| SEPTEMBER 2, 2024 -- So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Romans 7:21-23
Most of us are familiar with the concept of shoulder angels. It is a common fictional device, with a good angel, representing our conscience, on one shoulder, and a bad angel, or devil, sitting on the other shoulder, representing temptation. The concept is first found in a passage in an early Christian apocryphal writing, The Shepherd of Hermas, dating from about 150 A.D., in which it is written: “There are two angels with a man—one of righteousness, and the other of iniquity.” But it also is a symbolic form of the human dilemma we read in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which begins this column.
There are several thousand years of literature exploring the general concept of striving to do good and failing to do so, both within a religious context and in psychological terms. While almost all writers recognize the conflict exists, there are very few positive solutions that have been presented. It is generally recognized that most people develop a sense of what is right and what is wrong, but argument is made by some that there is a God-Given absolute standard of right and wrong, while others state that humans determine these standards based on observation and experience.
To me, the very fact that we struggle to do right is strong evidence that there is an external force, which comes from God, let us call it the Holy Spirit, calling us to a moral existence. That calling gives us a conscience. That opposing drive within us we could call “original sin”, which inhibits us from always doing right. The more we strive to do right, to obey our conscience, the stronger our conscience becomes. The more we ignore doing right, the weaker our conscience becomes.
But let us turn to God in prayer to help us overcome that tendency to do evil. And the more we try to overcome the evil within us the closer we will come to be able to do good.
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