"If we rationalize our problems when He points them out, we will spend less and less time meditating because we won't want to face God in that area of our lives"
About this Quote
Stanley’s line lands like a pastoral warning dressed up as psychological insight: the real danger isn’t the problem; it’s the mental maneuvering we do to keep it from costing us anything. “Rationalize” is the tell. He’s not condemning reason so much as the self-serving kind of reasoning that turns conviction into a courtroom where we always win. The quote assumes a God who actively “points” things out, and a believer who knows the nudge is real but would rather negotiate than obey.
The subtext is about drift. Stanley sketches a familiar spiritual feedback loop: evade accountability, then avoid the setting where accountability tends to show up. Meditation (in his evangelical register, sustained prayerful attention to God) becomes collateral damage. Not because meditation is hard, but because it’s clarifying. If a person keeps defending the same corner of their life, the silence starts to feel less like comfort and more like exposure. So they shorten it. Skip it. Replace it with busyness that can be baptized as “productive.”
Context matters: Stanley preached to a broad, TV-era audience formed by therapeutic language but hungry for moral direction. This sentence borrows the language of cognition (“rationalize”) to make an old theological claim newly legible: sin isn’t merely rule-breaking; it’s self-deception with a spiritual cost. The intent isn’t to shame private struggle; it’s to name a protective habit that quietly reshapes a life. You don’t stop believing first, in Stanley’s telling. You stop wanting to be seen.
The subtext is about drift. Stanley sketches a familiar spiritual feedback loop: evade accountability, then avoid the setting where accountability tends to show up. Meditation (in his evangelical register, sustained prayerful attention to God) becomes collateral damage. Not because meditation is hard, but because it’s clarifying. If a person keeps defending the same corner of their life, the silence starts to feel less like comfort and more like exposure. So they shorten it. Skip it. Replace it with busyness that can be baptized as “productive.”
Context matters: Stanley preached to a broad, TV-era audience formed by therapeutic language but hungry for moral direction. This sentence borrows the language of cognition (“rationalize”) to make an old theological claim newly legible: sin isn’t merely rule-breaking; it’s self-deception with a spiritual cost. The intent isn’t to shame private struggle; it’s to name a protective habit that quietly reshapes a life. You don’t stop believing first, in Stanley’s telling. You stop wanting to be seen.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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