The pursuit of gratification as an end is an abandonment of
the work appointed to us by God. All pleasure and amusement are not forbidden.
If we make these the end all of life, and abandon ourselves to their traps and
pitfalls, we forsake all our God given duties as holy people. Whatever lies in
the path of our following and obedience to Christ is ours to enjoy, but one
simple digression or bad decision will allow us to stray from that path in
search of appealing indulgences that quickly overcome us, and we lose control. We become prisoners of our own sins and are punished with them.
Duty and service to honoring God should be our first order
of business. We were not sent into this world by God merely to play and seek
frivolous gratification. It is dangerous to forget our duty and destiny of the
spiritual part of our lives. The uninhibited pursuit of pleasure harms us
physically, mentally and spiritually. We need only look at the current state of
the world around us to see the result of pursuing American hedonism. The
blatant sexual immorality being flaunted in the form of adultery, homosexuality
and transexuality is just the tip of the iceberg. This constant spiritually
blinding behavior causes a nation’s moral decline. There are no brakes because
there are no boundaries morally, ethically or sexually.
Romans 1:28-31 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.
The health of our souls has been impaired perhaps even
damaged irreparably. Especially of those that do not seek God. Our balance and
symmetry of our lives is destroyed. By constantly bleeding off any holy
influence in one direction without replenishing it we empty ourselves and
become shells. One cannot replenish from a source if they are separated and too
distant from it. Since holiness can only come from God, separation from him
pulls from us the farther afield as we drift towards the world. All the while
slowly emptying of spiritual life while being refilled with deadened waste.
In God’s place a darkness sets in just as the body is
deformed and its strength consumed by malignant tumors. At some point our
understanding and proper thinking is impaired. Someone who is dedicated only to
fulfilling themselves only needs to exert effort to those ends and the residual
effect is selfishness and ambivalence to others…even of those in need. The rest
of our mental and moral abilities remain unused or deadened mentally and
spiritually. Idle minds and hearts become the devil’s plaything.
Like drug addiction, the increased tolerance and bombardment
of worldly distractions and debauchary blunts our senses. They tend to make
life hollow and artificial. Instead of vibrancy only hollow resonance. Beneath
our apparent gentleness and goodwill, the heart is often hard and cold. A
generation of indulgent pursuits and pleasures are the ones that cry, fret and
have anxiety over fictions, falsehoods and fake dilemmas. We see this in every
liberal protest or pronoun argument in society over media driven deceptions.
Weak men produce weak societies. Weak societies collapse under the weight of
their own incompetence. These same people are also often unmoved by the real
crimes, sins and injustices such as the loss of life like we’ve seen in society
on nearly a daily basis.
These moral and ethical weakness exhausts proper
decision-making ability until people can no longer think rationally or
logically. The constant pursuit of a person’s greatest desires brings good
thinking down into a captivity of mindlessness devoid of God because constantly
pursuit of godlessness suppresses knowledge of God (Romans 1:18). People become
slaves to lies. In this way people’s sensibility and conscience are injured,
sometimes permanently. Eventually, the conscience cannot hear what the Spirit
of God is telling them.
1 Timothy clearly spells this out what it states that
people’s minds become seared. Searing is a form of burning that permanently
disfigures and desensitizes the flesh so that one cannot feel properly or feel
anything at all.
1 Timothy 4:1-2 ~ Now the Spirit expressly says that in
later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful
spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose
consciences are seared.
So, what we see in society is the consequence or aftermath
of moral insanity. Wild impulses of a person in the throes of sin are literally
out of balance and disturbed.
A man of impulse is not governed by truth but is instead
steered and controlled by his most base urges. This is why we see such violence
and perversion in society nearly every day now. We see a society of people
given over to impulse instead of intellect. Reason is no longer the guide,
irrationality is.
People are thrown around like deck chairs on a ship in a
storm and the ship has lost its rudder and navigation equipment. They are
disoriented and confused. Those who live only for themselves and for what this
world can give them have given up control and command of themselves. They are a
ship adrift in a tempest sure to break apart of capsize if they do not seek
harbor in God or at least attempt to right the ship. All the while they hear
the maddening laughter of like-minded souls around them that are also lost at
sea…driving them deeper into madness.
It is a madness that is an entire inversion of their
abilities. Their will, instinct, and emotions are all warped in mental disease.
The man who forsakes God, and lives for pleasure, uses none of these faculties
properly because the bases of these faculties need to be rooted in God. These
people above all are to be pitied. If possible, they we need to help them see
their error through Biblical persuasion. It will likely be a long road because
entrenched psychosis is hard to root out. When reason deserts a person, that
person falls below their true dignity and abilities. The image of God in them
becomes distorted and disguised. Instead of being s ruler in a home with God
they become slaves in ‘far-off” lands without Him.
The one redeemable feature of these people is that they are possibly redeemable. By careful reflection and compassion reason may come again to the confused man. That can only come from God and the Word. Buildings and palaces will eventually cease to please but not necessarily Christ’s church. A person must also have the clear-headedness of the open air, the wholesomeness of the garden. But we need to remember there are often resting places and sepulchers in gardens. Just as there are gravestones not far from the church’s front doors. One needs only to wander by one step off the path to the church to end up taking an unintended step into the cemetery. The path is narrow.