Ruined soul? We know of spectacular sins? Admitting ours & seeking opposite Part 1

 

RUINED SOULS - One of the greatest obstacles to effective spiritual formation in Christ today is our failure to understand and acknowledge the reality of the human situation. We must start from where we really are. 

Some years back, within a period of a few weeks, three nationally known pastors in Southern California were publicly exposed for sexual sins. But sex is far from being the only problem inside and outside the church. The presence of vanity, egotism, hostility, fear, indifference, and downright meanness can be counted on among professing Christians. 

Their opposites cannot be counted on or simply assumed in the standard Christian group, and the rare individual who exemplifies these opposites—genuine purity and humility, death to selfishness, freedom from rage and depression, and so on—will stand out in the group with all the obtrusiveness of a sore thumb. This person will be a constant hindrance in group processes and will be personally conflicted by them, for he or she will not be living on the same terms as the others. 

Paul described the human self: “There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave, With their tongues they keep deceiving,” “The poison of asps is under their lips”; “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”; “Their feet are swift to shed blood, Destruction and misery are in their paths, And the path of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:10-18) Paul summed up the root of human evil by saying, “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 

When God is put out of the heart and the soul, the intellect becomes dysfunctional, trying to devise a “truth” that will be compatible with the basic falsehood that not God, but rather man, is god; and the affections (feelings, emotions, even sensations) soon follow along on the path to chaos. The path of spiritual transformation today lies through the illumination that we have ruined souls. 

This must be gratefully and humbly accepted and applied, to oneself above all. When the prophet Jeremiah, for example, said, “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (17:9), we have to recognize from our heart that we are the ones spoken of, that, indeed, I am the one described. Only then is a foundation laid for spiritual formation into Christlikeness.

Johnson, Jan; Willard, Dallas. Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Experiments in Spiritual Transformation (Redefining Life) (pp. 34-35). The Navigators. Kindle Edition. 

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