FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

After Baptism or a good confession, a soul becomes as a clean slate with nothing written on it. It is now ready to receive whatever people want to write on it. Of course, God and his angels would like to write on it; and so does the Fiend with the help of the spirits of the flesh and the world. The soul is free to choose who would do the writing. And it gets what it consents to.

The new promptings on the clean slate comes from both God's spirit and the three evil spirits. None from you. What is yours is the ability to consent. Maybe before you were prone to evil; but since the slate is clean you are now able to be good than to be evil. But there is nothing in you to urge you to good or evil. So neither the good nor the evil comes from your soul. It is the consent to good or evil that comes from your soul.

If the soul consents to the flesh, the world, or to the wicked Fiend, then the soul takes the functions of these evil spirits. If the soul consents to the Spirit of God then it takes the functions of that spirit through clean living, resistance to the flesh, heavenly mindedness in dealing with the world and possessed of godly peace and love when faced with the spirit of malice and wickedness.

So not all thoughts, good or evil, come from the heart. But the consent to thoughts is always ours…whether for good or for evil. May we always consent to the good and resist that which is evil. Amen.  

(01-05-02)