Seared
Have you ever lost sensation in part of your body and then tried to do a familiar activity? It feels strange and awkward. Once, I lost sensation in one of my fingertips due to wearing a bandage and playing the piano became a strange experience. Have you tried walking on a foot that’s asleep? Or have you tried drinking from a straw after receiving oral anesthesia?
It’s a strange sensation, isn’t it, to lose that feeling. What causes it? Well, your body isn’t receiving the tactile feedback that it once did to the world around you. Things that you overlooked – like such as being able to feel your foot while walking — suddenly become glaring by their absence.
This idea of losing sensation is one that the Apostle Paul uses when describing those who would lead the church astray:
“The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.”
1 Timothy 4:1-2, NIV
What characterizes these “hypocritical liars” that Paul warns Timothy about? Why do they espouse the doctrines of demons? Because their consciences have been seared. The Greek word that Paul uses for “seared” is where we get our English medical term “cauterized.”
When we stop receiving sensations from our conscience, that is when it’s time to worry. Becoming blind to sins that used to bother us is a sign that we’re not in a good place spiritually.
If that is where you are today, rest assured that it’s not too late. Just as a foot that is asleep tingles and pricks as it wakes back up, our consciences can reawaken as well. Pray and ask God to awaken what has been asleep.
A Prayer
Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy, forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
“The Book of Common Prayer,” Proper 22, pg. 182
