Eat That Attitude

It is easy to stand up to someone if you tower above them and look down into their face. "No biggie," says contemporary parse. Facing sin is somewhat like this - we must tower above it and look down into its face. Well, that is assuming that one admits to the reality of sin. So let's assume that this thing the Bible calls sin is, in fact real - which, of course, it is. Likewise, we can also assume that bad attitudes are sins, which they are.

In the same manner, it is fairly easy to take a towering stand against certain outward sins of the flesh, and we should. Where we make a mistake, however, is in failing to put an equal, if not a greater, emphasis on the secret sins of the heart, which are our evil attitudes. Yes, I am capable of having evil attitudes. We all are.

Bad attitudes cause more damage than we think. A bad attitude is more than simply having a bad hair day. Bad attitudes are now known to be precipitating factors in many of our human diseases. Studies which have been conducted at various medical centers suggest that inner stress may be involved in causing illness.

For a long time, cancer has been linked to tobacco and other forms of chemical pollution. And more recently, some researchers suspect that factors such as loneliness and estrangement may be even more significant. According to them you don't just get a malignancy. In all probability the presence of anxiety can and does interfere with the body's natural immune system. It inhibits the formation of antibodies and may make a person vulnerable to several dreaded diseases.

Something similar to this happens when a believer suffers spiritually just as quickly from wrong attitudes as from fleshly acts. To be sure, God wants us to keep the body from evil. The Apostle Paul called it the temple of the Holy Spirit. Even more important, is what goes on inside that temple.

In Proverbs 6 we read about seven things that God abhors. Four of them, pride, deception, hatred, and rebellion, are sins of the spirit. God is as concerned about these as He is about whether we smoke or drink, or what we put into our mouths. So we should be careful what we eat.

But we should be even more careful about what is eating us!

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