I recently finished my class on psychology and needless to say I did alright. I was surprised to find the subject matter quite interesting. Of particular interest to me was Pavlov's theory o conditioning. He was a noted psychologist who used a dog to prove his theory. In his famous experiment he conditioned the dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, because there was a connection between the bell and being fed. What I found most interesting is that conditioning not only works positively, it works negatively.

All of this got me thinking of the very first words of the book of Psalms which we're currently studying. "How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night." (NAS) A couple of bulletins ago we talked about sin and now I want to tie it into this theory of conditioning. You see a man is first startled by sin; then it becomes pleasing, then easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then uncontrollable. Through the conditioning of sin a man becomes impenitent, then obstinate, then lost!

We use conditioning as a method to deal with various kinds of things that present difficulties. It could be a fear, or something related to a particular job that is unpleasant, or any number of things that a person might want to do, but finds difficult because of some unpleasantness or worse. For example, a medical student may find it almost impossible to make it through an autopsy without fainting. But, little by little, that same student can become conditioned to withstand the sight, sound and smell of all sorts of unpleasant things. A horse might shy at sudden sounds, but little by little, it can be conditioned to ignore the sounds and remain under control.

On the other hand it is entirely possible to become conditioned to accept sin and unholy things, through small bits of exposure to them. We don't see our thinking change, yet what might have offended us at one point may have become perfectly acceptable later, this transition happening because we were exposed to that sinful or unholy thing a little at a time. The movie, Gone With The Wind, created quite a stir when it first came out because right at the end, Clark Gable had a line with one curse word in it. It's the only curse word in the entire movie. Today, movies are filled with much worse words than the one used in that movie. Nobody seems to notice. Have we become conditioned?

In file early years of television, censors made sure that family values and morals weren't trampled by "artistic freedom." Some said that censorship robbed us of better entertainment, more real-to-life programming, and something better than the plastic characters in nonsensical stories. So, instead, today we open up our homes so that we can enjoy everything from the worst sailor's mouth, to nudity, to open sex, to you-name-it. How did we get here from where we started? Could it be conditioning? Books, magazines, music, and every other form of entertainment have treated us the same way. People call it more fitting to the times, or some other description, but the truth is that if it's sinful and unholy, it doesn't matter what _You call it. Most people in American society have been conditioned to think nothing of things that would have brought a blush of shame to the cheeks of earlier generations. Today, we don't even know how to blush, much less be ashamed. There is only one way to undo the conditioning that makes it easy to accept the sinful: the repentance of a broken and contrite heart, cleansed by God's forgiving grace, and determined to seek those things that are above!! Eric