God is with me...if I obey

[JosephDColeman]

Lately I’ve been dealing with a particular sin that caught me off guard. For about 5 months before that, I was not struggling with mortal sin and, though I was dealing with scruples, I truly had confidence that God was going to take care of me. In fact, though I worried often, I had no problem saying (with full confidence) that no matter what happens, God will provide.

However, recently this thought has been in my head: “As long as I don’t commit this mortal sin, everything will be okay. However, if I do it, I’m losing God’s protection by abandoning His love.”

The problem I see with this is that I seem to be saying I’m winning God’s favor and gifts by my obedience. Is there an alternative way I should be viewing my situation?

I don’t currently have a vehicle, so sometimes I walk home from work late at night. On the weeks I fall into mortal sin my mindset is that I could be robbed or murdered because my guardian angel isn’t protecting me anymore.

I really appreciate any thoughts you have. I often get stuck in my own head and it helps to get an outside perspective on where I’m erring.

 

[OddBird]

Talk to your priest.

 

[JosephDColeman]

You should not be asking here. You have scruples. Our answers and advice could be very negative to your battle with scruples.

I didn’t mean to address the scruples and they haven’t been an issue. I was really more concerned with the theological question of mortal sin being equivalent to losing God’s protection.

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

Ask your Priest. We on CAF , should not be answering and engaging in these type of questions with a person struggling with scruples.

 

[Camehome4john6]

However, recently this thought has been in my head: “As long as I don’t commit this mortal sin, everything will be okay.

This seems very scrupulous to me. This is best dealt with by your priest because receiving answers,/reinforcement on forums tends to increase the scrupulosity. God bless.

 

[JosephDColeman]

Okay I’ll talk to the priest. I wouldn’t have posted the topic had I realized it was an expression of scruples. Thank you all.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The reason we don’t commit mortal sins is because they distance us from God, they hurt God, and they likely have bad effects on our lives and those of other people and on the world in general, even if they seem totally harmless when we’re doing them.

The idea that if you commit mortal sin X, God will immediately “zap” you in some way, by causing or allowing something bad to happen to you, is childish thinking. We think this way because first of all, every morality tale used to try to teach us good behavior as children is based on this premise, and in fact a lot of the rules given to children (like don’t lie, don’t engage in that risky behavior your dad told you not to do) are given for their personal safety, so for children it has some basis in fact.

We also see this thinking in the Old Testament. Every time the Israelites were conquered in battle or had a famine, it was because they made God mad in some way. They believed that keeping God happy meant he’d protect them, and if they displeased him then he would withdraw his protection. Again, this is undeveloped thinking. As shown by the Book of Job, God might allow bad things to happen to someone who was actually following all the rules.

Unfortunately, one day we become adults and we commit some big grave sin and realize that hey, God didn’t strike us with a lightning bolt. And it seems like the sin didn’t hurt anybody. So we commit more sins. And before long, we are sinning regularly.

You’re an adult now. God doesn’t strike you with lightning bolts when you sin, because he wants you to behave properly out of love for him. It’s not even obedience. It’s love.

Picture Jesus in the Garden crying over all the sins of man that they’re going to commit anyway in spite of him loving them so much and sacrificing himself for them. He loves you, he’s your dearest friend. Do you want to make him cry harder by committing a sin, or do you want to give him a hug and make him feel better? Most of us would say we want to comfort Jesus and we would say ok all right I’ll not do the sin, or if we already did it we would say okay I’m so sorry I won’t do it again if it makes you feel this bad.

That should be your motivation for not sinning, not this “God’s gonna get me if I step one foot off the path” kind of childish “obedience” stuff.

Edited to add, sorry I posted this before I saw the post above regarding “expression of scruples”. I’m going to leave the post anyway because it might be helpful to someone else but I apologize for posting substantively in a scrupulous thread.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Remember the children’s song, “Jesus Loves Me”?

Sing it to yourself, especially the line:

Jesus loves me when I’m bad
Though it makes Him very sad.

Our guardian angels are not like Secret Service Agents, Saints have been robbed and murdered.

God loves you. God is with you when bad things happen, even if you are at gunpoint, God wants to be with you.

See your priest about scruples