Right! Anything can become evil to us. The question is – how do we identify it before that happens – before it becomes evil to us or we entertain sinful thoughts? We subconsciously accept things God tells us He hates like divorce and homosexuality, and label ‘loving our neighbor’ as being nice and not saying anything that might hurt their feelings. That isn’t love. I recently told a 21 year old member of our family that he was being very judgmental toward someone, and I did it very gently and lovingly, but he was furious at first. Now, weeks later, he is just beginning to speak to me again – very little and very superficial, nothing meaty yet. I am waiting for his apology and to see repentance because he is a Christian, not just claiming to be one. I told him one day that I love him enough to tell him when he is making a mistake even if it means losing his ‘friendship’ (for lack of a better word at the moment).
But we also subconsciously accept music that is not only not pleasing to our Heavenly Father, but we don’t care. I was a country music fan years ago and when the songs overwhelmingly started to promote adultery/fornication, drunkenness (“Jose Cuervo, you are a friend of mine”), and on and on, I was convicted of the evil I was subjecting myself to and not only making it more difficult to resist evil, I was wasting time that could have been spent communicating with my Savior. It is the sneaky little things we don’t notice that become a danger to our spiritual health.
We are to sound the trumpet of warning and steer someone clear of spiritual danger just as we would warn them if they were about to get run over by a bus.
