The Right and Wrong Use of Self
By Christian Union
WHEN a man has gone astray, he has lost the right use of himself. He has not necessarily lost all will power, nor all intellectual power. And when a man is recalled from wandering, and it is said he is born again—a generic term that stumbled Nicodemus and has a great many theologians since that day—all we mean is that from his wrong use of himself he turns toward the right use of himself. Going in the wrong direction, he changes his direction; using his moral sensibilities in the wrong way, they are changed too. He is brought to recognize a higher standard of living, body, mind, and soul, and enters upon that better understanding. Then we say he has been recalled by his shepherd; he has returned. He was in the wrong pasture; he was in peril; he has heard the voice, and been called, and is now restored to the shepherd and bishop—that is, care-taker—of his soul. Every organ of the body is, according to the design of God in nature, good. It is wrong use that produces evil. Every faculty of the human mind and soul is right and needful to the body and soul, to social relations and universal truth. But the wrong use of right things is sinfulness. It may be in a single act, or in a continuity of acts until they become habit; then it is character; and a bad character is nothing but an automatic practice of wrong uses induced by individual acts of sin.