Walking the path

Temptation came this week. Immediately, having done nothing wrong, I felt guilty. It was as if I was assuming I was going to give in. Everyone has weak points, and in all of this, I discovered something about myself that I didn’t know. My central weak point was different from what I suspected.

In the book of Job, the devil has a conversation with God about how Job will react if all that he has is taken from him. The devil used human logic to make his prediction which turned out to be wrong because Job possessed three things of great importance that are not logical. They were: faith, hope, and love. When the devil comes to tempt us, we are no match for him using human logic.

A study back in the 1970s determined what they called the fraud triangle. It said that 80% of employees would steal if they had the need, opportunity, and ability to justify their actions. There it is, that last one, human logic.

For example, suppose someone is falling behind on their bills and sees something of value they could steal from work. They might think, “I’m not paid what I deserve, so this is not really stealing.” Or possibly, “the cost of living is going up so fast, I’m now effectively being paid less than what was agreed.” Our logical mind seeks to protect us and help us succeed.

Stealing is not my issue, making it much easier to talk about. I have a problem deciding what it is I let into my thinking. I’m too concerned about imagined issues in the future or rethinking past events and allowing them to roll over and over in my mind. The Lord wants me to be aware of the past and future but live in the present. If you could climb into my brain, I think you might climb right back out and be totally exhausted.

Until this week, I would have said no if you had asked me if the devil was logical. The devil is bad; logic is good. The reality is that logic is neither good nor bad; it is the calculator of the information we present. My weakness is that I try to live the bulk of my life using my human logic to make decisions. Lord, give me the wisdom to always put faith, hope, and love into the mental calculations of everything I do and think.