Pro 4:19 The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.
Sin has a blinding aspect to it. Its way is called “darkness” in the Bible. Sinners are blind to God’s truth. They are comfortable in the darkness, away from the light of the Lord, even though that darkness will be their ruin.
We live in a fallen, sinful world. This world is not normal. It isn’t what it was when the Lord created it. But because this world is all we have known, we grow accustomed to its darkness.
I primarily want to consider this in respect to Christians – to us who know the Lord. What was the family like which you grew up in? Christian, non-Christian? Functional, dysfunctional? I grew up in a professing Christian home (though my father never once spoke to me about the Lord, nor did I ever hear him pray). We went to church rather regularly and I heard the gospel, making a profession of Christ when I was about 8 years old.
But my family of origin was botched. My parents weren’t really Christians, though if pressed my father would claim to be. We didn’t communicate. There was never any parental instruction in the Lord and as a result I learned by unspoken example that to talk about the Lord was an embarrassment. Talk about anything else pretty much, but nothing of real import. There was no real instruction in righteousness, only anger and punishment if I did something wrong. And I did do plenty wrong.
Now, here is the point – I grew up believing without question that my family was normal. I cannot ever recall thinking, “our family is really messed up.” My sister and I fought. Everyone pretty much just went their own way through the day and spent the evenings still in our own little worlds. I remember my mother asking me a question one evening in the living room and I responded with the classic, “I dunno.” Something like “what did you do today?” “I dunno.” “But you must know what you did.” “I dunno.” My dad got rather riled and correctly observed, “he just doesn’t want to talk!” Which was true. But what they didn’t get is that they had taught this to me. By their example they taught me to never divulge too much about myself. If I had a crush on a girl, for instance, I would NEVER have told them. Why? Because I would be made fun of. So this was as I said, a botched family.
But I thought it was normal. After all, it was all the family I had known.
And here is the danger of this business – the abnormal, even the wicked, can over time become our normal. This has happened to many of you in a marriage for instance. You lived so close to that evil abuse, you just figured this was a normal marriage. Evil is blinding. If I, for instance, could go back in a time machine to a date when you were still in that abusive marriage, in its first half let’s say, and if I told you that you were being abused, you might even be offended. Why? Because you thought things were normal. They weren’t.
When we have RASNs in our lives, doing their evil reviling, abusing, sociopathing, and narcissicing, we most typically can remain blind to it for a long time. The abnormal becomes normal. RASNs depend upon this. They know exactly what they are doing and they will do all they can to push it off on us as normal.
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