It's true, you know. We tend to head in the direction we're looking. It's hard to walk straight ahead when you're looking to the side. We also tend to go in the direction we're looking in life. How many, for instance, have been caught in the very sin they've decried for so long? How many, holding to marital fidelity at the start, end up in adultery because they looked too long at another person or at pornography? James says that sin results when a man is "is drawn away of his own lust and enticed" (James 1:14). Looking that way, we go that way.
That, I think, is a big reason the Scriptures do not tell us to look at nothing. We are to be "wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matt 10:16). We have to walk this careful line: "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret" (Eph 5:11-12). Expose them, but don't talk about them. "Don't be looking there." This is why Paul tells us:
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think on these things (Phil 4:8).Notice it's not daydreaming or the like. It is not ethereal. It is specific. It is positive. "Don't think about nothing in particular. Pay attention here."
Look where you're going, because you will likely go where you're looking. On the road or in your spiritual life.
3 comments:
I know someone (we both do) who uses that Phil 4:8 verse in his support for a specific form of sexual immorality. Just sayin'.
I suppose I can see how that might be done, and, in fact, I would approve ... as long as you define "true", "honorable", "right", "pure", and especially "worthy of praise" in the same way that the pages of Scripture does. However, in order to use this as justification for endorsement of sexual (or any other form of) immorality, they have to first correctly redefine "good" and its relatives. You know ... they must not "call evil good and good evil" (Isa 5:20) as opposed to "those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil" (Heb 5:14).
Indeed. I have always responded that one must consider God's definition as implied by all of Scripture. It would not cover that which has been prohibited as that which has been prohibited is defined in a manner totally opposite any of those terms.
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