Being a Bit Conservative*

* I am being a bit conservative today... in the sense that the entry below was part of yesterday's sermon that was cut out because of time considerations. (When I recognize in advance that I'm being long-winded, then I am being long-winded indeed). But why waste a whole page of type, especially given how slow I type? So here are my recycled thoughts that I present in interest of conserving work.

Sigmund Freud would have said that people with poor impulse control have “weak ego boundaries.” Freud’s theory of personality saw the id as the pleasure principle, the superego as the morality principle, and the ego as the reality principle. The ego’s job is to satisfy the needs of the id while respecting the superego and the needs of other people. So Freud would have said that people who don’t seem to be able to delay gratification have an unbalanced id that the ego can’t control, this weak ego boundaries.

Freud was no friend of Christianity, and he indeed saw this whole process a as purely psychological phenomenon. But several years ago, Joe Beam (in his book Seeing the Unseen) suggested that Freud may have been on to something here. Not that this process is merely a psychological issue; Beam argues just the opposite. But he suggests that there is a indeed a three-fold battle that rages within.

• What Freud calls the “id” the Bible calls the “sinful nature” or literally “the flesh.” This is the part of us that wants what it wants when it wants it. It is inherently selfish, and it cares nothing for delayed gratification or the needs of others.
  

• What Freud calls “the superego,” the Bible calls “the conscience.” This is the part of us that tells us to do what is right, moral and good. It is the “sense of oughtness” placed inside each of us by God that spurs us to do what it is that we ought to do, even if that is not what we want to do
  

• What Freud calls “the ego” the Bible calls “the mind.” It is the rational part of us that makes choices and decides what we will do. Our minds get messages from both our “flesh” and our “conscience,” from our “sinful nature” and from our “higher nature.”

This is the battle that rages within us, but there is more involved than just what is within us. Our sinful nature wants what it wants when it wants it, and it is precisely here that Satan tempts us, prompting us to do evil. While our conscience prompts us to do what is right, Christians receive promptings from the Spirit of God within us. So this struggle between good and evil within us is really a spiritual battle. But we have the final choice-- our minds decide what it is that we are going to do.

Is all of that clear? Sure it is! Well, maybe my explanation isn’t all that clear, but we are surely clear in the way that this works in our lives. Each human heart is a spiritual battlefield that Paul describes so vividly in Romans 7:18-23—

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

There is an ongoing spiritual battle between flesh (our sinful nature plus Satan’s temptation) and the Spirit (our conscience plus the prompting of the Spirit within). We always receive mixed signals. But we remain key players because our minds (our conscience selves) make the choice as to which voice we are going to hear and which action we are going to take. Our inner being (conscience) delights in God's law, but there is also a law at war within us (sinful nature) that wars against our minds. And the war goes on.