Deceiving Ourselves #2

When it comes to sin, we’re very good at deceiving ourselves. Just like the Pharisees who were criticized by Jesus for their hypocrisy, we religious folks find loop holes that let us off the hook. Guess what, it doesn’t work! God knows our heart, our motivation and even our thoughts. As the Bible says:

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” Gal. 6:7

We may be able to fool ourselves, but we can’t fool God. This quote by John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) explains just one example of how we look for “wiggle room.”

“The essence of lying is in deception, not in words. A lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a syllable, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence. All these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly worded. No form of blinded conscience is so far sunk as that which comforts itself for having deceived because the deception was by gesture or silence, instead of utterance.”

So keep your conscience sensitive. Don’t forget to examine yourself for sins of omission as well as commission. There are no loop holes.

For more about sinful thoughts see:

I Can Do Better

The Gift of Wisdom, Part 2

The World, The Flesh and … oh yes, THE DEVIL

What You Do or What You Don’t Do?

“I have been sorrowfully convinced that in what I thought necessary attention to home duties, my time and strength have been engrossed to a degree that I fear has interfered with my duty to others.  It is of serious consideration, how much good we miss of doing by our want of watchfulness for opportunities, and our engrossment even in our lawful and necessary cares;  and there is another way, too, in the influence we might continually exert over all who come in contact with us, and through them over others, to an extent of which we are probably not aware, if we continually kept in a meek and quiet spirit.  Ah, it may be with some of us that it is more for what we leave undone than for what we do, that we shall be called to an account.”

Elizabeth Taber King

For another quote by Elizabeth Taber King (a Quaker) see:

God’s Victory Over Our Sin