Pensees: Confessions of Irreverence

Confessions of Irreverence

From time to time when enough water has gone under the bridge and I feel I can share journal entries without risking the appearance of maudlin exhibitionism, I like to post thoughts that have penetrated my soul during my own spiritual journey in the hope that it will encourage brothers and sisters in their walk. Thus, the occasional “confession.” I only wish they were as deep and eloquent as Augustine’s!

From the Journal

Date (______________):

“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil” (Proverbs 8:13). Real reverence for God constitutes an emotional dislike for anything that displeases Him. I am particularly convicted by the sin of my entertainment choices. I have become too tolerant of evil as it is displayed through entertainment. My soul has been almost numb to various manifestations of ungodliness except for the occasional pricks of a guilty conscience when I contemplate what I have allowed my daughter to enjoy.

Yet my concern should not only be about “age-appropriate” material for my daughter, but I should bow my knee to the fact that evil is always inappropriate. My assessment of my own capacity to tolerate the world’s amusements without entering into temptation or proactively mimicking the entertainment is irrelevant. It smacks of an arrogance that believes that I actually can understand the effect of evil on my soul. How foolish.

Some things are wrong just because God hates them. Or, all things are wrong because God hates them; they are not hated by God because they are wrong. My readings in the Pentateuch have opened my eyes to this. Some animals were elected; others were declared unclean. I think the attempts of men like Bill Gothard and others to give a “scientific” reason for God’s depiction of some animals as unclean is off the mark. Years later they would all be declared as “clean” in Peter’s vision at Joppa. They are unclean or clean simply because God said so.

We must not think that God doeth a thing because it is good and right; but rather is the thing good and right because God willeth it and worketh it ~ William Perkins

A cool, ambivalent nonchalance about anything that flagrantly rebels against God’s will is not maturity or open-mindedness. It is irreverent.

I am guilty. And I repent.