Table of Contents
This is a topic that has frustrated me for years because all my attempts to reign-in my outrageous behavior through self-control were like trying to push over a brick wall– the harder I pushed, the harder the wall pushed back. When we talk about self-control, we mean that we want our self to be compliant to the leadership of our rational mind and spirit (self is under control). For some, however, self-control is the reality that all control of who I am and what I do is in the hands of a corrupted, self– a selfish soul (self is in control).
The purpose of this whole book is to raise your level of “self-awareness” to the point where you can see your self for who and what it is. There really is a grand scheme– and God, You and Yourself are key components in the design.
Your Soul’s True Nature
Originally, God, You and Yourself were part of a design that was perfect– in fact God called it “very good” in Genesis 1:31. But the perfection of God’s creation included moral vulnerability. The ban God placed on Adam and Eve– never eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil– was at the same time both an encouragement to live a long and happy life with God by obeying the ban and a warning that consequences fall on those who disobey. Read all about these consequences in the chapter, “What Went Wrong?” The one line summary is that Adam ate a banned fruit, disobeyed God, violating a trust relationship, welcoming sin and death into God’s perfect creation and received immediate and eternal consequences for the misbehavior. The sin and death Adam welcomed into our ecosystem aren’t a separate creation, they are the curse on human souls. Sin has been handed the steering wheel to a being created in the image of God.
In that horrible moment, Adam and Eve unwittingly caused every human born from that day forward to be shackled with a beast whose desire and motivation is to bless itself, doing whatever it takes to maximize ease, comfort, appetite, pleasure, power, and social popularity. Additionally, if left unchecked, this selfish baby of a soul can become a minion of Satan, recruited as a soldier in the devil’s war against God. The curse of self corruption is harm to self and others.
As a good friend of mine always says, “It is what it is…” And so it is. Every human on this planet must relearn these truths of our now less-than-perfect nature and either battle the corrupted self or succumb to our soul’s lustful whims. If let lose to have complete control, your soul will attract the attention of Satan and he’ll abuse you even farther in the advancement of his evil causes.
Can the Soul Be Controlled?
A soul out of control is a tempest primed to rage with destructive forces. A soul out of control is a whiny child’s tantrum. A soul out of control is an addiction so unbreakable that all potential damage to body, mind and dear loved ones is ignored. A soul out of control is a stream of lies, woven into a web so tangled that all reason and logic are useless. A soul out of control is a blind-spot so big that the brightest light of truth isn’t even a dim glow in the darkness. A soul out of control cares nothing of others or the laws that regulate our wicked bent. A soul out of control will eventually be controlled, but most likely by police officers.
For those of you now locked in a prison cell, either physically or spiritually, the good news is YES, a soul can be controlled! What follows is the best reasoning I’ve found from God, the programmer of our souls, who knows where all Satan’s bugs were placed in the code.
Adam and Eve’s Self-Control
Question: Did Adam and Eve ever learn the secret to conquering the soul? What power was available to them to restrain this newborn beast inside them? I believe they did learn the secret and received the power needed. It is an argument from silence, but once the disobedience was done, and the just and righteous consequences were measured out, I firmly believe Adam and Eve committed themselves to a new plan for life, discussing with each other and with God at length every moral issue that they faced. I am certain that they were so affected by the brutal contrast between life in the garden before and after their disobedience that they voluntarily entered into a walk with God that deeply respected His view on every matter. As Paul so aptly points out in Romans 8:6
… the mind of the Spirit is life and peace …
Romans 8:6
Romans 8:6 also says that fixing your mind on the flesh, your corrupted soul, is death. Adam and Eve worked hard to not follow after the urges and desires of self but instead trusted their lives to the guidance and leadership of God, hoping to return to a peaceful life that looked like what they had lost in Eden.
The Gospel for Old Testament saints is summarized perfectly by Solomon in Proverbs 3:5-6
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6
Question: Is it possible to walk with God while the torture of selfish and lustful temptations arise from our corrupt souls? It is possible– and here is why: God is Love. Love extended to souls that deserve judgment is mercy. Mercy is invisible and unseen, but God’s grace is real and powerful, able to set our dead hearts free from the cruel tyrant sin.
Question: Will a corrupt soul still war against a heart and mind set free by God’s grace? Yes– and and that war will continue all the way to the grave. But God’s Love is so accepting and welcoming that even when we fall from time to time, His open arms are wide to receive our apology, listen to our regrets and work with us to strengthen us in the battle against sin. God’s love draws us to Him. A redeemed heart that succumbs to a sin will still face consequences, perhaps even severe consequences, but our state of eternal redemption isn’t altered. The aged apostle John knew this well when he wrote
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9
If you’re wondering how a just, holy and righteous God can just “look the other way” when offended by an insult of the magnitude that Adam and Eve perpetrated, then you’re head is thinking rightly about God. Love, mercy and grace extended to enemies makes no sense. Of course a just, holy and righteous God can’t merely “look the other way”. There must be a payment equal and commensurate to the severity of the infraction. The curses and consequences leveled at Adam and Eve weren’t even close to the punishment they deserved. Faced with a broken trust relationship with their creator and now infested with an inward bent toward rebellion against eternal power and authority, turning away from God meant certain and eternal horror, a fate they would share with God’s enemy, Satan. They had only one hope for redemption, one hope for reconciliation, one hope for deliverance and that was by turning toward God. They committed their hearts to a plan that placed God between themselves and the eternal life they knew was available only when God was part of that plan. This was the depth of the faith they were called upon to live by and live they did. Mortality was still a consequence of their disobedience, but God was not finished with the plan. God was just getting the plan started. “His story” included a perfect Savior who would offer a payment sufficient to pardon Adam and Eve’s sin, making a way for them to enjoy God forever, even after their bodies and corrupted souls returned to the dust from which Adam was formed.
Today we live in the age of Jesus. Jesus is our Savior, offering the sacrifice and payment that finished the plan God started implementing in the Garden of Eden. Through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, God’s justice, holiness and righteousness were perfectly satisfied, making the grace released before and after Christ’s death completely consistent with the integrity of God’s perfect character. God can pour out love, mercy and grace on His enemies who trust Him to provide the covering for their sin. Jesus’ sacrifice in love, both opened God’s flood-gates of grace and rightfully made Jesus the hero of the universe!
So here is our first pro-tip: A life walked with God, by faith, results in a flow of Grace that delivers us from the tyranny of our own corrupt souls. I firmly believe this is the essence of God’s plan for sinners as we live out our cursed mortality on earth. The curse of death is resolved through a promise of resurrection into a new life, led by the first person ever to be resurrected, Jesus Christ.
This plan doesn’t leave us as orphans or abandon us to misery. A life walked with God by faith actually takes advantage of this horrible situation and generates within our eternal spirits wisdom and understanding, the jeweled crown we can offer to God in eternity. Jesus died on the cross, but was resurrected to walk in a new life, as the first born from the dead– we too can walk in this new life, a life even better than the original life of Eden, through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
If you’ve been struggling in your battle against sin and the control of your own soul, then this is all very good news!
But… There’s Some Sad News Too
However, a sad fact regarding God’s true plan of redemption is this: the soul can be somewhat tamed, albeit deceptively, without a restored relationship with God, without a true deliverance from our corrupt soul and without the power of the Holy Spirit. This fact is encouraging for a society, but damning to deceived souls, who stop part way before reaching a conviction of their sin and turning to their Savior. When this deception is combined with a false set of spiritual truths, the corruption of the soul can lock even religiously minded people into a form of Self-Righteousness that checks off all the boxes but the one that really matters. Read all about this in the chapter titled, “Self-Righteousness“.
Western Civilization, with its roots in God’s truths found in the Old and New Testaments, combined with a secular (non spiritual) base of rational advancements of Greek and Roman philosophy, has seemingly liberated millions from their selfish souls. Unless the true Gospel of eternal deliverance from sin through Jesus is preached, each person imprisoned by sin will be lost. The culture and society may flourish under a set of laws and classical education founded in the truth, but only for a time. People born and raised in this context, lacking a spiritual and moral background, and genuine salvation by grace, will eventually throw off civilization’s soul-conquering restraints.
Let’s review for a moment the techniques that historically have helped civilizations thrive even when the war against God from the corruption of souls fights to erode the Creator’s moral standards.
The Conscience– God’s Built-in Self Controller
The fruit Adam and Eve ate wasn’t magical. Neither was it poisonous. The consequences of disobedience, on the other hand, changed Adam and Eve both physically and morally right from the very instant they ignored God’s ban. Prior to their fall, Adam and Eve enjoyed a life free from a sense of guilt and shame. Having never thought wrongly and having never behaved wrongly, their consciences were without a job, idle, unneeded and unused. However, once sin entered their lives and their behavior transgressed God’s character standards reflected in every aspect of creation, their consciences began to scream a painful warning, impossible to ignore.
The word “conscience” is a Latin term meaning “with science” or literally “with knowledge”. This moral facility, bolted to our minds, comes pre-programmed with basic knowledge of right and wrong according to the righteous standard of our creator. No one has an excuse for bad behavior since feelings of guilt and shame automatically burden souls that misbehave.
A well-informed conscience also presents a foul heaviness to our hearts, a weight of guilt, regret and remorse, that depresses our beings until our relationship with God is restored. Thus we feel guilt when we misbehave and we feel a constant terror of death knowing that once dead, we’ll have to stand face to face with our creator and give an account not just for our wrong deeds, but for our soul’s cursed wrongness as well.
Talk with anyone who has met Jesus Christ personally and turned their lives over to His leadership and they will invariably mention how a burden of guilt and shame was somehow lifted from their beings in the process of God’s regeneration. The “how” is still a mystery to me, but the “what” of this awesome deliverance from guilt and the fear of death is a real feeling worth singing about!
The Bible has a lot to say about consciences. We must train our conscience with good moral exercises. You’ve heard the term, “Garbage In, Garbage Out?” This is a truth that applies to our conscience. If we teach our children violence is an acceptable response to constraining rules or hardships, then the conscience will spin with the momentum of a heavy fly-wheel, continuing to encourage violent responses to discipline. Moral guidance from the Bible is a standard that will cooperate with God’s Spirit and Character to keep people under self-control. Consciences primed with Biblical morality will have a winning edge in the self-control battle. Priming a conscience with God’s truth will create an inertia in the conscience with the power to internally constrain wayward souls.
Those who attempt to convince others that ignoring the voice of the conscience is okay, are guilty of corrupting and abusing others. Certainly some people’s consciences are mis-programmed and need input from a better moral standard, but this tweaking and adjustment must be done apart from a moral crisis. In nearly every case, mentors and teachers must encourage obedience to the voice of the conscience. Training a conscience is an important job. Thus teachers are under greater scrutiny morally because their influence can set students on either morally good or morally bad tracks for life.
Ignoring the voice of the conscience has become a pattern of life in the modern world. If ignored too often, the voice of the conscience will grow fainter and fainter until people no longer have a built-in constraint. There used to be a time when people as a whole respected speed limit signs and complied willingly. Now that voice of conscience is dead and the only thing that limits people’s highway speed is fear of a ticket and the annoying bumper in front of them. I remember meeting a Christian man who boasted that he could speed all the way across the state of Wisconsin with impunity.
Another principle of the conscience worth noting is the incremental perfection of a good conscience. Initially, the conscience alerts our being of wrongdoing and wrongness in the most elementary sense of justice- pangs of guilt will prick us when we lie or cheat or steal. As our conscience is matured, and the lying and stealing stop, then the conscience will awaken in times of the most subtle of faint corruptions, like merely having a bad attitude toward another person, or merely being in a situation that appears to be an instance of selfishness. A tender conscience is a good thing.
Parental Self-Control, Cain and Abel Style
Children awaken to a world without context. Sure, parents can do their darnedest to verbally instruct their children in the most influential lessons of life, but a verbal description isn’t the same as an actual experience.
As a parent, I found this truth both hard to understand and hard to find peace about. Part of me felt I could merely talk my kids through my mistakes and they would be grateful that I had saved them the painful lessons I learned. But children at nearly every age never seem to be at the proper age to learn a lesson passed down from a parent. So another part of me had to accept that as hard as I tried to help them avoid my mistakes, my kids would have to suffer my painful lessons all over again and there was nothing I could do about it.
So it was with Cain and Abel. Some of this story is described in the chapter, “Listen to God’s Advice.” We know very little of Cain and Abel in their early formative years. But in Genesis chapter 4 we learn that Adam and Eve must have attempted to introduce them to God and instill in them a reverence for both God’s sin-covering Love and His sin-punishing character of righteous consistency. This education led the boys to eventually discern it was the proper season to express their inward attitude about God in an outward reflection of worship. Both boys, likely men by this time, brought an offering to God, a token of their heart’s invisible appreciation. Chapter 4 verses 4 and 5 tell us that God looked with favor (grace) on Abel’s offering, but not on Cain’s.
I won’t explain why Cain’s offering wasn’t favored… you can read about that in the chapter referenced above. But it is comforting to note, that even with a soul corrupted by sin and death, Abel was endowed with a victorious humility, properly appreciating the deliverance God’s role played in his faith plan for life. The state of Abel’s formation of conscience and character gave the gratitude he expressed in worship to God a winsome favor. I hesitate to say that Abel’s behavior earned God’s favor because this is never true– we’ll talk more about that in the chapter titled, “Self-Righteousness“. When one does walk with God the way Abel did, God grants a favor that helps us appreciate God for His willingness to guide us to everything good and at the same time grants us a love for God that gently constrains our souls from evil.
Remember, Adam and Eve were created from day one (or day six in this case) mature enough physically to be a legitimately and appropriately married couple, mature in body and even mature in soul and spirit. Both Cain and Abel, however, were born of Eve as infants who gained their maturity primarily from Adam and Eve’s training and instruction. It was Adam and Eve, witnessing childishness and selfish behavior in their children, the curse they themselves were responsible for unleashing on the world, who certainly did all they could to make their children aware of God’s plan to remedy this situation: know God, trust God, obey God, and ultimately love God.
Since that first birthday, moral character, that ability to subdue self and live consistent with God’s own character, is a quality in children that parents are held responsible for. This basic and fundamental truth has just about disappeared from society today. When I was growing up, my selfish actions were a reflection of my parent’s quality of moral education in me. Sure, my parents had their own moral problems, but the responsibility was still theirs. When my children let selfishness rule their behavior, I took responsibility for the matter.
Question: Are all parents perfect moral educators? No. Are all children always as moral as the quality of the moral education they were taught? Also, sadly, No. At some point, every child is launched into their own age of accountability, buttressed by the moral education they received as a child, but free, just like Adam and Eve to disobey God, sometime when deceived and sometimes as a direct affront to God. This was the case with Cain– it is likely he was taught enough by his parents to understand basic standards of moral behavior, but at some point, every person is their own person who must stand or fall at the base of God’s throne.
In addition to moral discipline and character education, a parent ultimately wants each of their children to know God personally. God is a parent forever. Though a child leaves home, so to speak, they will never leave God’s home. Even in Cain’s state of defeat before sin and self, God was still the parent Cain needed, offering Cain the wisest advice Cain would ever receive. Even after murdering his own brother, God made the deliberate choice to continue to act the role of a loving parent instead of the strict judge.
Parental discipline, those gracefully weighed and perfectly timed consequences, applied in love to a child, whose selfishness is growing in strength faster than their ability to master it, will not only make for better children, better citizens and better leaders, but will also keep the message of this battle in the forefront of their minds. Everyone will need someone’s help to grow in sanctification and purity of heart all throughout their lives. Parents can only do so much. Eventually all discipline will be guided by the best parent ever, God Himself.
I need to reiterate that even when raised by perfect parents, children will eventually make their own choices– too often bad choices. Children raised without parents aren’t without hope since God is the father to the fatherless. However, more than one study has concluded that unstable family environments are to blame for the increased risk of children missing much of the valuable truth and support that biblical families afford. Without these two primary supports, God and parents, children are easily mastered by their own souls which in turn leads to so much unnecessary pain and hardship to their unprepared lives.
So we have yet another pro-tip to reflect upon: Parents bear the responsibility for setting their kids on a track of self-control through education, training and discipline. All parents pray that their children will only leave their influence and care once they are ready to be adopted into the family of God where God can continue the subjection of the soul.
Social Influences: Both Good and Bad
Certainly God is the best answer for every question regarding the battle for the soul, but as we noted, next in the priority of influences after God are parents. Added to these powerful encouragements to moral character are the influences of friends and community.
As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Bad company corrupts good character.” In the presence of others who are failing in their battle to master their own souls, we find less support and encouragement to win the battle ourselves. Seeing others appear to gain from their corrupted soul’s false guidance, negatively encourages us to explore a similar wasteland, which at first tastes sweet, but quickly turns to bitterness and regret. However, being surrounded by friends who have a similar respect for parental advice and Godly character traits, positively encourages us in our own lives to “fight the good fight.”
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
Proverbs 27:17
So important is this continued support from the community, that Jesus pronounced His very strongest curses against anyone who would influence a child to walk on the side of evil instead of running to escape from evil. In Matthew 18, verses 6 and 7, Jesus makes this abundantly clear:
6 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. 7 Woe to the world for the causes of sin. These stumbling blocks must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!
Matthew 18:6-7
Whatever punishment is reserved for those who would corrupt a child, it must be a severe punishment if being drowned in the sea is better! We live in a world of sin. Undoubtedly much suffering is in the forecast. But beware: if you ever let your own corrupt soul gain full control over you, and your corruption spreads to a child– then indeed, woe is you!
The “clean slate” of a child is so critical that our own laws in society have guarded and protected children from being the prey of beasts by enacting consequences that fit the severity of the crime. Kidnapping, seducing a minor, influences that contribute to the delinquency of a minor all carry severe sentences because the life-long damage that can be done to a child is almost immeasurable. Movies come with ratings to protect the impressionable minds of children. Acts of violence leave deep scars on the souls of children. Children subjected to parental abuse grow up often to become abusers of their own children. As unthinkable as it may be, parents can be so negligent in the raising of their own children that we grant authority to our government to remove children from homes where their physical, emotional, moral and character needs aren’t being met.
“Public” Schools?
With whom do we trust the moral growth and maturation process of our children? When I was growing up, my parents trusted me to the public school system. I had a few rough experiences in school: bullied on a school bus, hands locked behind my back in an abandoned stairwell and pin-ball bounced while walking narrow hallways with an armful of nerdy books. But none of these peer events ruined my life. Much later in life, however, when I began to study both historical and moral issues with God’s Word open, I realized that nearly every one of my teachers, even up through university classes, were secretly trying to un-teach me what my parents tried to instill in me. They were all busy with a plan to make the moral character of God look evil and it worked. History, Sociology, Psychology, English and even Science disciplines were filled with those subtle persuasions to lead me away from God and set me against my parents.
I’ll date myself with this fond memory: I can remember in elementary school, gathering on the last day before “Christmas Break” in the large main entryway to the school, lighting the Christmas tree and singing Christmas Carols, the ones found in every church hymnal. This ended for all of American schools because the singing of songs in praise of a Savior who came to save us from our sin, that corrupt force that is responsible for every bad day anyone has ever had, wasn’t the appropriate influence for children of a public school. I hope you detected my sarcasm in that last statement. Knowing what I know now, what society has become completely ignorant of, breaks my heart. The answers to every pain, agony and suffering of our dying world are right here in our common sense. The influences of the corrupted souls of those we trust with our children, have filled up the bowl of consequences and are overflowing on all of us today. If we could have stopped this 50 years ago, our world would be so different.
Thus, we have new forms of education today: homeschooling and private schooling. There have been church-sponsored schools for as long as I can remember, but these too have begun to fall prey to government regulation and adults ignorant of the responsibility they will be held accountable for in the age to come. If schools fail to support the moral character building being done in the home, if schools work against the absolute moral character of God, then schools have lost their social and cultural mandate from the people. More importantly, schools will be held responsible and they need to be warned, “woe to the world for the causes of sin.”
Tradition and Normalcy
Many societies are supported morally by a scaffolding of tradition. The human soul is built with a sense of prevailing normalcy. We all want to “fit in”. We all want to understand our purpose as it relates to those around us. We search for a normal in our lives and once that normal is grasped, we tend to fight any deviation from normal.
When society’s traditions act as a fence to constrain the soul, such as when a respect of elders holds acts of disrespect in check, these external traditions serve as a force for good. Normal can become such a powerful environment for the soul that any temptation to wander from normal is rejected. The fear of violating normal can be a positive force when normal is crafted from a basis in God’s truth and character.
Sure, there are traditions and normal forces that can become entrenched so deeply into our minds that necessary changes to adapt for advances in demographics, technology or unpredictable situations become difficult. When traditions hold too much root, the changes to traditions themselves become a stumbling block for the corrupted soul, leading to difficulties, or worse, rifts and rebellions.
Other Miscellaneous Influences
In addition to schools, government as a whole must be reminded of its responsibility to support the moral character of the people being governed. At one time, when radio and television were in the early days of their respective technologies, the guardians in our government understood that once a signal left a radio transmitter, any radio receiver could pick up that signal and it would instantly begin working either a positive or a negative force in impressionable minds. This was immediately identified as a public safety risk. Government acted quickly to force broadcasters to be licensed and that license was subject to the broadcaster’s adherence to a “code of conduct”. Broadcasters who let foul language out over the airwaves, or salacious images across a television screen, would be fined and could have their licenses revoked.
Today this is almost laughable since the corrupted soul has completely mastered the average person. Almost all further corruption is welcomed instead of repressed. Nobody is fighting back against the lusts and desires of the soul any more. We’re even to the point where we applaud the wicked corruption of children with pornography, turning little boys into drag queens and pre-adolescent girls into pole dancers. This is pure child abuse and it will not end well.
The entertainment industry has been a comical factor in the war for control of self. The movies that sell are those with a strong moral message of heroism, self-sacrifice and love, yet the actors playing these roles for us on the screen are the worst character examples for our children. Those actors who do play the same characters on and off the screen are ridiculed for their pre-historic adherence to outdated moral codes.
Similarly, children’s heroes have been our sports heroes. Yet more and more athletes are failing in their own moral character, living lives of rich, privileged, selfish abandon. Nearly every rising star eventually falls, leaving their lives a public embarrassment.
What happens when parents no longer care to teach their children any moral character? What happens when parents no longer look forward to the day when their children walk with God as their eternal parent? What happens when every social influence falls to the corrupted forces of the soul and completely encourages entertaining selfish temptations, sexual lusts and all manner of evil motives? Well, when this happens, God takes very serious measures to end such wanton behavior. Read the chapter, “When Enough is Enough” for a review of what God did when this happened the first time. Sadly, it is going to happen again and when it does, will there be anyone on earth left who voluntarily hungers to fill their emptiness from God’s well of love, mercy and grace?
Yes, the soul can be controlled, but only when parents take responsibility for the moral character of their children, only when their goal for moral education includes an accurate knowledge of God’s moral absolutes, and only when they someday hand their children over to the eternal parent who is God Himself. When culture and society cooperate with both parental and spiritual principles, achieving control is a far more likely prospect. When schools and government cooperate, a healthy society can flourish.
But if any of these influences are removed, then the likelihood of anyone gaining self control is bleak.
The Church as a Moral Institution
I discussed God, Parents, Friends, Schools, Traditions and Government and their influence on the question, “Can the soul be controlled?” It’s time to look at the church as another factor.
It is a good idea generally that we separate church and state, but the only way the state will continue to be a positive moral influence is if the church is free to influence society. Today, the church more than ever must proclaim God’s truth and encourage Christians to be “salt and light” to a rotting society, yet every force of evil is arraying itself in lines of battle to thwart the church’s work. Not only are churches being silenced in what they can say from the outside, but churches are being high jacked from within so that their moral message can be minimized.
God owns the copyright to absolute moral truth because He created it all. Likewise the church is God’s church, where the message of the church is the Gospel lighthouse, drawing hungry, hurting souls to the light and warning wayward, wandering souls of the dangerous rocks.
I want to motivate everyone to read, study and understand God’s Word preserved for us in the Bible. That Word stimulates us to gather together as a church family to encourage one another, love one another, exhort and discipline one another so that the power of truth can be preached everywhere.
Some of the best seasons of growth I have experienced have been when I let God speak to me through others in my church. By joining others on mission to serve God in the world, by joining others to study God’s Word and by joining others to pray, my sanctification in life has grown and my control over self has been bolstered.
If a church stops being the best support for everyone’s growing conscience, the church has failed. If the church won’t teach a better understanding of God, ourselves and the plan of history, the church has failed. If the church discourages parents in their responsibility to train their children in moral excellence, the church has failed. If the church abandons its mandate to reach out into society to present the contrast between influences of good and evil, the church as failed. If the church doesn’t prepare leaders who can join the government so it’s duty as a preservation of safety and peace can continue, the church has failed.
Winning the Game
In every game, cheating is foolish. No cheater ever wins. The rules of this game of life came from God and the sooner we learn and follow the rules, the better chance we have of winning. To you winning may not be important– and that’s fine. This was just an analogy. Pick your favorite metaphor or allegory– in every case, your blessing in life will depend on your ability to cooperate with God, trusting Him and obeying Him. There is a lot of talk today about privilege, but the only legitimate privilege is righteous privileged. Blessings fall on those who play the game according to the rules. Properly executed, righteous privilege will lead to eternal privilege through the salvation, redemption, and regeneration available through Jesus Christ.
Hopefully this chapter has brought you a better understanding of self control. To make the issue a bit more personal, I’d suggest continuing to the chapter on “Self-Discipline” for practical tips and techniques to avoid addiction (the soul wins) and to avoid “Self-Righteousness“, which is pure moral deception.