On Being Indifferent to God

While eating dinner the other day, I asked myself the question I always ask:  Do I want more food?  I thought about it, and concluded that I had probably had enough.  In fact, I thought that eating more at that point might cause me physical discomfort, and might constitute the sin of gluttony.

I wanted to keep eating anyway.

I was tempted to think, Well, no big deal, right?  If I feel like eating more, I’ll eat more.  But at another level, I clearly didn’t feel like eating any more; I felt as if I were about to become full and uncomfortable.  More importantly, I had consciously considered the possibility that God was telling me to stop there, and I was on the point of saying, in effect, that I didn’t care about that.

It was just an ordinary, everyday, unremarkable moment, but it occurred to me that it might contain within it the essence or seed of all sin whatsoever.  If I choose to reject God in that tiny moment, I’m not just doing some little thing that doesn’t matter, something to be shrugged off; I’m choosing, for at least a moment, death instead of life—I’m choosing rebellion against God.

Of course, in a sense, it could be shrugged off:  If I’m in Christ and He is always at work in my life, leading me upward and onward and making me holy, then next time maybe He’ll catch me before I fall, and I won’t commit gluttony that time, and I’ll even feel less and less inclined to do so as time goes on.  On the other hand, in this moment we’re contemplating, He’s already trying to catch me, isn’t He?  Why wait until next time?  If I reject His guidance and help—if I sin anyway—why shouldn’t I do the same next time?  Why shouldn’t I do the same every time?

Or if I already plan to try obeying Him next time, why not start right now?

 

And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans  write, “These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God:

“‘I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.  So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.'”

Revelation 3:14-16