A Doctrine of Inhibited Tendencies can be True

A Doctrine of Inhibited Tendencies can be True.

How can one follow the virtue of truth if he/she does not understand what is in their conscience regarding the paradox between right and wrong?  In life we find that there are too many restrictions that were learned as adolescents and hold on to them as if they were gospel. The outcome may become so confusing that finding the truth about anything can upset us.

C.S. Lewis puts this idea in perspective;  Christian writers seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another.  They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven.  But I have come to see that they are right.  What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure or enjoy forever. 

A serious look at what the human spirit can find at times when right and wrong tendencies  leave most of us in a quandary is another path for understanding that we cannot search for a solution alone.  We must never forget the presence of the Holy Spirit who is not asleep but constantly works diligently to keep us active especially when an evil tendency confronts us.

Man is divided in himself.  As a result, the whole life of men, both individual and social, shows itself to be a struggle, and a dramatic one, between good and evil, between light and darkness.  (GS Gaudium et spes). Joy!

By his Passion, Christ delivered us from Satan and from sin.  He merited for us the new life in the Holy Spirit.  His grace restores what sin had damaged in us.  (CCC 1708).

Man is obliged to follow the moral law, which urges him to do what is good and avoid what is evil.  This law makes itself heard in his conscience.  (CCC 1713).

We must try to find what is within our desires that confront our knowledge of right and wrong especially when the tendencies to take the easy path can confuse our ability to seek what is morally correct.  

The most crucial truth we must hold onto is God is open to our belief that he can and will forgive us for the most heinous sin we can commit.  When I ministered with recovering addicts the one response they uttered was they could not forgive themselves.  Sometimes that paralleled the thought that God would not forgive them as well.  There is no sin that God will not forgive us for no matter how repulsive it may be.  

Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.  There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit.  Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss.  (CCC 1864).

This alone is the sin that will not only close the door to paradise, it insults God’s integrity and places a block on our soul that only God can erase if we seek his forgiveness before we die.  That is the one truth we must assure non-believers with to insure their passage into heaven.  Without this belief we may lose a loved one never to see them again.

One thought that can boggle our mind is what if the Incarnation of God’s Son had never occurred?  Is there any possible way that God would have related to man’s sinful nature?  We believe God knows everything, even the nature of man.  That is omnipresence and would be a summary of his understanding of human nature.  Yet, Jesus, through his Incarnation learned in a human understanding the mountain man must climb before his journey into paradise.  Sin is not a concept of the divine, but it has become the natural tendency of man to adopt it because of his fallen nature.  We will never know if God truly shared this fallen nature in thought and must accept the fact that his Son learned suffering and the mission of the Cross via human nature.  That is the truth of man’s need for God and the mission Christ took upon himself to release mankind from eternal death.

Ralph B. Hathaway