Are you sure?
This bookmark will be removed from all folders and any saved notes will be permanently removed.
Messages—legitimate and illegitimate
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
Sometimes I get spam emails from what appear to be legitimate companies. But I can quickly see that they’re completely phony because they ask me to “confirm” personal information, like account numbers and passwords. So they aren’t hard to identify and expose. I know what legitimate email content should look like. And if an email doesn’t seem genuine, I can just delete it from my inbox.
Similarly, negative and hopeless thoughts may come to us, trying to fool us into thinking they are really describing us. Here are a few examples: “I think that the possible cause behind my illness, lack, injustice, stupidity, or (fill in the blank) is that I’ve lost God, or maybe God just doesn’t care for me.” Or, “I can’t help but resent so and so—he (or she) gets all the breaks.” “I just don’t understand God like I used to.” A common one: “I’m just getting old—that’s what’s wrong with me.” “If only I lived somewhere else or was around someone else, I’d be able to feel God’s goodness in my life.”
Do you notice how every single one of these messages, if you believed them, could make you feel separated from God’s goodness and love? Well, anything like that qualifies as what I like to think of as “mental spam.” But if you have one of these thoughts, that doesn’t make you a bad person. You don’t create them, so you’re no more responsible for them than you are for the spam that shows up in your email inbox.
Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.
