A Conscience Seared With a Hot Iron

A young woman was found, naked and battered. She told police an almost unbelievable story of abduction, rape and torture by a man and woman, and how she had managed to escape. When police found the place she had described, they discovered the implements of torture and her blood, they also found evidence of several other women having been tortured. Several bodies were discovered and some missing person cases were resolved.

While this took place only about 100 miles from where I live, it is not an isolated incident. W read of them constantly, and Tv shows portray them as a steady diet. How could anyone be so depraved as to treat other human beings that way? How could a system such as the Nazi concentration camps develop? Reading of the acts depicted on pornographic movies is nauseating. What could lead to such monstrous behaviour?

Paul answers the question, and advises us how to avoid falling into the same kind of wickedness in Ephesians 4:17-24. "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."

People who immerse themselves in wickedness begin to loose natural emotions. Titus 1:15 tells us, "unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled." If continued longer, even those who profess to know God can become that evil as we are told in I Timothy 4:1-2. "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;"

Psychologists tell us that men who regularly read and watch pornography become unable to enjoy the natural sex act, and turn to ever escalating homosexuality, bestiallity, sadism, and masochism in an effort to feel something. I used to wonder how the man accused of the Black Magnolia murder in Los Angeles could assist in gang raping his own daughter, but he had become so desensitized that it no longer affected him. He was fully given over to lasciviousness, so that his own children believe him guilty, even though he was never brought to trial.

Human efforts to stop such behaviour have resulted in huge jail populations, registering sex offenders, and clogged courts and treatment facilities, with ever increasing problems.

Paul warns us that we need, as Christians, to replace that old nature with the new man who is made after the nature of God. The atrocities commited by so called "Christians" are the result of not allowing God to replace the old man with a new one. You cannot serve God living in such a manner. We are, as natural humans no different than anyone else. It is only that new man controling us that makes us truly different. Who controls you?