It is the thought-life that pollutes!

Mark 7:14-23

Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “All of you listen,” he said,“and try to understand. Your souls aren’t harmed by what you eat, but by what you think and say!” Then he went into a house to get away from the crowds, and his disciples asked him what he meant by the statement he had just made. “Don’t you understand either?” he asked. “Can’t you see that what you eat won’t harm your soul? For food doesn’t come in contact with your heart, but only passes through the digestive system.” (By saying this he showed that every kind of food is kosher.) And then he added, “It is the thought-life that pollutes. For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts of lust, theft, murder, adultery, wanting what belongs to others, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, pride, and all other folly. All these vile things come from within; they are what pollute you and make you unfit for God.”

Food for thought!

Jesus is teaching us that our problem are our thoughts, and our thoughts are our problem; The world we see and live in is the one we have created with our thoughts. It is from our thoughts that originate good and eveil like lust, theft, murder, adultery, wanting what belongs to others, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, pride, and all other folly. Why is this so? Well, every outward act of sin is preceded by an inward act of thought. Therefore, Jesus warns us of the danger of evil thought from which the evil action comes. 

We are all the products of our own thoughts. Whatever we think, that we become. For that reason, think and say only that which you wish to become true. Never for an instant admit that you are sick, weak, or ill unless you wish to experience these conditions, for the very thinking of them helps them to get a stronger hold upon you. Our whole thought current must be set in the direction of our life purpose. Holding the poverty thought keeps us in touch with poverty producing conditions.

It is the poverty attitude, the narrowness of our thought that has limited us. If we had larger and grander conceptions of life, of our birthright; if, instead of whining, crawling, grumbling, sneaking and apologizing, we were to stand erect and claim our kingship, demand our rich inheritance, the inheritance which is an abundance of all that is good and beautiful and true, we should live far completer, fuller lives.

Great teachers down through the ages have described the importance of our mind and of being master over our thoughts. Buddha said, “The mind is everything; what you think, you become.” Ramakrishna, the Indian mystic put it this way: “By the mind one is bound, by the mind one is freed…. He who asserts with strong conviction, ‘I am not bound, I am free,’ becomes free.” William James wrote, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.” And Jesus says, “It is the thought-life that pollutes. For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts of lust, theft, murder, adultery, wanting what belongs to others, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, pride, and all other folly. All these vile things come from within; they are what pollute you and make you unfit for God.”