by Carla Raley

Created on: October 21, 2010

“The greatest security against sin is to be shocked at its presence”  (Thomas Carlyle)

 For many years, I lived an oxymoron called “the worldly Christian” life.  I was raised by parents who took me to church Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night, and kept me well insulated against impurity.  I married at the age of eighteen, a very innocent young woman still because they had guarded me well.

 But around the age of twenty, my husband and I decided we were ready to start a family, and I quit my job outside the home and began a home day care center so that when our baby arrived, I would be able to stay home with her.

Keeping a houseful of children kept me pretty busy until naptime came.  I had a couple of hours to kill, and I soon discovered soap operas.  Before long I was watching three of them.  Even more than thirty years ago, soap operas were pretty rank, but I loved them.  I looked forward to them every day, and dwelt on the lives of those fictitious people.

I also began to take women’s magazines; my husband and I went to the movies and rented them to watch at home, not worrying about the ratings.  I have always been an avid reader, and I was not careful what I bought or checked out of the library.  After all, I was an adult, and I could handle it, right?

My thought life was filled with these impure things.  I repeated what I had seen on TV and read in books.  I told and laughed at crude jokes.  I enjoyed hearing things that the Bible means when it says in Ephesians 5:12 “It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret.”

But still, I thought I was alright.  I was still going to church every Sunday and Wednesday night.  I taught in children’s Bible classes and Mother’s Day Out programs.  I was very active, to the point that my children were sometimes left on their own while I did all these things with church.

 So when, in my late twenties and on into my thirties, my life took a turn for the worse, I was surprised and dismayed.  I had done everything right.  Hadn’t I?

 But if this was my fruit, then obviously I had not.  I had to get things turned around.  I told God I was going to start reading my Bible, and I would do whatever He wanted me to do, if He would just show me the way. 

 I know that God must just love it when we do that. 

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