August 29, 2025 • 55 mins
How do I make godly decisions when my needs or preferences clash with someone else's, especially someone who is important to me, such as my spouse or parents? Using the principle of edification over gratification from 1 Corinthians 8, we learn when to put others’ spiritual growth (e.g., avoiding scandal with meat offered to idols) above self-interest, and when to LEAN IN to self-interest (e.g., doom scrolling).
Sonja shares her contraception dilemma, balancing freedom and legalism when faced with her husband’s salvation, guided by prayer and the Catechism’s call to dignity (1738). Discover how to set boundaries (e.g., skipping family Christmas) and use Ignatius’ discernment rules for mature Christian liberty.
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O | Observe (Connect the passage to your life and recent events.)
In what situation has the Holy Spirit spoken to you through this episode about choosing between edification and gratification? What do you want to say to Him about that?
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What We Discussed | Show Notes
Overview:
Minutes 00:00-12:00 – Spirit vs flesh; others over self
Minutes 12:01-24:00 – social media scrolling?; meat on Fridays?
Minutes 24:01-36:00 – when your boundaries offend; parents; contraception
Minutes 36:01-48:00 – Catholics and non-Catholics in decision making; evaluating Christian witness
Transcript
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We have to think about the
the gratification
and the edification together. What is the most
edifying thing over what is most gratifying? When
we were eating from the food pantry, we
were poo. And I know as I say
that, there's some of y'all going, I I
can't believe she did that. I eat dinner
and I am a total noodle.
(00:20):
And it broke my heart.
All I could think is, for all those
years that I had contracepted,
how many of my babies
have
I possibly lost?
We all have relationships to consider when we're
making decisions. So how do I make a
godly decision when my preferences
(00:40):
offend someone else's? I'm Sonya. I've written eight
books. I've lived and taught from biblical principles
for three decades
internationally and one on one to over 300
souls and tens of thousands of podcast listeners
and master class participants.
Today, we're talking about navigating
Christian freedom.
(01:12):
Paul said that for freedom, Christ has set
you free. Do not submit again
to the yoke of slavery.
Last week in the free indeed series, we
looked at the purpose of Christian freedom.
We saw that the purpose was the glory
of God, which
ultimately
means not God's reputation
(01:34):
and how he looks
through us
because he's too big for that.
But what it means there, the glory of
God is that we reach our fullest potential
according to the church father, Saint Irenaeus.
So anything that detracts
from my fullest potential
is something that
(01:54):
Christ has freed me from, namely sin, and
we talked about that last week.
But today, I wanna talk about some of
the principles
of making good godly decisions, and we looked
at one of them last week a bit,
and we saw that the ruling principle
trumps the rules.
(02:15):
And those rules are often arbitrary
either and they're usually imposed. They're imposed either
by someone else,
maybe our family of origin,
and then they go on to be imposed
by ourselves
through these
traditions
or
castles, I call them, in our minds about
(02:35):
what makes a good Christian, a good Catholic,
a good mother,
a good daughter, a good priest,
those kinds of things. Those are more arbitrary
things that the church does not speak to
specifically.
Now, the church does give us some guidelines.
The Bible does. We have the 10 commandments.
We have the beatitudes.
Those are hard and fast rules
(02:58):
that help us
stay on the narrow path that leads to
that abundant life, that leads to that fullest
potential
for myself and for the people around me.
Paul calls that the difference in the spirit
of the law,
the old testament law,
and
the law,
(03:18):
the letter of the law. So the letter
of the law would be the very strict
rules. Specifically, in that context, it wouldn't just
be the 10 commandments. It would be the
Levitical
ceremonial laws and rules,
and then, you know, what all is in
the Torah, all that stuff from Judaism that
Christians don't practice anymore because
(03:38):
we
observe
the
participation
in a new liturgy that is based on
our saving event, which is the cross of
Christ,
his death, his passion, his death, his resurrection,
and his ascension.
And so we celebrate according to those traditions
(03:58):
and rules. And many of those are not
hard and fast
either, but that's neither here nor there. The
point here is that Paul calls
the Old Testament law specifically and the rules
of that, namely circumcision. He talks about that
a lot. Circumcision
being one of
the hard and fast rules of Judaism
(04:21):
that no longer apply
to Christians because circumcision was a sign
of initiation
into the family of God
in Judaism.
For us, the sign of initiation into the
family of god is baptism.
So, then, the letter of the Old Testament
law no longer applies to us
(04:41):
but the spirit of the law does because
the spirit of that law is what initiates
me into the family of God. And so
for Christians,
that initiation begins with baptism.
So, you can see there the difference then
in the letter of the law and the
spirit of the law. And Paul talks quite
a bit about that in his letters.
(05:03):
Another way to look at it, and this
is the way we
we
specified
the
principle
here last
episode
was liberty or freedom
versus legalism.
And legalism is that term for
these
imposed rules
(05:23):
that the church doesn't even impose, but that
we impose on ourselves or we impose on
other people,
namely things like veiling or the traditional Latin
mass versus
the Novus Ordo or traditionalism
versus a charismatic approach.
Those kinds of things are preferences
(05:43):
that the church gives us leeway on, and
so we have freedom in those to choose.
That's the difference in legalism and liberty. And
we talk specifically
about
Moses
whacking that rock twice
and how if he had whacked the rock
in faith rather than impatience and even
(06:06):
some anger,
he probably would not have gotten in trouble.
Either way, that's all in the previous episode.
The principle there is
that the spirit trumps the law,
freedom trumps
legalism,
or liberty trumps legalism,
and the ruling principle
(06:27):
trumps the rules.
So, when we come up against
a decision that pits the two of those
against each other, we should choose freedom
if we're able to. And that leads us
to the second principle, which is edification
over gratification.
Now Paul talks about this quite a bit
(06:47):
in both Galatians five, but also in first
Corinthians eight. And I'm gonna read this entire
chapter for you because first of all, it's
good to hear the word of God. But
secondly, he offers us an example
that we don't see very often in this
particular
context.
He says, first of all, if you'll notice
in
(07:08):
your Bible, I hope, you have
a chapter heading here
at the beginning of chapter eight in first
Corinthians. And for me, mine says, be sensitive
sensitive to conscience.
He says, now concerning things offered to idols,
we know that we have knowledge.
Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
And if anyone thinks that he knows anything,
(07:30):
he knows nothing, yet as he ought to
know. But if anyone loves God,
this one is known by him. So he
is
he's showing a principle of love
over
knowledge.
Meaning, you might know all kinds of theology
and philosophy,
but if you don't have any love for
your brother
or for yourself, an ordered love for both
(07:52):
yourself and your neighbor,
then
you might be at fault
in
matters of conscience.
Okay? He goes on to say,
Therefore, concerning the eating of things offered to
idols,
we know that an idol is nothing in
the world, and that there is no other
god but one.
(08:13):
For even if there are so called gods,
either in heaven or on earth, as there
are many gods and many idols,
yet for us there is one God, the
Father, of whom all things
and for all things
in him one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom
are all things and through whom we live.
So he's speaking of the primacy of Christ.
(08:34):
And the primacy, there is only one God.
We understand that as Christians. That's
his point. However, there is not in everyone
that knowledge. For some, with consciousness of the
idol, until now eat it as a thing
offered to an idol, and their conscience, being
weak, is defiled.
But food does not commend us to God,
for neither if we eat, are we the
(08:55):
better are are we the better,
nor if we do not eat, are we
the worse.
But beware, lest somehow the liberty of yours
become a stumbling block to those who are
weak.
For if anyone sees you who have a
knowledge eating
in an idol's temple,
will not the conscience of him who is
weak be emboldened to eat those things offered
(09:17):
to idols?
And because of your knowledge, shall the weak
brother perish for whom Christ died?
But when you thus sin against the brethren
and wound their weak weak conscience, you sin
against Christ.
Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I
will never again eat meat, lest I make
my brother stumble. Okay. So he is presenting
(09:40):
this
this principle of edification
over gratification.
The gratification here would be the knowledge
that food sacrificed to idols
is harmless.
Nothing that goes in the body defiles, Jesus
said. It's what comes out of a man
that defiles.
(10:00):
So, the food itself,
even if it were actually sacrificed to idols.
Now, for us, this might be,
they actually had temples
where they sacrificed
these were pagan temples, where they sacrificed
meat
to pagan idols,
and then they sold it in the marketplace.
And, when they did that, Christians would go
(10:21):
to the marketplace and they would buy
food.
And sometimes it actually was labeled for them
that it had been sacrificed to idols. And
so, Paul is saying, you may know
that there's nothing wrong with this food. It's
just meat. There is only one God ultimately
anyway.
(10:42):
But, if you eat this meat,
and your brother, your Christian brother
sees you doing that in freedom,
because you have the freedom of this knowledge,
if he sees you do that and then
he does it
contrary to his own conscience,
because he doesn't know that, and he
(11:04):
because he doesn't know it, he doesn't believe
it. He believes
that there's something actually wrong with that food.
If it has been sacrificed to idols, then
there's something
definitely wrong with it. And if my Christian
brother eats it, well, okay.
I might eat it too. But, if I
eat it too, I don't really believe that
because I don't know it. And so, I
(11:26):
then have sinned against my own conscience.
That's what he's saying here. Now, we don't
have
temples,
usually,
at Kroger
or Publix
or Aldi's,
and we don't have,
cases, food cases that are labeled
sacrifice to idols or sacrifice to Satan. And
(11:46):
most of us, if we saw that, we
wouldn't buy that meat anyway,
even knowing what we know.
But if we did
and a Christian brother saw it, or
say we invited a fellow Christian
to our home
and let him know that we had bought
this
meat that had been sacrificed to Satan,
(12:08):
but it's okay,
because there's only one God.
If he then
ate that meat,
and it offended his conscience,
and he sinned before God,
then we would be culpable
to some degree. Now, this is what the
church calls a scandal, and I'm getting a
little bit ahead of myself, because we'll talk
(12:29):
about this in-depth
in the next episode. But, the principle here
is edification over gratification.
And, what he's saying here is
that I need to be aware
that
my gratification
is less important
than what is good
for my fellow Christian.
(12:51):
Now, how does this play out practically? Because
we don't usually see meat sacrificed
to Satan or to idols.
So,
let's just look at it in a personal
kind of way.
The spirit here
is sort of,
juxtaposed,
we'll say,
(13:11):
against the flesh.
So, what is good for my spirit
is not going to
satisfy my flesh very often. And, the church
calls these passions. So, when our passions, when
our fleshly desires are out of control,
when we don't have self control, when we're
not prudent, when we're not temperate,
(13:33):
then we have sinned
in lust,
really. We save the lust word for sex,
but I'd like for you to think of
lust as anything that you feel compelled to
do in your flesh.
Meaning, something that gratifies my flesh. If I'm
habitually lazy,
(13:54):
if I'm not motivated,
that could be a satisfaction of the flesh
against the spirit
of temperance and prudence and self discipline, all
of those things. So, the spirit versus the
flesh. And, in those decisions, we want to
make
a decision for the spirit over the flesh.
(14:14):
And, that is part of what Jesus
freed us
from. We talked about that last week. Freedom
from is freedom for, and the reason we
want to cooperate with the Holy Spirit
in
freeing ourselves
practically and literally
(14:34):
through our habits
of those kinds of slaveries
is in order that we can
be free to serve God
with a good conscience
and with all of our time, all of
our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
So, when we have a decision that involves
liberty versus legalism,
(14:56):
We want to choose freedom.
But if my freedom
is going to be more of a self
gratification,
that it is a spiritual one,
especially if it's going to offend a Christian
brother or sister,
then I need to reevaluate
that decision with the Holy Spirit.
(15:17):
Now, you can see
just with these first two principles,
why
Christian freedom is a matter of maturity and
it's a matter of love, because it takes
into consideration
both what is good for me and what
is good for my neighbor. Therefore, we have
loved both ourselves and our neighbor, as the
primary two commandments say. And in doing that,
(15:39):
we have loved God with all of our
heart, soul, mind, and strength.
But it's not a matter of a hard
and fast rule. What do I mean?
Let's take an example that I had in
the community this week, and actually I had
this also in a one on one consultation.
Someone asked specifically
about their habit of doomscrolling.
(16:02):
And I know this person to be a
highly disciplined,
very conscientious
person.
And
she was lamenting that she spends a couple
of hours in the evenings
scrolling on her phone before bed.
And so I kinda probed a little bit.
The way she presented it was that's all
(16:23):
she does all day, And and I I
thought I knew better because I kinda know
her pretty well. So I started to probe
a little bit and ask for some detail.
And what I discovered was at about 08:00,
when all of the chores of the day
are done, everyone has finished their stuff for
the day, and they are starting to wind
down, and they are relaxing and getting ready
(16:44):
for bed, she likes to scroll her phone
or watch TV.
And she felt that two hours was just
too long.
Well, I also know this person to actually
be enslaved
to all these other arbitrary rules in her
life and in her heart.
So, in that situation,
(17:04):
I advised
that she just let herself enjoy the two
hours of doomscrolling.
It's not going to hurt anything. She's already
completed all of her chores, all of her
responsibilities.
It's a matter of relaxation for her, and
it was also tied to happy memories
with a husband who had died.
So, you can see how what might
(17:26):
be important for one person
is not good for another in a different
situation. So, this is super subjective,
and why it's a matter of Christian maturity,
and why it's important that we evaluate
the context
and the specifics of each situation, so that
we are not imposing
onerous
(17:47):
rules and expectations
that God never imposes himself.
So if I had said to her,
you need to put your phone away
at 08:00
and read something holy,
I mean, that that might be good, but
it probably would not be good for her
because she's already enslaved to these ideas of
(18:09):
what makes herself
a good mother, a good Christian, a good
Catholic.
So she needed more freedom,
not more discipline.
And because she needs more freedom,
I advised her to just enjoy the doomscrolling.
So it's two hours, and I know as
I say that, there's some of y'all going,
I can't believe she did that.
(18:30):
But I myself practice this.
When I have a full day of consults
and I'm finished,
I eat dinner. My husband, bless him, has
usually fixed dinner on those days because I
I don't have the time.
I eat dinner, and I am a total
noodle. I don't I'm not thinking very well
because I'm tired.
(18:51):
I'm just tired.
And so,
I usually lie down somewhere. I'm either reading,
I'm scrolling my phone, I'm watching TV.
So it's a lot of time
that most people would look at me and
say, what a waste.
But if you knew how many hours I
worked six days a week,
if you knew the amount of work that
I get done,
(19:12):
it probably would not be an issue for
you.
But, for someone who is
naturally,
temperamentally,
and by personality,
less conscientious,
they might need a little more discipline.
So, you can see how this is a
subjective area, and it's a matter of Christian
maturity rather than a legalistic rule, which is
(19:33):
something like,
you get fifteen minutes on your phone every
day no matter who you are and no
matter what is going on in your life.
Because anything else
is laziness and it is a waste of
time and God wants you to redeem every
second.
Now, the book of Shirok
actually tells us that God provides
things for us
(19:54):
on Earth and in the world and in
our lives
to give us some relief.
That's what the Sabbath is for. We talked
about that last week. That's one of those
days
that most people consider a luxury that is
actually a discipline.
It's a rest that we need, and God
knows we need it. So, that's a subjective
area, but that's an actual
(20:15):
literal example of something that I bumped up
against just this week.
What about meat on Fridays? Now, in the
community, I asked the question, what is something
that you practice in your Catholic faith
that offends
other Catholics?
Now, this is going to be where the
rubber meets the road, because this is where
(20:35):
we have real difficulty
in making decisions
that are healthy for ourselves and the people
around us, while also considering other people's consciences.
What about meat on Fridays? Now, the church
advises
because it's an ancient Christian practice
that we give up meat on Fridays
(20:57):
in observance
of Jesus' passion,
but it doesn't command that we have to.
And it also advises that if we don't
give up meat, that perhaps we give up
something else as
a gift of alms, as a self sacrifice,
but it's completely up to us.
(21:19):
The church gives us the choice
in the same way that the church allows
us to receive the Eucharist either on the
tongue
or in the hand. And we're instructed how
to do both of those things
in case we choose one or the other.
Another example someone mentioned over in the community
was
(21:39):
a female
who lectures
and is an extraordinary minister
who offends
other Catholics
because she's female.
Now, that's another area. Now, I have my
own preference there.
I have my own opinion,
but I would never impose that opinion
(22:01):
on anyone else because the church doesn't.
The church allows the pastor,
under his bishop,
to make that decision for his own parish.
And so, we need to be very careful
in stepping in with these arbitrary
rules and judgments
against
fellow Christians, fellow Catholics,
(22:22):
who are making different choices that the church
allows.
Now, that's a whole different thing
than
our Catholic practices
that offend,
say,
non
Christians.
We're going to do a whole lot of
things that offend people that are not Christian.
They don't
(22:47):
capitulate
to them
would be to deny our own faith
in many, many cases.
For instance, here's one that came up in
the community.
Contraception
and natural family planning.
Now, I have experienced this in my own
life. When I came into the Catholic church,
I was
(23:08):
scandalized
by learning
the science behind
the pill.
I learned
because of my excellent catechesis
under
my mentor,
my godfather,
I learned
that the pill is actually abortifacient.
(23:30):
And it broke my
heart.
All I could think is for all those
years that I had contracepted,
how many of my babies
have
I possibly lost?
It broke my heart. I
was so convicted.
But at the same time, my husband is
(23:51):
almost a decade older than I am, and
he had just changed jobs. And so he
was terrified
that I might get pregnant and then it
was just
and he wasn't Catholic.
So I was coming into the church.
He wasn't Catholic.
I learned that contraception,
(24:12):
the pill specifically, is abortifacient,
and I wanted to quit immediately.
But I knew that if I did that,
it was going to scandalize
my Christian husband
to the point that he probably
might never enter the Catholic church and receive
(24:33):
the Eucharist and the other sacraments and all
those things that I knew
were best for him.
So, here is
a perfect example of what the heck do
we do.
Here's what I did.
I went to my priest and I laid
the whole thing out. I said, I just
discovered
that the pill is contraception,
(24:54):
or the contraception of the pill is abortifacient.
I need to get off of it. I
need to get off of it right away.
But if I do that, it's going to
terrify my husband. He's going to be very
angry. It's going to cause a rift in
our marriage,
and I really believe
that it might prevent him from ever considering
(25:16):
coming into the Catholic Church ever.
And my priest, to his credit, said to
me,
Pray
about this,
and don't stop using the pill yet.
And it was tough. But
luckily, first of all, I had a practice
(25:36):
of daily scripture
and daily prayer,
and therefore I trusted God to handle the
situation for me. So I went to him,
and I said, you know the situation.
You know what I've just learned. You know
his heart. You know my heart. You know
I would do this in a second
(25:56):
if I didn't also have to consider him
and his salvation
and his eventual
hopeful
entry into full communion with the Catholic church.
So I am asking you
to intervene here
in whatever way
you think is necessary.
(26:17):
And at the time, I was thinking maybe
he would just speak to him through me,
like maybe I would and I did. I
communicated
to him that the pill was abortifacient.
And, I mean, he was staunchly,
You're not quitting that pill.
So,
I did what the priest
advised.
I went to God. I received
encouragement
(26:38):
in that and an assurance that He would
handle it.
And it was only about a month
when
I lost
my paying job.
I was laid off.
And my husband who had been working
ten hours overtime
at his
job, they not only
(26:59):
cut back all of the overtime at the
the company, but they also cut his hours
in half.
So we went from two and a half
incomes to a half of an income,
And, we couldn't afford the pill.
It was $40 a month, and we couldn't
afford it.
And, I knew immediately, although, I mean, we
were eating from the food pantry, we were
(27:20):
poe. It was
difficult
to go from two and a half incomes
to a half of one, but I knew
that was an answer from God about that
prayer.
And so I just hunkered down,
and I made it work with the budget.
But we did not buy the pill anymore
because we couldn't afford it. And my husband
(27:41):
was the first to say, that needs to
go.
Because I had told him about natural family
planning, and I had shown him the science
that it's actually more
effective than the pill anyway. And, it's not
carcinogenic.
It's
natural to your body. All the perks, you
know, of natural family planning. But, you know,
we've been so conditioned
(28:03):
in western culture, but also just in our
families,
in in life in general,
that
children are not a blessing.
And so we postpone having children children way
too long,
perhaps,
for some people.
But also, the whole natural family planning thing
(28:25):
is just it can be scandalous to family
members who don't understand it, who haven't been
brought up that way, who have not learned
anything about it, who hear that you're doing
it and they
they believe automatically you're gonna have 14 kids
and maybe you want 14 kids. That's great.
But if you don't, that's what natural family
planning is for.
(28:46):
I mean, there's lots of of
issues
that
have to be brought to bear when we're
making such decisions.
But my point is, here,
I was concerned
with my husband, my marriage, first of all,
but also his
his receiving eventually
(29:07):
the sacraments and coming into full communion with
the church. I wanted that to happen, and
I knew that if I
offended his conscience
in that way
of just abruptly stopping the pill
after knowing and hearing his expressions of both
fear and anxiety and and even anger over
(29:29):
it,
that I might put a stumbling block, which
is what Paul calls it, in front of
my husband and his faith. And so, I
went to God with the situation. I I
trusted him to take care of it, and
he did in a way that it was
difficult. But it was an answer to prayer,
and we haven't been back on it. I
mean, that was
(29:50):
decades ago, and we haven't been back on
the pill since then.
So my point here is
we have to think about
the
gratification
and the edification
together. What is the most edifying thing over
what is most gratifying? For me, what would
have been most gratifying is that I get
(30:10):
off the pill immediately and never take another
one. But what was more edifying
to both myself and my husband
was that I wait on God to bring
about the circumstances
that would allow us to do that together.
It edified me because it strengthened my faith.
It deepened my faith. I couldn't believe it
when God did what He did. And even
(30:32):
though it was difficult, I knew it was
an answer to prayer, and that convinced me
that He would take care of us even
though we were poe and we only had
half an income. And He did.
And thankfully, he did it after we had
practiced natural family planning for some time
so that we were comfortable enough to never
go back to any sort of contraception.
(30:54):
And by that time, well, that's a whole
other story.
But you may
have chosen
to live according to the teachings of the
Catholic church, as I wanted to do in
this area.
And you're going to offend people by that.
But this is one area in which Paul
(31:17):
tells us
we are supposed to judge
other Christians' fruit.
So when you're looking at
situations
that call for
Christian freedom
in our decision making,
we want to make sure that we're choosing
(31:37):
freedom over
legalism
and edification
over
gratification.
But under that, edification
versus gratification, we also want to consider
whether or not this Christian
or this Catholic
is actually living according to
(31:58):
the premise that Jesus is their Lord.
If they claim to be a Christian,
but they're not living under Jesus' authority,
you might take a different tack
than you would for instance, if my husband
were non Christian,
like,
not even necessarily atheist, but he just wasn't
practicing anything, and I was the only one
(32:19):
in the family, I might have taken a
different
a different
route.
I don't know. But he he had his
own faith, and it was a real faith,
and he really practiced it.
And I could see that if I stepped
out and did this on my own, that
it was going to offend his faith
(32:41):
in a way that was harmful.
And so I had to really weigh that
decision.
And this is the thing, God wants us
to.
He wants us to
engage
our Christian freedom,
our wills,
and our intellect,
and our love in making decisions. He
(33:03):
loves humans.
He wants us to do that
because
in part it helps us grow into
a deeper love, a more authentic love for
both ourselves and others,
and for Him.
But it also grows us in Christian maturity.
And so, we're likely to make some mistakes
(33:24):
or some errors
in
trying to wrestle with these kinds of decisions.
But, understand
that grace
gives you that freedom
to make errors
and to make mistakes.
It's part of what allows us
(33:44):
to step out and take a bit of
a risk when we're making these kinds of
decisions
without the fear of going to hell.
So, judge that as
you will, but
that was
an example of a decision that I made
that was
strictly against the rule
(34:06):
of no contraception,
at least temporarily,
that led to
the best possible outcome.
And it was because I was weighing both
my gratification
and my husband's edification.
Now, when you're practicing something like NFP
or
not
(34:26):
eating meat on Fridays, whatever your practices are,
if you've chosen to do that out of
love for God, for your neighbor, whatever,
you're going to offend some other people.
You're just going to. They're not going to
understand. If they're not Christian,
then they're not living according to the same
worldview as you. They don't understand, and so
(34:49):
offending them is necessary
for you to practice your faith.
If you're
if you're offending
a non Catholic,
a non Catholic is not living according to
the same
principles and rules always, especially in these areas
of contraception,
(35:10):
of say alcohol
use or non use.
That was actually a big issue
where
as growing up as a Baptist, that was
a no no. You don't drink alcohol at
all, ever, for any reason. Now that has
relaxed quite a bit over the last several
decades since I've
(35:32):
come into the Catholic church and been Catholic.
And so now it's kind of a free
for all. But then it wasn't. And that
was
that for Catholics, I remember actually before I
even
had children, I was working at a company
where we had
a Catholic sales
man,
(35:52):
and he
I'm not sure. I mean, thinking back about
him, he was
because he was a salesman, he was constantly
entertaining
clients.
So, he would take them out. He would
take them to dinner.
They would drink. They would party. And here
I was a Baptist, you know. And I'm
like,
he's
Catholic?
(36:13):
I don't think I ever want to be
Catholic. Because to me, it just seemed
hedonistic.
It was so undisciplined
sounding and looking.
And so that might be an area, as
Catholics, that we really need to watch.
And we're not being hypocritical
as much as we're considering
(36:33):
the salvation of another Christian.
But still, you really have to weigh that.
What you might not do in public,
you are free to do in your home
because it's your home.
We don't want to be hypocritical. I'm not
saying that.
And I'm also not saying that you have
(36:53):
to give up everything
simply because it offends someone else.
We really have to know
and
at least evaluate as best we can who
we're dealing with and what the situation is
and what their faith is like. Do they
actually
live
under Christ and his lordship? And if they
(37:14):
do, okay, this might offend them, like, literally.
And I don't mean offense like I'm mad
about it. I mean offense like a stumbling
block to their faith
where they don't really believe it's okay for
them, but if they see you doing it
and then they do it, they've offended their
own conscience and therefore Christ. So you have
then you've become culpable
(37:34):
in offending
Christ
too. Because,
you know,
the maxim that Cain said about Abel, Am
I my brother's keeper? You know, yes. We
are. In the Christian faith, there is a
degree
to which we really need to be careful
to regard
our Christian brothers and sisters and their faith.
(37:58):
So we just need
to evaluate
those issues
as we're making certain decisions. And most of
us Catholics, you know, we'd have a glass
of wine at dinner at a restaurant and
never think a thing about it, and that's
fine. But getting drunk, getting sloshed,
partying
habitually,
those kinds of things, we have to be
(38:19):
careful about what kind of Christian witness
we are reflecting.
Because we
well, I'm getting ahead. I'm getting ahead because
that's actually
the topic of our next episode, so I
won't go too far on that. But here's
another
instance. Okay?
My parents,
now this is before I was Catholic, my
(38:39):
parents,
we always
traveled
back to my hometown for Christmas.
It was just a tradition. It was something
that we always gathered together at Christmas as
a family, and then when we moved away,
a state away,
we would go home
for Christmas. We would usually be there on
(39:00):
Christmas Eve and then into Christmas morning.
Well, the last year we did that,
that, my son, I only had one at
the time, and he was very young. I
think he might have been four.
And he wasn't awake yet. And we were
all awake and kinda waiting on him to
get up so we could do the Santa
thing. And I had bought the majority of
the gifts. I had wrapped them all. I
(39:21):
had loaded up the car.
I had done all that work.
But he wasn't awake yet, so I went
to get a shower.
And while I was in the shower,
he woke up,
went to the Christmas tree, and when I
came out of the shower,
they were opening presents.
And I don't remember if I said anything,
(39:44):
but I was so hurt,
and then I was mad.
And I determined from that day forward, we
are not gonna be home for Christmas.
I didn't want to make a stink out
of it because no one did anything maliciously.
No one was trying to hurt my feelings
or make me mad or offend me or
anything like that. I knew that.
(40:06):
But I determined this is a boundary that
I placed
for my own gratification
and even edification,
because
I knew that this would be an occasion
of sin for me.
If I continued
to
practice
going home as was the family tradition,
(40:30):
and that ever happened again,
oh, I was gonna be upset. So I
just determined we're not gonna do that anymore.
I didn't say anything. We came home,
but the next year, we didn't go home
for Christmas.
I know people. I work with them one
on one. I see their comments and their
questions over in the community. I work with
(40:51):
people who have
who are enslaved
or have been enslaved
to family traditions that no longer serve their
families.
Their own families.
And, their parents expect them to continue those
traditions,
and if they step back from them at
(41:11):
all, the parents are mad,
they're offended, and they're hurt.
But what is best for
the
the family
of these people,
their own families, not the extended family, but
their own families, their children,
their marriage,
(41:31):
I mean, it's not even counting the fact
that you have to travel.
And, my parents were divorced, so when we
went home, we also had to go to
two different houses
with two different sets of parents and step
parents. It was just
it was too much. So, there were lots
of reasons that it wasn't just the opening
of presents when I wasn't
(41:53):
there
and I couldn't be Santa. It wasn't just
that. There were several things that kind of
factored into it.
But, the point here is that I set
a new boundary.
We're not coming home for Christmas anymore.
Not on the day of or the day
before or the day after.
You can come here to our house,
(42:13):
or
we can delay it for a week, something
like that. But that cut down on a
lot of things. It kept us from having
to travel
six hours away
on a holiday that I really wanted to
be about us and our little family.
And that was appropriate.
That's my vocation.
(42:34):
My vocation is my marriage and my family,
not the extended family.
And yours is too, if you're married.
Your first priority is God and your relationship
to Him, and second one is your vocation.
If it's marriage, then your marriage and your
children.
And so I felt comfortable, even though I
(42:55):
really didn't even have that principle then, but
I did feel comfortable
guarding
the privacy and the the fun and the
time and the peace
of my own family.
And it it didn't cause too much of
a stink, to be honest. But in some
families, it really will, or it would, and
(43:16):
it has.
And if that's you,
first of all, keep in mind that priority.
But secondly,
in thinking about edification,
can you balance
what is edifying and what is gratifying?
(43:37):
In my case, I was able to do
that.
When it comes to your family,
what's best for your family
is
sometimes going to offend
your extended family.
Your boundaries,
your boundaries are always going to offend somebody,
usually.
(43:58):
But you probably
need them
in many of these instances
in order to guard your peace and your
time
and nurture your own family.
So,
do we offend
a fellow Christian, fellow Catholic when they're in
our family?
(44:18):
Well, sometimes, yes.
When it's a matter of boundaries,
when they're best for you and your family,
because that's who you're supposed to be concerned
about, not your extended family.
So, if they're upset with you, then they're
just gonna have to be upset. And, it's
not a matter of salvation
anyway.
Right? This is not a spiritual principle
(44:40):
like
contraception is.
Whether or not to meet with your family
on Christmas is not a dogma of the
church, it's not a doctrine of the church,
it's not a teaching of the church at
all. So, you're completely free to make decisions
in love
that are edifying and gratifying
(45:00):
and a matter of freedom
for yourself and your family.
And the rest of the everybody else is
just going to have to either get on
board or not.
If they're mad, they're just mad.
So,
the first principle
(45:21):
well, there's actually something else I wanna share.
So another area that can really help us
is
the Ignatian rules of discernment.
A couple of things to keep in mind.
So first of all,
is it a matter of freedom
or legalism?
If it's a matter of freedom,
(45:41):
then choose freedom over legalism.
You don't want to just be keeping arbitrary
rules simply because they're arbitrary rules and everybody's
always done it and it's a tradition and
we should just always do it then. Right?
If it stops working for you, then you
get to choose. You're free in Christ to
make those decisions.
Then evaluate.
Is this a matter of edification or gratification?
(46:03):
Is this good for me?
Is it better that I satisfy
the spirit
or the flesh here?
And what about the other people around me?
How is this going to affect them? Is
this edifying for them or is it simply
gratifying for me? Or vice versa, is it
simply gratifying for them or is this edifying
(46:24):
for me?
If I'm only doing it to please them,
but it's not edifying for me, meaning to
build up,
to nurture, if it's not edifying for me,
and I'm only doing it to please them,
then I don't want to choose that. I
want to do the thing that's edifying,
if I can.
And then always
(46:44):
keep in mind
the priority of your vocation.
Your first vocation is to God and your
relationship
with Him, and edifying that,
meaning
giving God the priority over your time and
your energy. So for me, that means prayer
in the morning. But that doesn't mean you
can't do prayer at night.
(47:05):
Right?
That vocation is first, and then your secondary
vocation would be either religious life, singlehood,
or marriage or
priesthood.
Whatever that secondary vocation is, that's your next
priority.
That's who you consider
in making the decisions. Not the in laws,
(47:27):
not the extended family, not the friend or
the neighbor across the street, and not the
people in the parish.
That's
the vocation is the the next consideration.
And then we can look at these rules
for discernment. Now Ignatius,
he wrote all kinds of writings on this,
(47:47):
and so I have distilled them
into
a quick
reference, we'll say. So we want to check,
is it according to scripture? Is it scriptural
or at least not against scripture?
Particularly in the gospels.
Does the church allow it and or encourage
it? That would be a yes then. If
(48:08):
it's biblical,
that would be a yes.
If the church allows it, that would be
another yes. Is it reasonable? Does it make
sense according to reason, enlightened by faith? Is
it in line with what God has already
been doing in my life?
For instance, is this thing according to
(48:28):
my gifts and spiritual gifts and temperament and
personality?
For instance, here's an example.
When I was trying to decide
whether or not to teach RCIA, now it's
OCIA,
But a couple of years ago, I stepped
back from that.
And it was because I was traveling so
much on the weekends, and the weekends were
actually the best time for the people in
(48:50):
the class
to participate in the class. And I could
only teach it on Wednesday evenings because that
was when I was always home.
And I was traveling on the weekends, and
so I wrestled with that for a couple
of years. I taught on Wednesday nights for
a couple of years, but I could see
that we would get a lot more people
involved in those classes if we could do
(49:12):
it between the masses on Sunday, and I
was not able to be there
and teach
often enough
to be reliable.
And so this was one of the considerations.
Did it make sense according to reason enlightened
by faith? Is it in line with what
he has already been doing in your life?
Well, yes, because I had taught RCIA for
(49:33):
sixteen years.
So I could have said yes,
but was it edifying?
It was gratifying for me
because I was able to use my gifts,
but was it edifying? It wasn't for the
people who wanted to participate
but had a harder time doing it on
a a weeknight than they would have on
Sunday when they're already participating at mass.
(49:55):
And so that was one of the considerations.
Another one of those quick rules for discernment,
does it bring you peace and does it
feel peaceful? This is a big one.
Your greatest gift from God
is, besides salvation, eternal salvation, is peace.
So, if you're not peaceful about it, then
(50:17):
perhaps delay making the
decision until you do have more peace about
it, pray about it a little longer, evaluate
it a little more according to all the
principles,
and ultimately for me, if I don't feel
peaceful about it, I won't do it. I
was able,
in the whole contraception issue, I had peace
(50:37):
about that because I knew
from my relationship with God that He would
take care of that. I knew He would.
And so I just trusted Him. And it
took about a month. But, man, when He
moved, He moved.
And he did exactly well, I mean I
didn't expect him to do it the way
he did it. But I knew that he
would take care of it, and he did.
So I had peace about it, even though
(50:58):
technically speaking, I was actually breaking a doctrine
of the church.
And my priest told me I could.
So that was one of those kind of
gray areas that we really want to practice
our Christian maturity in making those decisions.
Here's another one of those rules for discernment.
Is it unrealistically
radical?
Am I actually capable,
(51:20):
literally capable of doing it? For instance,
do I want to sing in the choir,
but I can't carry a tune?
Do I want a teaching ministry,
but my spiritual gifts actually lie in the
area of intercession
and encouragement
and not in teaching at all? I don't
even like to read much.
(51:42):
Don't like theology.
Right? That would be excessive demands. That would
place excessive demands on you
to be able
to teach when it's not in your spiritual
gift mix
or you have very little interest in it.
So if someone comes to you and pressures
you to take a class at church, but
(52:03):
you don't feel equipped for it,
then perhaps you reevaluate.
If you have peace about it, that might
be something else. Are you trying to do
it to gratify them? Or do you just
wanna do it out of gratification?
Maybe it's visible and you like that idea,
but it's not edifying, not to you because
it's not in your gift mix, and it's
not edifying to the people that you're teaching
(52:24):
because you're probably not gonna be very effective
at it. Right? So you can see how
all of this is very subjective.
And to impose a rule, everybody who's asked
should teach a class,
right, that wouldn't be it wouldn't be right
or fair. And it it wouldn't be holy
either because the the goal here is the
glory of God, is helping people grow to
(52:44):
their fullest potential. That's the whole point
of Christian freedom.
Here's another. Does it require an abandonment of
my duty and station in life? So duty
and vocation is another consideration, which I already
shared a moment ago.
And then consistency.
Is it consistent with my gifts and the
direction that God has led me in the
(53:05):
past?
So all of those, that's just sort of
a synopsis of the Ignatius
rules for discernment when we're trying to make
decisions.
But combine that with all of these other
principles,
and perhaps
perhaps you can make sort of a checklist
to kinda go through.
Is it
(53:25):
liberty or legalism?
Is it edification or gratification?
Is it in the priorities of my vocation?
Is it according to the rules of discernment?
As you're making decisions, if you keep those
things in mind, you're gonna be a whole
lot more free
to make the decision that is about freedom
for you and freedom for the people around
(53:46):
you. And then if you have to offend
someone with your boundary
or your decision,
then you can know that you're you're safe
to do so
because you have considered and you have weighed,
seriously weighed
all of those issues in your decision making.
And then when we have decided, we simply
(54:07):
entrust God
with all that we have weighed
and and received his input on. We step
out in faith, and we do what we
feel like is the right thing to do.
And at that point, we have exercised our
Christian freedom. We have navigated
(54:31):
vocations. We've weighed the rules of discernment,
and we have come to the very best
decision that we can possibly make without having
a hard and fast rule.
And that is Christian freedom. That is navigating
Christian freedom. Next week, we're gonna talk about
a proposition.
We could call it a pattern or a
model. Paul said that I am all things
to all men in order to save some.
(54:54):
What did he mean by that? We'll talk
about that next week. I'm Sonya Corbitt. You
can find me and all of my resources,
all of my
my books, my masterclass,
the love heals
information,
talks on that, all my videos, everything at
sonyacorbett.com.
We have to think about the
the gratification
and the edification together. What is the most
edifying thing over what is most gratifying? When
we were eating from the food pantry, we
were poo. And I know as I say
that, there's some of y'all going, I I
can't believe she did that. I eat dinner
and I am a total noodle.
(00:20):
And it broke my heart.
All I could think is, for all those
years that I had contracepted,
how many of my babies
have
I possibly lost?
We all have relationships to consider when we're
making decisions. So how do I make a
godly decision when my preferences
(00:40):
offend someone else's? I'm Sonya. I've written eight
books. I've lived and taught from biblical principles
for three decades
internationally and one on one to over 300
souls and tens of thousands of podcast listeners
and master class participants.
Today, we're talking about navigating
Christian freedom.
(01:12):
Paul said that for freedom, Christ has set
you free. Do not submit again
to the yoke of slavery.
Last week in the free indeed series, we
looked at the purpose of Christian freedom.
We saw that the purpose was the glory
of God, which
ultimately
means not God's reputation
(01:34):
and how he looks
through us
because he's too big for that.
But what it means there, the glory of
God is that we reach our fullest potential
according to the church father, Saint Irenaeus.
So anything that detracts
from my fullest potential
is something that
(01:54):
Christ has freed me from, namely sin, and
we talked about that last week.
But today, I wanna talk about some of
the principles
of making good godly decisions, and we looked
at one of them last week a bit,
and we saw that the ruling principle
trumps the rules.
(02:15):
And those rules are often arbitrary
either and they're usually imposed. They're imposed either
by someone else,
maybe our family of origin,
and then they go on to be imposed
by ourselves
through these
traditions
or
castles, I call them, in our minds about
(02:35):
what makes a good Christian, a good Catholic,
a good mother,
a good daughter, a good priest,
those kinds of things. Those are more arbitrary
things that the church does not speak to
specifically.
Now, the church does give us some guidelines.
The Bible does. We have the 10 commandments.
We have the beatitudes.
Those are hard and fast rules
(02:58):
that help us
stay on the narrow path that leads to
that abundant life, that leads to that fullest
potential
for myself and for the people around me.
Paul calls that the difference in the spirit
of the law,
the old testament law,
and
the law,
(03:18):
the letter of the law. So the letter
of the law would be the very strict
rules. Specifically, in that context, it wouldn't just
be the 10 commandments. It would be the
Levitical
ceremonial laws and rules,
and then, you know, what all is in
the Torah, all that stuff from Judaism that
Christians don't practice anymore because
(03:38):
we
observe
the
participation
in a new liturgy that is based on
our saving event, which is the cross of
Christ,
his death, his passion, his death, his resurrection,
and his ascension.
And so we celebrate according to those traditions
(03:58):
and rules. And many of those are not
hard and fast
either, but that's neither here nor there. The
point here is that Paul calls
the Old Testament law specifically and the rules
of that, namely circumcision. He talks about that
a lot. Circumcision
being one of
the hard and fast rules of Judaism
(04:21):
that no longer apply
to Christians because circumcision was a sign
of initiation
into the family of God
in Judaism.
For us, the sign of initiation into the
family of god is baptism.
So, then, the letter of the Old Testament
law no longer applies to us
(04:41):
but the spirit of the law does because
the spirit of that law is what initiates
me into the family of God. And so
for Christians,
that initiation begins with baptism.
So, you can see there the difference then
in the letter of the law and the
spirit of the law. And Paul talks quite
a bit about that in his letters.
(05:03):
Another way to look at it, and this
is the way we
we
specified
the
principle
here last
episode
was liberty or freedom
versus legalism.
And legalism is that term for
these
imposed rules
(05:23):
that the church doesn't even impose, but that
we impose on ourselves or we impose on
other people,
namely things like veiling or the traditional Latin
mass versus
the Novus Ordo or traditionalism
versus a charismatic approach.
Those kinds of things are preferences
(05:43):
that the church gives us leeway on, and
so we have freedom in those to choose.
That's the difference in legalism and liberty. And
we talk specifically
about
Moses
whacking that rock twice
and how if he had whacked the rock
in faith rather than impatience and even
(06:06):
some anger,
he probably would not have gotten in trouble.
Either way, that's all in the previous episode.
The principle there is
that the spirit trumps the law,
freedom trumps
legalism,
or liberty trumps legalism,
and the ruling principle
(06:27):
trumps the rules.
So, when we come up against
a decision that pits the two of those
against each other, we should choose freedom
if we're able to. And that leads us
to the second principle, which is edification
over gratification.
Now Paul talks about this quite a bit
(06:47):
in both Galatians five, but also in first
Corinthians eight. And I'm gonna read this entire
chapter for you because first of all, it's
good to hear the word of God. But
secondly, he offers us an example
that we don't see very often in this
particular
context.
He says, first of all, if you'll notice
in
(07:08):
your Bible, I hope, you have
a chapter heading here
at the beginning of chapter eight in first
Corinthians. And for me, mine says, be sensitive
sensitive to conscience.
He says, now concerning things offered to idols,
we know that we have knowledge.
Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
And if anyone thinks that he knows anything,
(07:30):
he knows nothing, yet as he ought to
know. But if anyone loves God,
this one is known by him. So he
is
he's showing a principle of love
over
knowledge.
Meaning, you might know all kinds of theology
and philosophy,
but if you don't have any love for
your brother
or for yourself, an ordered love for both
(07:52):
yourself and your neighbor,
then
you might be at fault
in
matters of conscience.
Okay? He goes on to say,
Therefore, concerning the eating of things offered to
idols,
we know that an idol is nothing in
the world, and that there is no other
god but one.
(08:13):
For even if there are so called gods,
either in heaven or on earth, as there
are many gods and many idols,
yet for us there is one God, the
Father, of whom all things
and for all things
in him one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom
are all things and through whom we live.
So he's speaking of the primacy of Christ.
(08:34):
And the primacy, there is only one God.
We understand that as Christians. That's
his point. However, there is not in everyone
that knowledge. For some, with consciousness of the
idol, until now eat it as a thing
offered to an idol, and their conscience, being
weak, is defiled.
But food does not commend us to God,
for neither if we eat, are we the
(08:55):
better are are we the better,
nor if we do not eat, are we
the worse.
But beware, lest somehow the liberty of yours
become a stumbling block to those who are
weak.
For if anyone sees you who have a
knowledge eating
in an idol's temple,
will not the conscience of him who is
weak be emboldened to eat those things offered
(09:17):
to idols?
And because of your knowledge, shall the weak
brother perish for whom Christ died?
But when you thus sin against the brethren
and wound their weak weak conscience, you sin
against Christ.
Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I
will never again eat meat, lest I make
my brother stumble. Okay. So he is presenting
(09:40):
this
this principle of edification
over gratification.
The gratification here would be the knowledge
that food sacrificed to idols
is harmless.
Nothing that goes in the body defiles, Jesus
said. It's what comes out of a man
that defiles.
(10:00):
So, the food itself,
even if it were actually sacrificed to idols.
Now, for us, this might be,
they actually had temples
where they sacrificed
these were pagan temples, where they sacrificed
meat
to pagan idols,
and then they sold it in the marketplace.
And, when they did that, Christians would go
(10:21):
to the marketplace and they would buy
food.
And sometimes it actually was labeled for them
that it had been sacrificed to idols. And
so, Paul is saying, you may know
that there's nothing wrong with this food. It's
just meat. There is only one God ultimately
anyway.
(10:42):
But, if you eat this meat,
and your brother, your Christian brother
sees you doing that in freedom,
because you have the freedom of this knowledge,
if he sees you do that and then
he does it
contrary to his own conscience,
because he doesn't know that, and he
(11:04):
because he doesn't know it, he doesn't believe
it. He believes
that there's something actually wrong with that food.
If it has been sacrificed to idols, then
there's something
definitely wrong with it. And if my Christian
brother eats it, well, okay.
I might eat it too. But, if I
eat it too, I don't really believe that
because I don't know it. And so, I
(11:26):
then have sinned against my own conscience.
That's what he's saying here. Now, we don't
have
temples,
usually,
at Kroger
or Publix
or Aldi's,
and we don't have,
cases, food cases that are labeled
sacrifice to idols or sacrifice to Satan. And
(11:46):
most of us, if we saw that, we
wouldn't buy that meat anyway,
even knowing what we know.
But if we did
and a Christian brother saw it, or
say we invited a fellow Christian
to our home
and let him know that we had bought
this
meat that had been sacrificed to Satan,
(12:08):
but it's okay,
because there's only one God.
If he then
ate that meat,
and it offended his conscience,
and he sinned before God,
then we would be culpable
to some degree. Now, this is what the
church calls a scandal, and I'm getting a
little bit ahead of myself, because we'll talk
(12:29):
about this in-depth
in the next episode. But, the principle here
is edification over gratification.
And, what he's saying here is
that I need to be aware
that
my gratification
is less important
than what is good
for my fellow Christian.
(12:51):
Now, how does this play out practically? Because
we don't usually see meat sacrificed
to Satan or to idols.
So,
let's just look at it in a personal
kind of way.
The spirit here
is sort of,
juxtaposed,
we'll say,
(13:11):
against the flesh.
So, what is good for my spirit
is not going to
satisfy my flesh very often. And, the church
calls these passions. So, when our passions, when
our fleshly desires are out of control,
when we don't have self control, when we're
not prudent, when we're not temperate,
(13:33):
then we have sinned
in lust,
really. We save the lust word for sex,
but I'd like for you to think of
lust as anything that you feel compelled to
do in your flesh.
Meaning, something that gratifies my flesh. If I'm
habitually lazy,
(13:54):
if I'm not motivated,
that could be a satisfaction of the flesh
against the spirit
of temperance and prudence and self discipline, all
of those things. So, the spirit versus the
flesh. And, in those decisions, we want to
make
a decision for the spirit over the flesh.
(14:14):
And, that is part of what Jesus
freed us
from. We talked about that last week. Freedom
from is freedom for, and the reason we
want to cooperate with the Holy Spirit
in
freeing ourselves
practically and literally
(14:34):
through our habits
of those kinds of slaveries
is in order that we can
be free to serve God
with a good conscience
and with all of our time, all of
our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
So, when we have a decision that involves
liberty versus legalism,
(14:56):
We want to choose freedom.
But if my freedom
is going to be more of a self
gratification,
that it is a spiritual one,
especially if it's going to offend a Christian
brother or sister,
then I need to reevaluate
that decision with the Holy Spirit.
(15:17):
Now, you can see
just with these first two principles,
why
Christian freedom is a matter of maturity and
it's a matter of love, because it takes
into consideration
both what is good for me and what
is good for my neighbor. Therefore, we have
loved both ourselves and our neighbor, as the
primary two commandments say. And in doing that,
(15:39):
we have loved God with all of our
heart, soul, mind, and strength.
But it's not a matter of a hard
and fast rule. What do I mean?
Let's take an example that I had in
the community this week, and actually I had
this also in a one on one consultation.
Someone asked specifically
about their habit of doomscrolling.
(16:02):
And I know this person to be a
highly disciplined,
very conscientious
person.
And
she was lamenting that she spends a couple
of hours in the evenings
scrolling on her phone before bed.
And so I kinda probed a little bit.
The way she presented it was that's all
(16:23):
she does all day, And and I I
thought I knew better because I kinda know
her pretty well. So I started to probe
a little bit and ask for some detail.
And what I discovered was at about 08:00,
when all of the chores of the day
are done, everyone has finished their stuff for
the day, and they are starting to wind
down, and they are relaxing and getting ready
(16:44):
for bed, she likes to scroll her phone
or watch TV.
And she felt that two hours was just
too long.
Well, I also know this person to actually
be enslaved
to all these other arbitrary rules in her
life and in her heart.
So, in that situation,
(17:04):
I advised
that she just let herself enjoy the two
hours of doomscrolling.
It's not going to hurt anything. She's already
completed all of her chores, all of her
responsibilities.
It's a matter of relaxation for her, and
it was also tied to happy memories
with a husband who had died.
So, you can see how what might
(17:26):
be important for one person
is not good for another in a different
situation. So, this is super subjective,
and why it's a matter of Christian maturity,
and why it's important that we evaluate
the context
and the specifics of each situation, so that
we are not imposing
onerous
(17:47):
rules and expectations
that God never imposes himself.
So if I had said to her,
you need to put your phone away
at 08:00
and read something holy,
I mean, that that might be good, but
it probably would not be good for her
because she's already enslaved to these ideas of
(18:09):
what makes herself
a good mother, a good Christian, a good
Catholic.
So she needed more freedom,
not more discipline.
And because she needs more freedom,
I advised her to just enjoy the doomscrolling.
So it's two hours, and I know as
I say that, there's some of y'all going,
I can't believe she did that.
(18:30):
But I myself practice this.
When I have a full day of consults
and I'm finished,
I eat dinner. My husband, bless him, has
usually fixed dinner on those days because I
I don't have the time.
I eat dinner, and I am a total
noodle. I don't I'm not thinking very well
because I'm tired.
(18:51):
I'm just tired.
And so,
I usually lie down somewhere. I'm either reading,
I'm scrolling my phone, I'm watching TV.
So it's a lot of time
that most people would look at me and
say, what a waste.
But if you knew how many hours I
worked six days a week,
if you knew the amount of work that
I get done,
(19:12):
it probably would not be an issue for
you.
But, for someone who is
naturally,
temperamentally,
and by personality,
less conscientious,
they might need a little more discipline.
So, you can see how this is a
subjective area, and it's a matter of Christian
maturity rather than a legalistic rule, which is
(19:33):
something like,
you get fifteen minutes on your phone every
day no matter who you are and no
matter what is going on in your life.
Because anything else
is laziness and it is a waste of
time and God wants you to redeem every
second.
Now, the book of Shirok
actually tells us that God provides
things for us
(19:54):
on Earth and in the world and in
our lives
to give us some relief.
That's what the Sabbath is for. We talked
about that last week. That's one of those
days
that most people consider a luxury that is
actually a discipline.
It's a rest that we need, and God
knows we need it. So, that's a subjective
area, but that's an actual
(20:15):
literal example of something that I bumped up
against just this week.
What about meat on Fridays? Now, in the
community, I asked the question, what is something
that you practice in your Catholic faith
that offends
other Catholics?
Now, this is going to be where the
rubber meets the road, because this is where
(20:35):
we have real difficulty
in making decisions
that are healthy for ourselves and the people
around us, while also considering other people's consciences.
What about meat on Fridays? Now, the church
advises
because it's an ancient Christian practice
that we give up meat on Fridays
(20:57):
in observance
of Jesus' passion,
but it doesn't command that we have to.
And it also advises that if we don't
give up meat, that perhaps we give up
something else as
a gift of alms, as a self sacrifice,
but it's completely up to us.
(21:19):
The church gives us the choice
in the same way that the church allows
us to receive the Eucharist either on the
tongue
or in the hand. And we're instructed how
to do both of those things
in case we choose one or the other.
Another example someone mentioned over in the community
was
(21:39):
a female
who lectures
and is an extraordinary minister
who offends
other Catholics
because she's female.
Now, that's another area. Now, I have my
own preference there.
I have my own opinion,
but I would never impose that opinion
(22:01):
on anyone else because the church doesn't.
The church allows the pastor,
under his bishop,
to make that decision for his own parish.
And so, we need to be very careful
in stepping in with these arbitrary
rules and judgments
against
fellow Christians, fellow Catholics,
(22:22):
who are making different choices that the church
allows.
Now, that's a whole different thing
than
our Catholic practices
that offend,
say,
non
Christians.
We're going to do a whole lot of
things that offend people that are not Christian.
They don't
(22:47):
capitulate
to them
would be to deny our own faith
in many, many cases.
For instance, here's one that came up in
the community.
Contraception
and natural family planning.
Now, I have experienced this in my own
life. When I came into the Catholic church,
I was
(23:08):
scandalized
by learning
the science behind
the pill.
I learned
because of my excellent catechesis
under
my mentor,
my godfather,
I learned
that the pill is actually abortifacient.
(23:30):
And it broke my
heart.
All I could think is for all those
years that I had contracepted,
how many of my babies
have
I possibly lost?
It broke my heart. I
was so convicted.
But at the same time, my husband is
(23:51):
almost a decade older than I am, and
he had just changed jobs. And so he
was terrified
that I might get pregnant and then it
was just
and he wasn't Catholic.
So I was coming into the church.
He wasn't Catholic.
I learned that contraception,
(24:12):
the pill specifically, is abortifacient,
and I wanted to quit immediately.
But I knew that if I did that,
it was going to scandalize
my Christian husband
to the point that he probably
might never enter the Catholic church and receive
(24:33):
the Eucharist and the other sacraments and all
those things that I knew
were best for him.
So, here is
a perfect example of what the heck do
we do.
Here's what I did.
I went to my priest and I laid
the whole thing out. I said, I just
discovered
that the pill is contraception,
(24:54):
or the contraception of the pill is abortifacient.
I need to get off of it. I
need to get off of it right away.
But if I do that, it's going to
terrify my husband. He's going to be very
angry. It's going to cause a rift in
our marriage,
and I really believe
that it might prevent him from ever considering
(25:16):
coming into the Catholic Church ever.
And my priest, to his credit, said to
me,
Pray
about this,
and don't stop using the pill yet.
And it was tough. But
luckily, first of all, I had a practice
(25:36):
of daily scripture
and daily prayer,
and therefore I trusted God to handle the
situation for me. So I went to him,
and I said, you know the situation.
You know what I've just learned. You know
his heart. You know my heart. You know
I would do this in a second
(25:56):
if I didn't also have to consider him
and his salvation
and his eventual
hopeful
entry into full communion with the Catholic church.
So I am asking you
to intervene here
in whatever way
you think is necessary.
(26:17):
And at the time, I was thinking maybe
he would just speak to him through me,
like maybe I would and I did. I
communicated
to him that the pill was abortifacient.
And, I mean, he was staunchly,
You're not quitting that pill.
So,
I did what the priest
advised.
I went to God. I received
encouragement
(26:38):
in that and an assurance that He would
handle it.
And it was only about a month
when
I lost
my paying job.
I was laid off.
And my husband who had been working
ten hours overtime
at his
job, they not only
(26:59):
cut back all of the overtime at the
the company, but they also cut his hours
in half.
So we went from two and a half
incomes to a half of an income,
And, we couldn't afford the pill.
It was $40 a month, and we couldn't
afford it.
And, I knew immediately, although, I mean, we
were eating from the food pantry, we were
(27:20):
poe. It was
difficult
to go from two and a half incomes
to a half of one, but I knew
that was an answer from God about that
prayer.
And so I just hunkered down,
and I made it work with the budget.
But we did not buy the pill anymore
because we couldn't afford it. And my husband
(27:41):
was the first to say, that needs to
go.
Because I had told him about natural family
planning, and I had shown him the science
that it's actually more
effective than the pill anyway. And, it's not
carcinogenic.
It's
natural to your body. All the perks, you
know, of natural family planning. But, you know,
we've been so conditioned
(28:03):
in western culture, but also just in our
families,
in in life in general,
that
children are not a blessing.
And so we postpone having children children way
too long,
perhaps,
for some people.
But also, the whole natural family planning thing
(28:25):
is just it can be scandalous to family
members who don't understand it, who haven't been
brought up that way, who have not learned
anything about it, who hear that you're doing
it and they
they believe automatically you're gonna have 14 kids
and maybe you want 14 kids. That's great.
But if you don't, that's what natural family
planning is for.
(28:46):
I mean, there's lots of of
issues
that
have to be brought to bear when we're
making such decisions.
But my point is, here,
I was concerned
with my husband, my marriage, first of all,
but also his
his receiving eventually
(29:07):
the sacraments and coming into full communion with
the church. I wanted that to happen, and
I knew that if I
offended his conscience
in that way
of just abruptly stopping the pill
after knowing and hearing his expressions of both
fear and anxiety and and even anger over
(29:29):
it,
that I might put a stumbling block, which
is what Paul calls it, in front of
my husband and his faith. And so, I
went to God with the situation. I I
trusted him to take care of it, and
he did in a way that it was
difficult. But it was an answer to prayer,
and we haven't been back on it. I
mean, that was
(29:50):
decades ago, and we haven't been back on
the pill since then.
So my point here is
we have to think about
the
gratification
and the edification
together. What is the most edifying thing over
what is most gratifying? For me, what would
have been most gratifying is that I get
(30:10):
off the pill immediately and never take another
one. But what was more edifying
to both myself and my husband
was that I wait on God to bring
about the circumstances
that would allow us to do that together.
It edified me because it strengthened my faith.
It deepened my faith. I couldn't believe it
when God did what He did. And even
(30:32):
though it was difficult, I knew it was
an answer to prayer, and that convinced me
that He would take care of us even
though we were poe and we only had
half an income. And He did.
And thankfully, he did it after we had
practiced natural family planning for some time
so that we were comfortable enough to never
go back to any sort of contraception.
(30:54):
And by that time, well, that's a whole
other story.
But you may
have chosen
to live according to the teachings of the
Catholic church, as I wanted to do in
this area.
And you're going to offend people by that.
But this is one area in which Paul
(31:17):
tells us
we are supposed to judge
other Christians' fruit.
So when you're looking at
situations
that call for
Christian freedom
in our decision making,
we want to make sure that we're choosing
(31:37):
freedom over
legalism
and edification
over
gratification.
But under that, edification
versus gratification, we also want to consider
whether or not this Christian
or this Catholic
is actually living according to
(31:58):
the premise that Jesus is their Lord.
If they claim to be a Christian,
but they're not living under Jesus' authority,
you might take a different tack
than you would for instance, if my husband
were non Christian,
like,
not even necessarily atheist, but he just wasn't
practicing anything, and I was the only one
(32:19):
in the family, I might have taken a
different
a different
route.
I don't know. But he he had his
own faith, and it was a real faith,
and he really practiced it.
And I could see that if I stepped
out and did this on my own, that
it was going to offend his faith
(32:41):
in a way that was harmful.
And so I had to really weigh that
decision.
And this is the thing, God wants us
to.
He wants us to
engage
our Christian freedom,
our wills,
and our intellect,
and our love in making decisions. He
(33:03):
loves humans.
He wants us to do that
because
in part it helps us grow into
a deeper love, a more authentic love for
both ourselves and others,
and for Him.
But it also grows us in Christian maturity.
And so, we're likely to make some mistakes
(33:24):
or some errors
in
trying to wrestle with these kinds of decisions.
But, understand
that grace
gives you that freedom
to make errors
and to make mistakes.
It's part of what allows us
(33:44):
to step out and take a bit of
a risk when we're making these kinds of
decisions
without the fear of going to hell.
So, judge that as
you will, but
that was
an example of a decision that I made
that was
strictly against the rule
(34:06):
of no contraception,
at least temporarily,
that led to
the best possible outcome.
And it was because I was weighing both
my gratification
and my husband's edification.
Now, when you're practicing something like NFP
or
not
(34:26):
eating meat on Fridays, whatever your practices are,
if you've chosen to do that out of
love for God, for your neighbor, whatever,
you're going to offend some other people.
You're just going to. They're not going to
understand. If they're not Christian,
then they're not living according to the same
worldview as you. They don't understand, and so
(34:49):
offending them is necessary
for you to practice your faith.
If you're
if you're offending
a non Catholic,
a non Catholic is not living according to
the same
principles and rules always, especially in these areas
of contraception,
(35:10):
of say alcohol
use or non use.
That was actually a big issue
where
as growing up as a Baptist, that was
a no no. You don't drink alcohol at
all, ever, for any reason. Now that has
relaxed quite a bit over the last several
decades since I've
(35:32):
come into the Catholic church and been Catholic.
And so now it's kind of a free
for all. But then it wasn't. And that
was
that for Catholics, I remember actually before I
even
had children, I was working at a company
where we had
a Catholic sales
man,
(35:52):
and he
I'm not sure. I mean, thinking back about
him, he was
because he was a salesman, he was constantly
entertaining
clients.
So, he would take them out. He would
take them to dinner.
They would drink. They would party. And here
I was a Baptist, you know. And I'm
like,
he's
Catholic?
(36:13):
I don't think I ever want to be
Catholic. Because to me, it just seemed
hedonistic.
It was so undisciplined
sounding and looking.
And so that might be an area, as
Catholics, that we really need to watch.
And we're not being hypocritical
as much as we're considering
(36:33):
the salvation of another Christian.
But still, you really have to weigh that.
What you might not do in public,
you are free to do in your home
because it's your home.
We don't want to be hypocritical. I'm not
saying that.
And I'm also not saying that you have
(36:53):
to give up everything
simply because it offends someone else.
We really have to know
and
at least evaluate as best we can who
we're dealing with and what the situation is
and what their faith is like. Do they
actually
live
under Christ and his lordship? And if they
(37:14):
do, okay, this might offend them, like, literally.
And I don't mean offense like I'm mad
about it. I mean offense like a stumbling
block to their faith
where they don't really believe it's okay for
them, but if they see you doing it
and then they do it, they've offended their
own conscience and therefore Christ. So you have
then you've become culpable
(37:34):
in offending
Christ
too. Because,
you know,
the maxim that Cain said about Abel, Am
I my brother's keeper? You know, yes. We
are. In the Christian faith, there is a
degree
to which we really need to be careful
to regard
our Christian brothers and sisters and their faith.
(37:58):
So we just need
to evaluate
those issues
as we're making certain decisions. And most of
us Catholics, you know, we'd have a glass
of wine at dinner at a restaurant and
never think a thing about it, and that's
fine. But getting drunk, getting sloshed,
partying
habitually,
those kinds of things, we have to be
(38:19):
careful about what kind of Christian witness
we are reflecting.
Because we
well, I'm getting ahead. I'm getting ahead because
that's actually
the topic of our next episode, so I
won't go too far on that. But here's
another
instance. Okay?
My parents,
now this is before I was Catholic, my
(38:39):
parents,
we always
traveled
back to my hometown for Christmas.
It was just a tradition. It was something
that we always gathered together at Christmas as
a family, and then when we moved away,
a state away,
we would go home
for Christmas. We would usually be there on
(39:00):
Christmas Eve and then into Christmas morning.
Well, the last year we did that,
that, my son, I only had one at
the time, and he was very young. I
think he might have been four.
And he wasn't awake yet. And we were
all awake and kinda waiting on him to
get up so we could do the Santa
thing. And I had bought the majority of
the gifts. I had wrapped them all. I
(39:21):
had loaded up the car.
I had done all that work.
But he wasn't awake yet, so I went
to get a shower.
And while I was in the shower,
he woke up,
went to the Christmas tree, and when I
came out of the shower,
they were opening presents.
And I don't remember if I said anything,
(39:44):
but I was so hurt,
and then I was mad.
And I determined from that day forward, we
are not gonna be home for Christmas.
I didn't want to make a stink out
of it because no one did anything maliciously.
No one was trying to hurt my feelings
or make me mad or offend me or
anything like that. I knew that.
(40:06):
But I determined this is a boundary that
I placed
for my own gratification
and even edification,
because
I knew that this would be an occasion
of sin for me.
If I continued
to
practice
going home as was the family tradition,
(40:30):
and that ever happened again,
oh, I was gonna be upset. So I
just determined we're not gonna do that anymore.
I didn't say anything. We came home,
but the next year, we didn't go home
for Christmas.
I know people. I work with them one
on one. I see their comments and their
questions over in the community. I work with
(40:51):
people who have
who are enslaved
or have been enslaved
to family traditions that no longer serve their
families.
Their own families.
And, their parents expect them to continue those
traditions,
and if they step back from them at
(41:11):
all, the parents are mad,
they're offended, and they're hurt.
But what is best for
the
the family
of these people,
their own families, not the extended family, but
their own families, their children,
their marriage,
(41:31):
I mean, it's not even counting the fact
that you have to travel.
And, my parents were divorced, so when we
went home, we also had to go to
two different houses
with two different sets of parents and step
parents. It was just
it was too much. So, there were lots
of reasons that it wasn't just the opening
of presents when I wasn't
(41:53):
there
and I couldn't be Santa. It wasn't just
that. There were several things that kind of
factored into it.
But, the point here is that I set
a new boundary.
We're not coming home for Christmas anymore.
Not on the day of or the day
before or the day after.
You can come here to our house,
(42:13):
or
we can delay it for a week, something
like that. But that cut down on a
lot of things. It kept us from having
to travel
six hours away
on a holiday that I really wanted to
be about us and our little family.
And that was appropriate.
That's my vocation.
(42:34):
My vocation is my marriage and my family,
not the extended family.
And yours is too, if you're married.
Your first priority is God and your relationship
to Him, and second one is your vocation.
If it's marriage, then your marriage and your
children.
And so I felt comfortable, even though I
(42:55):
really didn't even have that principle then, but
I did feel comfortable
guarding
the privacy and the the fun and the
time and the peace
of my own family.
And it it didn't cause too much of
a stink, to be honest. But in some
families, it really will, or it would, and
(43:16):
it has.
And if that's you,
first of all, keep in mind that priority.
But secondly,
in thinking about edification,
can you balance
what is edifying and what is gratifying?
(43:37):
In my case, I was able to do
that.
When it comes to your family,
what's best for your family
is
sometimes going to offend
your extended family.
Your boundaries,
your boundaries are always going to offend somebody,
usually.
(43:58):
But you probably
need them
in many of these instances
in order to guard your peace and your
time
and nurture your own family.
So,
do we offend
a fellow Christian, fellow Catholic when they're in
our family?
(44:18):
Well, sometimes, yes.
When it's a matter of boundaries,
when they're best for you and your family,
because that's who you're supposed to be concerned
about, not your extended family.
So, if they're upset with you, then they're
just gonna have to be upset. And, it's
not a matter of salvation
anyway.
Right? This is not a spiritual principle
(44:40):
like
contraception is.
Whether or not to meet with your family
on Christmas is not a dogma of the
church, it's not a doctrine of the church,
it's not a teaching of the church at
all. So, you're completely free to make decisions
in love
that are edifying and gratifying
(45:00):
and a matter of freedom
for yourself and your family.
And the rest of the everybody else is
just going to have to either get on
board or not.
If they're mad, they're just mad.
So,
the first principle
(45:21):
well, there's actually something else I wanna share.
So another area that can really help us
is
the Ignatian rules of discernment.
A couple of things to keep in mind.
So first of all,
is it a matter of freedom
or legalism?
If it's a matter of freedom,
(45:41):
then choose freedom over legalism.
You don't want to just be keeping arbitrary
rules simply because they're arbitrary rules and everybody's
always done it and it's a tradition and
we should just always do it then. Right?
If it stops working for you, then you
get to choose. You're free in Christ to
make those decisions.
Then evaluate.
Is this a matter of edification or gratification?
(46:03):
Is this good for me?
Is it better that I satisfy
the spirit
or the flesh here?
And what about the other people around me?
How is this going to affect them? Is
this edifying for them or is it simply
gratifying for me? Or vice versa, is it
simply gratifying for them or is this edifying
(46:24):
for me?
If I'm only doing it to please them,
but it's not edifying for me, meaning to
build up,
to nurture, if it's not edifying for me,
and I'm only doing it to please them,
then I don't want to choose that. I
want to do the thing that's edifying,
if I can.
And then always
(46:44):
keep in mind
the priority of your vocation.
Your first vocation is to God and your
relationship
with Him, and edifying that,
meaning
giving God the priority over your time and
your energy. So for me, that means prayer
in the morning. But that doesn't mean you
can't do prayer at night.
(47:05):
Right?
That vocation is first, and then your secondary
vocation would be either religious life, singlehood,
or marriage or
priesthood.
Whatever that secondary vocation is, that's your next
priority.
That's who you consider
in making the decisions. Not the in laws,
(47:27):
not the extended family, not the friend or
the neighbor across the street, and not the
people in the parish.
That's
the vocation is the the next consideration.
And then we can look at these rules
for discernment. Now Ignatius,
he wrote all kinds of writings on this,
(47:47):
and so I have distilled them
into
a quick
reference, we'll say. So we want to check,
is it according to scripture? Is it scriptural
or at least not against scripture?
Particularly in the gospels.
Does the church allow it and or encourage
it? That would be a yes then. If
(48:08):
it's biblical,
that would be a yes.
If the church allows it, that would be
another yes. Is it reasonable? Does it make
sense according to reason, enlightened by faith? Is
it in line with what God has already
been doing in my life?
For instance, is this thing according to
(48:28):
my gifts and spiritual gifts and temperament and
personality?
For instance, here's an example.
When I was trying to decide
whether or not to teach RCIA, now it's
OCIA,
But a couple of years ago, I stepped
back from that.
And it was because I was traveling so
much on the weekends, and the weekends were
actually the best time for the people in
(48:50):
the class
to participate in the class. And I could
only teach it on Wednesday evenings because that
was when I was always home.
And I was traveling on the weekends, and
so I wrestled with that for a couple
of years. I taught on Wednesday nights for
a couple of years, but I could see
that we would get a lot more people
involved in those classes if we could do
(49:12):
it between the masses on Sunday, and I
was not able to be there
and teach
often enough
to be reliable.
And so this was one of the considerations.
Did it make sense according to reason enlightened
by faith? Is it in line with what
he has already been doing in your life?
Well, yes, because I had taught RCIA for
(49:33):
sixteen years.
So I could have said yes,
but was it edifying?
It was gratifying for me
because I was able to use my gifts,
but was it edifying? It wasn't for the
people who wanted to participate
but had a harder time doing it on
a a weeknight than they would have on
Sunday when they're already participating at mass.
(49:55):
And so that was one of the considerations.
Another one of those quick rules for discernment,
does it bring you peace and does it
feel peaceful? This is a big one.
Your greatest gift from God
is, besides salvation, eternal salvation, is peace.
So, if you're not peaceful about it, then
(50:17):
perhaps delay making the
decision until you do have more peace about
it, pray about it a little longer, evaluate
it a little more according to all the
principles,
and ultimately for me, if I don't feel
peaceful about it, I won't do it. I
was able,
in the whole contraception issue, I had peace
(50:37):
about that because I knew
from my relationship with God that He would
take care of that. I knew He would.
And so I just trusted Him. And it
took about a month. But, man, when He
moved, He moved.
And he did exactly well, I mean I
didn't expect him to do it the way
he did it. But I knew that he
would take care of it, and he did.
So I had peace about it, even though
(50:58):
technically speaking, I was actually breaking a doctrine
of the church.
And my priest told me I could.
So that was one of those kind of
gray areas that we really want to practice
our Christian maturity in making those decisions.
Here's another one of those rules for discernment.
Is it unrealistically
radical?
Am I actually capable,
(51:20):
literally capable of doing it? For instance,
do I want to sing in the choir,
but I can't carry a tune?
Do I want a teaching ministry,
but my spiritual gifts actually lie in the
area of intercession
and encouragement
and not in teaching at all? I don't
even like to read much.
(51:42):
Don't like theology.
Right? That would be excessive demands. That would
place excessive demands on you
to be able
to teach when it's not in your spiritual
gift mix
or you have very little interest in it.
So if someone comes to you and pressures
you to take a class at church, but
(52:03):
you don't feel equipped for it,
then perhaps you reevaluate.
If you have peace about it, that might
be something else. Are you trying to do
it to gratify them? Or do you just
wanna do it out of gratification?
Maybe it's visible and you like that idea,
but it's not edifying, not to you because
it's not in your gift mix, and it's
not edifying to the people that you're teaching
(52:24):
because you're probably not gonna be very effective
at it. Right? So you can see how
all of this is very subjective.
And to impose a rule, everybody who's asked
should teach a class,
right, that wouldn't be it wouldn't be right
or fair. And it it wouldn't be holy
either because the the goal here is the
glory of God, is helping people grow to
(52:44):
their fullest potential. That's the whole point
of Christian freedom.
Here's another. Does it require an abandonment of
my duty and station in life? So duty
and vocation is another consideration, which I already
shared a moment ago.
And then consistency.
Is it consistent with my gifts and the
direction that God has led me in the
(53:05):
past?
So all of those, that's just sort of
a synopsis of the Ignatius
rules for discernment when we're trying to make
decisions.
But combine that with all of these other
principles,
and perhaps
perhaps you can make sort of a checklist
to kinda go through.
Is it
(53:25):
liberty or legalism?
Is it edification or gratification?
Is it in the priorities of my vocation?
Is it according to the rules of discernment?
As you're making decisions, if you keep those
things in mind, you're gonna be a whole
lot more free
to make the decision that is about freedom
for you and freedom for the people around
(53:46):
you. And then if you have to offend
someone with your boundary
or your decision,
then you can know that you're you're safe
to do so
because you have considered and you have weighed,
seriously weighed
all of those issues in your decision making.
And then when we have decided, we simply
(54:07):
entrust God
with all that we have weighed
and and received his input on. We step
out in faith, and we do what we
feel like is the right thing to do.
And at that point, we have exercised our
Christian freedom. We have navigated
(54:31):
vocations. We've weighed the rules of discernment,
and we have come to the very best
decision that we can possibly make without having
a hard and fast rule.
And that is Christian freedom. That is navigating
Christian freedom. Next week, we're gonna talk about
a proposition.
We could call it a pattern or a
model. Paul said that I am all things
to all men in order to save some.
(54:54):
What did he mean by that? We'll talk
about that next week. I'm Sonya Corbitt. You
can find me and all of my resources,
all of my
my books, my masterclass,
the love heals
information,
talks on that, all my videos, everything at
sonyacorbett.com.
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