Things to Ponder Vol:1

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I know this is long, but definitely filled with things to think about and ponder if you are so inclined….. this is an excerpt from “Knowing God” by J.I. Packer

“We are familiar with the thought that our bodies are like machines, needing the right routine of food, rest, and exercise if they are to run efaciently, and liable, if filled up with the wrong fuel — alcohol, drugs, poison - to lose their power of healthy functioning and ultimately to 'seize up' entirely in physical death. What we are, per-haps, slower to grasp is that God wishes us to think of our souls in a similar way. As rational persons, we were made to bear God's moral image - that is, our souls were made to 'run' on the practice of worship, law-keeping, truthfulness, honesty, discipline, self-control, and service to God and our fellows. If we abandon these practices, not only do we incur guilt before God; we also progressively destroy our own souls. Conscience atrophies, the sense of shame dries up, one's capacity for truthfulness, loyalty, and honesty is eaten away, one's character disintegrates. One not only becomes desperately miserable; one is steadily being de-humanised. This is one aspect of spiritual death. Richard Baxter was right to formulate the alternatives as 'A Saint-or a Brute': that, ultimately, is the only choice, and everyone, sooner or later, consciously or unconsciously opts for one or the other. Nowadays, some will main-tain, in the name of Humanism, that the 'Puritan' sexual morality of the Bible is inimical to the attainment of true human maturity, and that a little more license makes for richer living. Of this ideology we would only say that the proper name for it is not Humanism, but Brutism. Sexual laxity does not make you more of a man, but less so; it brutalises you, and tears your soul to pieces. The same is true wherever any of God's commandments are disregarded. Weare only living truly human lives just so far as we are labouring to keep God's commandments; no further.”