Time out

I will be taking off a couple months in order to get caught up with myself. I'm tired and demoralized in my work--too many irons in the fire, too many battles that cannot be won, and priorities beginning to drift. At this moment I have two articles waiting to be revised for publication, two books in the works, three ongoing research projects--two awaiting analysis--and my regular teaching. In addition, I have four workshops and one peer-reviewed presentation proposal to get turned in. Tired just hearing it? Me, too.
What I really need to do for awhile is to preserve my health and enrich my mental health by taking some time for me. Walking, cooking, sleeping, kayaking--anything that is good for the soul.

So I will be stepping away from any regular contributions to this site for awhile.
Many blessings, and I will be back in April sometime.

Temptation #10

Have you ever thought it is a bizarre thing to take a shower before you get into a pool? Are people really all that dirty that they need to wash before they climb into a pool? Perhaps some people have poor hygiene, but do dirty people with body odor, dirty skin, or greasy hair really climb into a public pool?
While in Europe once, I was asked to bathe before I went into a sauna. Apparently, the owners wanted only clean, soapy perspiration in their sauna. It struck me as so strange that I was there to perspire out whatever toxins were in my body, which would turn me into a greasy, piggy-feeling person. But I was to be sure to wash first.

The last temptation in this series is the one we hear the least about in the gospels: the desire to get clean before we come to Jesus. Paul speaks about this in Romans, where he tells us that righteousness is a gift from God--it does not come from anything we can produce ourselves. He later wrote of all the indicators of righteousness that he had: circumcision, appropriate genealogical lines, education, and flawless observance of Levitical law. But, he wrote, Even more, I consider everything to be nothing compared to knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. To know him is the best thing of all. Because of him I have lost everything. But I consider all of it [man-made righteousness] to be garbage so I can get to know Christ. (Philipians 3:8).

Isaiah probably said it best: All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away (64:6).

So many of us hate to be caught looking bad. One of my friends always tidies up the house before the house cleaning service arrives. "I don't want them to think I live in squalor." So I chuckle and watch her scurrying around, emptying trash and making stacks of papers out of the litter everywhere.

It seems like we do this when we present ourselves to God. We'd like to be clean first so we have some shred of human dignity. Even though we're not all-knowing, perfect, clumsy, and short-sighted, we'd like to be the best we can be so we don't offend God. This could be a noble motive. But who can get clean enough first? Who can be spiritually scrubbed up enough so as to impress a perfect, righteous God? Not one.

Righteousness is a gift from God. Forgiveness and repentance are gifts. Justification and sanctification are gifts. The ability to turn toward God is a gift. We can do none of these things, but we waste time, trying to tidy ourselves up before we ask for Him to forgive, change, and empower us. We cannot afford to be separated from Jesus for even a moment. I think that God expects us to be much more human than we expect ourselves to be--and I don't think He is scandalized by our condition or our foibles nearly as much as we are.

God calls us to come to Him as quickly as we can, in whatever state we find ourselves. Then and only then, He will then will and do within us His good pleasure.

Temptation #9

And they all forsook Him and fled. Judas kissed Jesus and the mob of belligerent men with scowling faces rushed upon Him. Peter pulled out his sword to defend Jesus, but in his anxiety he missed the head of an assailant and only clipped off his ear. Apparently the mob did try to round up the disciples too, because the book of Mark tells us that someone grabbed for him and he rushed out of his coat, running away naked. Peter tried to stay nearby so he could at least see what was going to happen to Jesus. But in his fear of being dragged off and harmed like Jesus was, he denied even knowing who He was. Jesus turned and looked straight at him when the rooster crowed. But Peter still didn’t run forward to Jesus. He ran away, out into the darkness, where his knowledge of Jesus would do no good for His safety or cause, except to regenerate his own heart.

Terror makes people do things that they typically would not do. In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell points out that we make split-second decisions based on intuition. He goes on to say that people who are in the frenzy of fear do things that any normal, steady-thinking individual wouldn’t do in their wildest dreams. People in authority are challenged and frightened in the way they are approached and may harm that individual, just because the rush of adrenaline causes them to overreact. It may well be that were I to be approached on the street in the middle of the night by a man—a man wearing a trench coat and with hands in his pockets, perhaps to conceal a weapon—I would probably ascribe motivation to him that would place the worst possible construction on him. I would turn and run in a mad panic, sure that he would be Hannibal Lecter on the loose, even though he might just be out in the night buying medication for his sick child.

In his book entitled, The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker points out that when our anxiety take over, we are no longer able to competently appraise the degree of reasonable threat to ourselves. We either over- or under-react. Under the influence of fear, relationships have been severed, people have projected evil on their brothers and sisters, and all sorts of conspiratorial theories have been advanced. In essence, fear wreaks havoc in our lives.
Jesus knew this when He advised the disciples to stay awake and pray that they wouldn’t be tempted. This was a temptation to which they all fell prey. And it is one that most of us know rather well, too.

The problem with reacting from fear is that we take our eyes off Jesus. We begin to look at ourselves and how we can cope with our circumstances: our puny resources and broken capacity. We lose have that full-face contact with Him that is so needed in order to have peace. For if we take our eyes off of Jesus, we cannot have peace. Our behavior results from our survival reflexes, which is not the way the Kingdom of God works:

Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. (Matthew 6:25)

And fear not them that kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul. Matthew 10:28

For whoever wants to save his life, will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it (Mark 8:35)

Jesus knew we would be afraid. The world—life—can be a scary business for anyone. How many times in the Gospels did Jesus say, “Fear not?” We see it over and over and over. Pray that ye enter not into temptation. May we turn to God in our fears, see His face, and be fearless and tuned into His love for us, over and over again.

For He did not give you a spirit of fear, but a spirit of boldness and a sound mind. (Romans 8:15)