DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Why are the divisions among us so deeply set?

Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. – Romans 12:2

They cry it from the conservative pulpits and they cry it from the progressive pulpits, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Except … each has a different catalogue of what make up the world’s sinful ways and which ones merit our concern.

I find the pattern of this world means different things to different people. For some, the sins seem always tied up with the sexual behavior; for some, the sins seem always tied up with social justice; and others, the sins are most importantly this and not so importantly that. And I find that most often the sins that need our concern are the sins we find in others.

With Paul, a soul with a blended mind of Hebrew, Greek and Roman thought, a soul who desperately to bridge the chasm that divided the Jewish and the Gentile, the old ways and the new ways … speaks to both sides and to all. You and your world must be transformed first by the renewing of you own mind and then the renewing of the world’s mind. Only then will you be able to do the challenging work of discerning … not so much what you think is right and wrong … but what is the ideal … the good, the pleasing, the perfect will of God.” The renewing of the mind is a transformation from a pattern of thinking “en-cultured” in you by the society around you, especially that pattern of thinking that you presume to be right, to be “common sense”, to be “just the way things are, and the way things are to be. It is a new way of thinking, a new awareness, a new sensitivity, even a new way of reasoning and a new way of feeling.

But we are so conformed to the thinking of our own tribe that our sinful nature makes us reluctant to the changing of minds.

Loved Ones, if God’s Grace is active in your life you will always be in the process of the renewing of your mind.

Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz