is promiscuity considered morally wrong, at least as it pertains to a standard derived from something less than the Bible.  There are other areas of behavior that are morally repugnant to a large portion of the population that would be odd concerns to any era but our own.  Feelings of guilt have not left us; they simply have become attached to new morality tenets that have surfaced in our time.    Would a couple ever before have felt guilty about having another child yet now many do!  Has there ever been an age where so much angst has been suffered over the military strength of one's own nation?  When did we start feeling guilty about expressing faith in Christ?  It is moral to send naked pictures of oneself by text but immoral to pass those naked pictures along to others.  There is a moral code to our world and it shifts about like seismic fissures.  The natural course is to make morality match one's behavior rather than the other way around.  In a social order that decides it is moral, what need is there for a God who dies for one's sins?  A god who powers success might be interesting or a deity that settles emotional instability could garner a following but a true Savior who wrecks ones inner world by becoming Lord is anathema to  moral self-determinists.  Satan does not want a guilty sinner and does his best to keep the fretting over right and wrong from the soul.  But once a man or woman faces the mirror of God's own justice and gains a fresh insight into what really is right and wrong, the sham is uncovered and the healthy guilt of the Holy Spirit descends.    We try so hard to be done with guilt but guilt is a window through which the light of God shines into the heart and reveals the true need of every soul, the need for Christ to bring salvation to the totality of life.

When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: 

John 16:8 NIV

Hunger is the Best Sauce

There is no one Satan is quite as ruthless with as the person who once walked with God and has turned aside.  The enemy shades this person's eyes and takes away his peripheral vision spiritually so that he cannot see how far off the narrow path he has turned.  Everything seems so good and true about what he is doing.  The older brother who despised the mercy his father provided his younger brother felt not the least twinge of guilt for thinking as he did.   Yet he could not have been farther from God if he had shot his father in the head.   The root of the older brother's falling away is that he wanted what his younger brother had...the life of sin and then the easy way out of it.  He was not satisfied with all the good he had done working along-side his father; he had to own the party his father threw for his brother.   Christian people who begin strong are most likely to fall away when they look around and want what God has given another.  The discontent seems holy at first; I deserve better and I am certain God will realize how badly I have been treated.  As soon as God becomes the "unjust judge" or the "inadequate master", Satan has the upper hand in the Christian's life and he is cooked.  There is only one way back for such a believer.  Repent.  Acknowledge your sin and turn to God in humble acceptance of your guilt.  Our Lord does not beg us to return to Him when we drift off and in fact He may become as silent as an Antarctic iceberg.  He did not chase after the younger son who walked away from Him and He let the older brother boycott the party.  We are free to hold our grudges and search for life away from God but it is a glorious day when we realize what we have done and seek out again the Savior who redeems us from Satan's velvet grasp.  What should we do if we have a friend who has fallen away from God?  Rely on the Holy Spirit to make you so alive in God that the person who has made his home in "Balaam's country" will hunger for Christ again.

 "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!   Luke 15:17 NIV

Changed Mind

Matthew 21:29 NIV

 "'I will not,' he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

Have You Changed Your Mind Lately?

I am not very fickle and I rarely change my mind when I have decided something but the other day I was ready to get rid of our cat.  She doesn’t really care about anyone but our daughter, she drags her claws on the sofa, she sheds all over the house and lately she has taken up going to the bathroom in our shower.  Our cat is grumpy, eats too much and doesn’t care if you come or go.  She only demands, never gives.  I can’t say she even really wants any of us to touch her.  So when a family friend said she was interested in taking our cat if we didn’t want her, I was very happy about the prospect.  Unfortunately it only lasted a week.  Our friend was hoping for a cat that purred, rested quietly on her lap, wanted to stay inside and liked her.  Our cat has absolutely no people skills and is not interested in making anyone happy and soon she was back in our apartment shedding once more everywhere.  But, I must say that I changed my mind about our cat.  I still would not get too upset if she got into drugs and was busted by the police or found a boyfriend and decided to move with him to Michigan but I was glad she was back with us because I saw how much my daughter loved her.  What seemed so dreadful, that our cat would be returned to us, I actually felt good about.  I changed my mind.

Perhaps you have changed your mind about how you thought of someone.  An enemy actually became a friend, a job you disliked you now enjoy doing.  Perhaps you now like where you live or have changed your mind about someone who asked you out for a date.  It could be that your thoughts about God have changed over time or even your views of heaven and eternity are different.  Sometimes it is quite a major change in thinking that we experience; even our family members are shocked, co-workers and classmates are surprised.  Would you shock even yourself if you changed political parties or made a flip-flop on your view of climate change, eating meat or which sports teams were your favorites?  How easy is it for you to change your mind and when it comes to how you think, is it true that “change is good”?  Do you need a change in how you think, in the way your life is going?  Do you think it really is possible for you to change in regard to the most important parts of your life?

The New Testament uses a particular word that carries with it negative connotations for many people.  You may have heard preachers use it and it bothered you the way it was expressed in sermons.  Unfortunately this word is often misunderstood and viewed as strictly a “religious word”.  John the Baptist is quoted in one of his sermons using it.  Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. (Matthew 3:8 NIV)  Jesus used the word to explain His work.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." (Luke 5:32 NIV)  The Apostle Paul stated that it was also his mission to present the same message.  I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus. (Acts 20:21 NIV)  Repentance is a great word that despite what some people think of it, presents the perfect picture of what every helping profession from psychologists to doctors and dentists hope to accomplish.  The goal of all these professionals is to bring about repentance.  Let me explain!

The English word “to repent” has Latin and French roots and speaks mostly of feeling badly about what one has done.  Guilt is a key component in the Latin and French terms.  That is often what we associate with repentance.  Repentance, at least as the early French and Catholics indicated, was all about the emotional side of realizing what you had done was wrong; it was about feeling guilty for bad behavior.  To some degree, that is how repentance may work for many of us but that is not the Biblical sense of repentance.  Repentance is a rather narrow English translation of the Greek word found in the New Testament and this Greek word means more than just feeling badly about your actions.  The Biblical expression is actually a combination of two Greek words which when put together mean, “to change the mind”.  It describes a morphing from one way of thinking to another, a “conversion” of thinking.

We see this illustrated by Martha, the sister of Lazarus who was raised by Jesus from the dead.  In Luke 10, Martha is agitated that she has to work hard in the kitchen while her sister is free to sit at Jesus’ feet and relax.  As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said.  But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"  "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42 NIV)  There is not a more believable and unremarkable account in the entire Bible than this.  Most of us have been incensed that all the work has fallen upon us while others get to play.  We have felt just like Martha and have even expressed our frustration about it.  But something happened that brought about a change in thinking with our friend.  It was the resurrection of her brother Lazarus.

In John 11 is the famous account of Jesus raising Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary from the dead.  At first, Martha was perturbed with Jesus for not coming when she and her sister sent for him when Lazarus was just sick.  When Jesus, in her mind, wasted his time on trivial matters and got to their house too late because Lazarus in the meantime had died, she chastised him for his cavalier attitude toward her brother’s dire circumstance.   But when Jesus raised him from the dead and Martha realized that not even death should dictate how she thought about things, and even more so how she thought about being left alone to serve everyone, she “changed her mind”.  Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him.  Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (John 12:1-3 NIV)

Much is made of Mary pouring all that expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and drying them with her hair but someone should notice Martha here too.  No longer is she complaining about Mary lounging when there was work to be done.  There was no more animosity about all the work she had to do on her own.  Her mind had changed: there was a conversion of her thinking!  The same could be said of the Apostle John who along with his brother James was furious over the lack of respect Jesus received in one of the Samaritan villages.  As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?"   But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village. (Luke 9:51-56 NIV)  It was never a small matter for Jesus to rebuke anyone and it would leave a lasting impression.  It clearly resulted in John “changing his mind” about the Samaritans because after Jesus crucified and risen left the disciples and they became apostles, sent out into the world, one of the very first things John did was join with Peter and begin an evangelistic tour throughout Samaria, preaching there the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages. (Acts 8:25b NIV)

It is one thing to feel badly about what you have done; another altogether to change your mind about your actions and alter your course.  One of the great questions facing the field of psychology is how to get people to change their minds about things…to change their minds sufficiently that it results in a different lifestyle.  All sorts of methods are used: punishment, rewards, talking, reviewing past personal history, mentoring, administering of drugs.  What everyone knows is that no matter how expensive and elaborate the intervention may be, unless a person’s mind is changed, behavior change is never long lasting.  For centuries however, Christian people have been changing their minds and dramatically altering their behavior as a result.  Not every person who names himself Christian has a changed mind; that is why so many so-called Christians look just like non-Christians…their morals are just as loose, their honesty is just as undependable and their addictions are just as resolute and harmful as those of non-Christian people.

What is needed is a real change of mind brought about by God’s kindness.  The Apostle Paul puts it this way.  …do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance? (Romans 2:4 NIV)  What happened with Paul has been occurring for centuries.  As soon as Paul realized what a great kindness God had done for Him by dying on the Cross for his sins, the hateful and angry Paul embraced the very people he wanted dead.  Why?  Because Jesus Christ became a part of Paul and the Savior began to work His way into Paul’s thinking.  Literally, this verse states that God’s kindness leads you into a changed mind!  How does this happen?  Paul let the cat out of the bag in his closing remarks to the leaders of the church of Ephesus.  The NIV translates it this way.  I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.  (Acts 20:21 NIV)  The original Greek wording puts it this way, “having declared to Jews and Greeks the changed mind into God and faith into our Lord Jesus.”  What this means is that the changed mind which is immersed in God’s mind is always in conjunction with faith into the Lord Jesus.  Without developing and expanding faith into Jesus Christ, the mind never develops God’s mind; it just stays the same with only its own strength and understanding.  Faith in Christ though brings God into our thinking and with Him there, habits can be broken, memories that have haunted us can lose their power over us and we will have the kind of thinking we need to overcome bad behaviors and bad attitudes.

Faith in Christ is the most dramatic and powerful way to change both what we do and how we think.  Yet it is so simple to place your faith in Christ and gain God’s power in thinking.  You ask Christ to guide you and help you with everything you can think of as you go through your day.  When you read something in the Bible that insists you change what you are doing, then you believe Christ is right and you make the change.  When there is a choice between something you think is good and fair and what the Holy Spirit clearly says is not for you, then you accept God’s guidance and trust Christ in it.  Faith in Christ is not a once for all decision; it is a hundred little decisions each day which when added together give you God’s power to become the sort of person you want to be and God intends for you to be.

Conscience Reboot

Acts 24:16 NIV

So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.

Do You Have a Clear Conscience?

I don’t ever remember a time when I was taken to school by my parents.  It must have happened but my only memories of getting to school were walking or riding my bike. My mom at some point stopped walking with me to elementary school…I know this because I can’t think of a single time that she actually accompanied me.  Those trips to school have long ago all blended together into a single blur except for one particular morning that is perhaps forever etched in my mind.  As I always did each day on my treks to school, I came to a since closed mom and pop grocery store on E. 14^th Street that was a constant curiosity to me.  My mom as far as I knew never shopped in it and so I never had an occasion to see what was inside.  Each day I went to school and then returned home I went past the little store and wondered what it would be like to look around.  One morning, I was a bit early for school so I finally decided to see what deep magic the store held within.  I walked up and down each aisle like I belonged, as if I intended to buy milk or bread or green beans.  I did not have a penny in my pocket; I was only on a fact finding mission.  Eventually I came upon the candy aisle and now I had found nirvana.  I looked at each candy bar, at every ball of gum, at each wrapped piece of hard candy and thought long and hard about what it would be like to have one of those candies.  In the most split of split seconds, I had a most delicious idea.  Why don’t I just take one?  No one was looking.  I was perhaps nine years old…too young to realize how stupid that idea was since I was the son of a police officer and too old to blame my action on ignorance of right and wrong.  I glanced about, stuck my hand down, grabbed a single Jolly Rancher, shoved it in my pocket and hurriedly walked out the door and down the street.  I kept waiting for the clerk to come running after me, for the police to chase me down and frisk me, for my dad to pull up in his car and confront me…but nothing happened.  I had gotten away with stealing the little piece of candy.  I wasn’t arrested.  I did not get a spanking.  I was not pulled out of class and sent to the principal’s office.  No one ever discovered my crime…as far as I knew.  But, my conscience knew what had happened and it would not let me off the hook.  It attacked me with a vengeance and despite the success of my great crime, I never unwrapped the little candy because I felt too guilty to eat it.

Not everyone is like me.  Many don’t feel guilty about all sorts of matters that are considered wrong.  They feel no qualms about stealing or lying or the use of swear words.  They don’t sweat it if they watch pornography or run through a red light or take too long of a shower.  They are unmoved by no trespassing signs, they are perfectly fine with cheating on their biology tests, don’t worry a bit about driving on a suspended license and will drink and drive without giving it a thought.  What are we supposed to do about such people who don’t seem to ever have a guilty conscience; who aren’t bothered by their bad behavior?  Are they hopelessly lost?  Should we try to make them see the error of their ways?

There is a mature, well thought through examination of the conscience in the Bible and it provides rich insight into the psychology of the conscience.  For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.  They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.  They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills.  Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.  From their callous hearts comes iniquity; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits. (Psalm 73:3-7 NIV)  “Hearts” in this verse is speaking of the conscience.  Who hasn’t had at least a little bit of jealousy that some people seem to feel no guilt over what they do.  They live wild lives with impunity and no one can get through to them that what they are doing is wrong.  It seems impossible to convince such people to change; their consciences are nearly immutable.

Consider the strange case of Jonah who had a profound hatred for Assyrians.  He refused to go to their capital city and warn them of God’s coming judgment because he did not want them to get out from under the destruction the Lord had planned for them.  Even after God had Jonah swallowed by a great fish and in its belly he stewed for three days, he still was unbending in his loathing of the Assyrians.  He did go and preach in the Assyrian city but nothing inside him changed even after the people repented   He was furious that God did not destroy Nineveh; his conscience felt no guilt over his hatred of the Assyrians whom the Lord clearly loved.  Not even three days in the gut of a great fish could rework Jonah’s conscience.

Likewise it is odd that the great Solomon who experienced several miraculous encounters with God did not seem to feel the least bit guilty about taxing the people excessively or dabbling in paganism.  His conscience was unmoved by the scriptures he read or the poverty he saw all around him.  Even while living in the golden age of the church when the pastors were Apostles like Peter, James and John, Ananias and Sapphira seemed to feel not the least twinge of guilt when they lied about the extent of their charity.  The great Paul seemed to feel no guilt over all the atrocities he committed against the Church even while facing the resurrected Jesus Christ in the middle of the road.  The conscience in many ways is as unbending as a steel bar and no amount of supernatural signs and wonders can force it to change its opinion of good and bad.   All of us have tried to talk someone into believing some action or attitude was morally wrong to no avail.  Just think of the times pro-life demonstrators have tried their best to convince abortion advocates of the horrors of abortion without success or how many have tried to get alcoholic family members to feel guilty for their actions.  We can wreck a conscience by our actions but rarely can we build up a conscience by our rhetoric.

We are thoroughly ineffective at trying to convince others of the wrongness of their wrongs.  We can try interventions, guilt-tripping and emotional pleas and rarely, if ever will we get far with another person’s conscience.  There is only one way for a conscience to be significantly altered.  It must be transformed by the presence of the Spirit of God.  Isaiah provides the perfect example of a converted conscience.  When He came up into the presence of God, he realized just how filthy and disgusting his speech had been before.   "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. (Isaiah 6:5 NIV)  Before this encounter with the Lord, Isaiah thought nothing of what sort of things he said…at least his conscience was unfazed by his words.  The moment he met the real God, he came undone with guilt for his conscience had been converted.  He knew that the sorts of things he had said before were ugly and wrong.  This did not come to him as an intellectual unearthing, it was a Spiritual revelation that not only uncovered the sin he did not before think was sinful but also brought deep remorse for what he realized he had been doing.

The Apostle Paul is a clear example of how the conscience is altered.  As mentioned before, Paul did not seem to feel guilty about his past persecution of Christians when he first met Jesus in a blazing manifestation of His glory.  It was much later that his conscience convicted him of the wrong he had done and he saw himself clearly as a sinner and really a sinner.  This is how he put it after the Spirit of God had changed Paul’s conscience.  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24-25 NIV)  This is not false guilt…not like someone weeping over the death of a mosquito he killed; this was the guilt of having done rotten things that before he had never thought were wrong.  This is the guilt of an alcoholic who suddenly realizes what horrible consequences his drinking has brought his family but more importantly, how it has wrecked his life with God.  This is the guilt of a stockbroker who had merrily cheated his clients out of their savings but now saw clearly the evil of his actions.  This is the guilt of young mother who finally realizes how terrible it has been for her to abandon the church.  No one can make her see how truly bad her own sin is; only God can reveal it.  The Bible puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 10: 4.  The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. (NIV)  God alone can break through into a conscience that is unable to see its own sin and change the way the conscience interprets badness.  Divine power can accomplish what we are powerless to undertake.

There is a second way our conscience is awakened to real sin within and it is a terrible discovery.  Let the Apostle Paul explain.  Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith.  Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.  (1Timothy 1:18-20 NIV)  There are times when even a Christian has abandoned his conscience and it becomes wasted on him.  What does God do in those situations?  Honestly it is terrifying but it is the epitome of “tough love”.  The Lord turns over the person to Satan.  We know what happened when God let Job be in the hands of Satan.  It can feel like “hell” but it isn’t.  God lets the person who has turned off her conscience and given up on it be in the grip of Satan.  It happened to Nebuchadnezzar when he went crazy for a year.  It happened to David after he committed adultery with Bathsheba.  It happened to Jonah when he was cast into the raging sea and it happened to Peter after he denied Christ in Caiaphas’s courtyard (see Luke 22: 31).

The church is given authority to do this and it must happen for the good of those who are ruining their consciences by going against them.  The Bible says that it is strong medicine for the sick spirit that is reeling from sin.  When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:4-5 NIV)  In this instance it was a man who was sleeping with his father’s wife.  It could be someone cheating on her husband, another who is an angry man who won’t control his temper, it might be a person who is cheating God out of the tithe or someone destroying her family by her drug addiction.  But we have to be careful here.  This is an extreme measure and only to be done if someone has completely shut out the conscience.  When that happens and there is no remorse for sin, you just quit praying for the person and stop trying to change his behavior.  You let Satan have his way with the person and in the end, God will have freed him or her of the taste for sin.  All rebellion against God will be gone and a craving for the Lord’s presence will surface and dominate the personality.

It is most dreadful when God turns us over to Satan…the most horrible of turns.  That is why we must keep our conscience clear and let the Holy Spirit of God direct our actions.  You see misery and unmitigated corruption in the personality turned over to Satan, a complete blindness to the destruction that person faces and yet, when like Nebuchadnezzar, he turns back to God, when he gets free of Satan’s grip by praying and seeking the mercy of Christ, it is like a fresh and exciting new dawn, filled with promise and hope and the joy of God.  When we walk in the light and trust Jesus Christ to direct us in each and every way whether it is something we see to do or stop doing in Scripture or when the quiet prod of the Holy Spirit through our conscience guides us, we have the peace of God surrounding us and protecting us and keeping us safe.