When you give your mental assent to any idea, good or bad, you associate yourself with that idea and you incorporate it into your consciousness—to the extent that you realize it. When you read a passage of Scripture you will, if you assent to it mentally, incorporate it into your life to that extent.
This law, of course, works the other way too. If when you hear or read of some piece of injustice or cruelty, you approve it mentally by thinking that “it serves him right,” you are associating yourself with that deed, and making it a part of your own life, even though you do not speak a word. It is the mental assent that counts.
Give your assent only to Truth.
For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my numbers, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity….So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God…. (Romans 7:22, 23, 25).
Regardless of the fact that we may ascribe to a certain theology or morality, if we give mental approval to something contrary to that theology, then we are not practicing what we believe. That mental approval is more critical than our “beliefs”. In fact, it will override our “beliefs” and undermine them and our ability to follow our beliefs. In biblical language this is called a stumbling block. Such mental assent will trip us and make us fall from our true path.
So, when our selfish human spirit is causing us to mentally accept something contrary to our faith, we must turn to God in thought, word and deed. Then we will rise above our selfish wrongness and discover selfless rightness (righteousness). Then we must follow that path to find the garden God created for us.
Seeking rightness,
Z gardener
Good Morning Garden 
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