Bella Vista Church of Christ
LIFELINES
May 9, 2001 Bill Denton
Conditioned
“How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.” (Psalms 1.1,2).
“A man is first startled by sin; then it becomes pleasing, then easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed. The man is impenitent, then obstinate, and then he is damned.” - Jeremy Taylor
There is a method used to deal with various kinds of things that present difficulties. It could be a fear, or something related to a particular job that is unpleasant, or any number of things that a person might want to do, but finds difficult because of some unpleasantness or worse. For example, a medical student may find it almost impossible to make it through an autopsy without fainting. But, little by little, that same student can become conditioned to withstand the sight, sound and smell of all sorts of unpleasant things. A horse might shy at sudden sounds, but little by little, it can be conditioned to ignore the sounds and remain under control. Perhaps one of the most famous experiments is that of Pavlov’s dog, conditioned to salivate at the sound of the bell, because there was a connection between the bell and being fed.
Unfortunately, conditioning not only works positively, it works negatively. It is entirely possible to become conditioned to accept sin and unholy things, through small bits of exposure to them. We don’t see our thinking change, yet what might have offended us at one point may have become perfectly acceptable later, the transition happening because we were exposed to that sinful or unholy thing a little at a time.
The movie
Gone with the Wind created quite a stir when it first came out because right at the end, Clark Gable (as Rhett Butler) had a line with one curse word in it. It’s the only curse word in the entire movie. Today, movies are filled with much worse words than the one used by Rhett Butler. Nobody seems to notice. Have we become conditioned?
In the early years of television, censors made sure that family values and morals weren’t trampled by “artistic freedom.” Some said that censorship robbed us of better entertainment, more real-to-life programming, and something better than the plastic characters in nonsensical stories. Maybe. So, instead, today we open up our homes so that we can enjoy everything from the worst sailor’s mouth, to nudity, to open sex, to you-name-it. How did we get here from where we started? Conditioning.
Books, magazines, music and every other form of entertainment have treated us the same way. You can use the words “mature” or “enlightened” or some other description, but the truth is that if it’s sinful and unholy, it doesn’t matter what you call it. Most people in American society have been conditioned to think nothing of things that would have brought a blush of shame to the cheeks of earlier generations. Today, we don’t even know how to blush, much less be ashamed. There is only one way to undo the conditioning that makes it easy to accept the sinful: the repentance of a broken and contrite heart, cleansed by God’s forgiving grace, and determined to seek those things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
BILL DENTON
Newton, KS
(via BulletinGold)
