Excuses are Poison

I got a great revelation today.

For a long time now, God has been teaching me that growth, not money or healing, is what Christianity is all about. God is a father, and he wants what every father wants: children who function correctly. Think about it, if you have kids. Do you sit around worrying that they won’t be rich? No. You worry that they’ll be dysfunctional idiots who end up on jail, dead, or on welfare. You worry that they’ll become bad people who can’t thrive and do good. God has the same concerns.

Correction is literally better than gold. There are a lot of disgusting, stupid, disgraceful people who have wealth. There are very few people who have their heads on straight.

God has shown me that my problems are generally my own fault. Even if someone else sins against me, I opened the door. People who conform to God’s design win their battles. If you’re a loser, God is not backing you up, and there’s a very good reason for that.

It sounds harsh. It is harsh. That doesn’t matter. It’s the truth, and you can’t change it. You have to work with the truth if you expect to succeed. You don’t make the rules of the universe. The sooner you accept responsibility for your problems, the sooner you will beat them.

I created my own enemies. I opened the door. I fed them. I bent the knee to them and thanked them for abusing me. People and spirits that might have had no interest in me at all but for my participation showed up in my life and abused me, and that’s on me. It’s also on them, but that shouldn’t matter to me. At judgment, God is not going to ask me about their sins. Not once.

When kids fight and their parents wade in, often one kid will say, “He started it.” Lazy parents don’t care who started it. They just care about shutting down the noise so they can flop back on the couch and watch Snooki. They say it doesn’t matter who started it. In reality, it matters. If you start a problem, you are primarily responsible. You start most of your own problems.

I knew all that. I also knew that the New Testament was different from the Old Testament in that Jesus criticized people’s attitudes as well as their actions and words. In the Old Testament, you just had to obey. That’s not good enough for Jesus. He criticized men for committing adultery in their hearts.

Is it fair to criticize people for things they merely want to do? Yes. If the Holy Spirit is available to change them, and they haven’t taken him up on it. Under the new covenant, we have access to the Holy Spirit, in a way that wasn’t available before the crucifixion. We are supposed to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and we are supposed to pray in tongues and subdue our flesh and our minds. So yes, Jesus was not out of line when he criticized our desires.

When you put all this together, you get the revelation God gave me today: we are held accountable for our inclinations.

We are held accountable for our inclinations.

That sounds discouraging, if you have no faith in the Holy Spirit’s ability and willingness to change your heart. If you have that faith, then it’s an open door. It’s one of the greatest messages you’ll ever hear.

Jesus said he came to set the captives free. The Jews thought he was talking about kicking the Romans out. Christians think he only meant he was freeing people from hell. He wasn’t concerned about the Romans, because the rebellion of the Jews put them in place. He was referring to salvation from hell, but that’s not all he was referring to. He was referring to freedom from sinful inclinations and compulsions.

Paul talks about this. He says we are slaves to sin. We give up our free will through rebellion, and we become unable to do right. Powerful inclinations fill us, and we can’t resist them.

The Holy Spirit can undo that. This is what we should focus on, instead of pretending God will give us money for supporting embarrassing, heartless imbecile preachers with helicopters and palaces.

God does not hold people accountable for things over which they have no power. Because he holds us accountable for our inclinations, we know we have power over them through the Holy Spirit. We should be taking it upon ourselves to avail ourselves of his help, but we’re too busy not judging and pretending to love each other more than we really do.

Jesus said no man born of woman was greater than John the Baptist, but he also said he that was least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than John. That’s because Pentecost hadn’t come in John’s time. John had to fight using his own power. The Holy Spirit didn’t live in him around the clock, cleaning and restructuring. We live under a different set of principles. We have power John didn’t have, and because we don’t use it, we live in defeat.

I try to do what is right, but because I see and hear my own thoughts, I know I’m still filthy inside. Some things are fixed. There are other things I have to cope with through willpower, and I fail from time to time. The knowledge that God wants to fix my remaining issues is a huge relief.

Here is what Satan says, through Christians: “You’re so judgmental. You’re going to drive people away. Who are you to say these things?” I hear it all the time. Most Christians in the US love sin and spiritual laziness. They don’t want to change, and they love excuses. They love attacking anyone who gives them good advice. The Jews in the time of Jesus were the same way. It’s why they had him killed. It’s why they murdered the prophets with their own hands.

You can have your excuses or you can have victory and peace.

If you want your life to improve, focus on getting your heart and mind fixed. Otherwise, you’re just making things worse. You’re coating yourself with a bulletproof crust of denial, and you will wear it until you die.

Think about this, and put it to work. Stop sending money to vampires with cable TV shows. Give up your bitterness toward God, and stop blaming him for your suffering. Stop blaming other people. Close the door, and get God to clean your house. Confess everything you can think of.

This is the plan we gave up during the Dark Ages. It’s still on the table. You just have to choose it.