Article November 25, 1996 Issue

Defending against unhealthy mental suggestions

Robert A. Johnson

Suggestions are always coming to our thought to be accepted or rejected. Some we like. Some we don't. The thought that a good friend may invite us to dinner is the kind of suggestion we probably like. But a suggestion that we ought to walk through a swarm of raging hornets is obviously one we don't like. Most suggestions, though, are subtle, and often are not easy to identify as true or false—like the suggestions that pollen from certain plants can be irritating or that a little social drinking is OK so long as we don't overdo it.

Watchfulness about such suggestion is vital to one's health and well-being. Among the oldest and most insidious of all suggestions is the serpent's proposal to Eve that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make her and Adam like gods. The serpent used no force, but Eve, and then Adam, yielded to the deceptive promise of having power and wisdom separate from God. The allegory of Adam and Eve makes clear the sad outcome whenever one is deceived by the lie that both good and evil are real. This lying suggestion would obscure in our lives the great truth that God made man spiritual and wholly good, in His image and likeness.

It was this eternal fact of man's sonship with God that Christ Jesus understood without reservation. Knowing this, he rejected the suggestion that life, intelligence, power, could be separate from God and proved that God's will for man is complete freedom.

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