The devil is so smart, but then he has been around for a long time and he has found that certain approaches work, so you might as well continue to destroy people the way you always have.  One of his major accomplishments is getting us, us Christians, to be allergic to reproof.

I remember talking to a lady who was 101 and had gone to church her whole life.  At age 75 her son, who is a Baptist minister, asked her all the right questions as to whether and how she had become a Christian.  She begrudgingly said the usual superficial acknowledgment that Jesus had died for her sins but could not identify any sins.  At age 101 I was seeing her in the nursing home and pointed out that, if she were to pass, I would need to give clear testimony to her salvation.  When asked what it was Jesus had saved her from, the question was foreign to her and she said, “I have always been a good person and gone to church”.  After our session, she called several of her friends from the church and told them that I was harassing her.  Her total allergy to taking a look at herself and identifying her need for salvation from the consequences of her sin, had insulated her from a thousand sermons from her own son’s efforts, and from mine and kept her from obtaining salvation.

Then, of the people who do get saved by admitting that they have sinned, most seem to think that they have arrived and have no further need for self-examination either to control the “old nature” or to grow into the likeness of Christ. 

St. John was talking to Christians when he said, “If we say we have no sin we lie and the truth is not in us”.  Paul said, “not that I have already obtained neither were already perfect, but I strive after whatever God  still has for me”.  We are warned, when we go to communion, to examine ourselves and those who took communion and were not worthy reaped negative consequences.  But God says, “Go ahead and take the communion, just examine yourself.”

We are told that all scripture reproves and Jesus said that it was good that he should go away, so that he could send us a comforter would comfort us by reproving us of sin, of how far short we fall from God’s righteousness, and of consequences to come, if we don’t change.  A good friend is a good friend when he acts like iron sharpening iron.

As I watch society today I see an interesting manifestation of the insanity of resenting reproof.  People act as if it is perfectly all right to drive like a maniac, but if you blow your horn at them to say that they are driving like a maniac and should be ashamed of themselves, they give you the finger and drive worse.  We seem to think that the great sin is to point out to someone else that they are sinning, but that it is perfect alright to do the sin in the first place.  It seems we have all become adolescents.  If you point out to a teenager there faults instead of repenting and changing the get upset that you were watching them.

Everyone thinks that their own behavior is no one elses’ business. Remember Achan and the consequences of his “hidden” sin?

I tell my patients, when we identify something about their reaction to life that is causing problems, that they should rejoice and be exceeding glad! People act as though the counselor, (Friend, Bible, Holy Spirit,) who points out the sin, has caused it to be and that it was not there before or at least that ignorance is an excuse.