Keith & Andrea's Blog
Content with Who You Are
Keith, my problem is that my spouse says that I am selfish, but I buy her nice clothes and presents of jewelry, etc. I even joined the church because she wanted me to. And I know a lot of men don’t do things like that. But in spite of everything I do, she is very frustrated because she still thinks I’m selfish and is getting very discouraged because I still can’t see that I’m selfish (and I’m angry because she thinks that.) What does a man have to do to let a woman know he’s not selfish???! What does being selfish mean to you?
A lot of people (and couples) have wrestled with that one. When I made a serious commitment to become a Christian, I—like you— had always done a lot of “nice things” for my wife (and other people, too), and I was floored when we started getting more open with each other that she felt that I was selfish—even though I was sincere in wanting to be God’s person.
As I read the Bible and talked honestly to the other Christian men in a small men’s group about this, I learned that there is evidently sort of a “secret control room” in the center of my mind that has one seat (a throne). And whoever or whatever is sitting on that throne determines all my actions. If I am sitting in the control seat, then without even knowing it, virtually all of my conscious actions are intended to influence and control the people and situations in my life to make me happy or to enhance the image I want to project that will make people admire me or love me. And usually the desired outcomes I try to bring about lead to my getting more than my share of their time, attention and love in close relationships. But I can’t see that I am doing this because I do so many “nice things” for them.
In my case, I began to see that I was trying to project an image of being smarter, wealthier, sexier, and a better Christian than I felt I really was.
Then one day after an argument, I recalled a movie, The Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy, the young girl from Kansas, was in this huge hall in the land of Oz. She and her new friends (the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion) were standing before a huge frightening holographic image of the great Wizard. But Toto, Dorothy’s little dog, had run over to the side of the great room and pulled back the curtain, exposing a frumpy little old man sitting at the large control board that controlled the voice and movements of the huge projected image of a wondrously powerful Wizard with a deep booming voice. The little man (the actual wizard) tried to save himself from the shame of being revealed as only an ordinary man by having the booming voice say, “Don’t look behind that curtain!” But it was too late.
That’s exactly how I felt when my spiritual mentor helped me pull back the curtain of denial and see that I had been unable (or unwilling) to recognize and deal with my motivations for maneuvering to get outcomes I wanted from people and situations in my life. I was in denial not only about pretending to be more than I am, and a pretty unselfish husband, but also I had not been able to face that I am inordinately self-centered even as a Christian.
It finally got through to me that becoming a Christian meant putting God in the center control seat (of my life) so that His character revealed in Jesus and His values would determine my actions. Through study and prayer, but mostly by confessing my Sin of taking God’s role in the center of my own life (and the lives of people close to me) and then surrendering that place to God, I began the reorienting process of making decisions on the basis of what will help God transform me into the loving, giving, culpable, and vulnerable person I believe God made me to be.
And when I began consciously to surrender to God the throne room and control board of my life, I discovered what my wife had been trying to tell me—that just giving her nice clothes and jewelry (although a nice thing to do) also made her a more beautiful trophy wife, part of the larger-than-life image of myself I was unconsciously trying to project as a successful male in America.
I was horrified to discover this and it was only the beginning of discovering the double meaning of a lot of my “unselfish” behavior. This does not mean that I didn’t love my wife, or that I didn’t want to give her nice things because I love her. (Because that was true.) But it does mean that until I am willing to face, confess and make amends for my self-centered taking of God’s place by trying to ‘shape’ the world around me into my image, I can never be the intimate, happy and loving man I was made to be—and now want with all my heart to be.
This has already meant a revolution in the way I live my days and nights. In order to know how to love the people around me, I am having to learn to listen to them and discover what I can do to help them become all they want to be—instead of insisting they play their parts in my drama of being the “Wizard of Austin, Texas.”
Lord, I want to see more clearly where I am occupying the throne in my life in Your place. Help me to become aware when I am on that throne. Show me how to get out of Your way, and how you would have me love and free the people you put in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.”
Mt. 5:5, The Message
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
Mt 5:8, The Message
Blessed the man, blessed the woman, who listens to me, awake and ready for me each morning, alert and responsive as I start my day’s work. When you find me, you find life, real life, to say nothing of God’s good pleasure.
Prov. 8:32 The Message
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”
Teilhard de Chardin
The Incompleteness of “Total Honesty”
Keith, why would anyone who is a Christian hesitate to be totally honest? Isn’t it just a question of having the courage to risk rejection? Can you think of reasons or situations where total honesty would not be the best policy?
One reason that total honesty is not as simple as it seems is the virtually universal experience of “denial”—that is, we cannot even see many of our own true motivations. Many Pharisees were considered to be leaders in having integrity, and yet Jesus told them you can pick out the tiniest speck of evil in your brother’s eye but you cannot see the log in your own. So one reason to hesitate in saying your truth about another person is we can’t see our real motives in blasting someone with our truth.
The second reason is more complex and difficult to understand. Here’s how I discovered that: It was still very dark, but I was awake, having been disturbed by a bad dream. I was weeping because the dream had recalled an experience in my adolescence which was so painful that I thought I would never be free from its haunting presence. Several times over the years I had been bothered by this dream. And it always made me cringe; wanting to undo something I had done as a teenager.
This experience and its painful reliving over the years had changed my whole life, especially my views concerning integrity, love, and honesty in close relationships. And although I hated the memory and had prayed many times that God would erase it from my mind, there was no doubt that it had helped me as a husband, father and friend.
It had happened at a boys’ summer camp where I was a counselor after my freshman year in college. I was in charge of a cabin full of junior boys, about eight and nine years old. They were at the hero-worship age, and I really loved them. One boy, Mortey, a camper from somewhere in eastern Oklahoma, was a particular favorite of mine. We became very close friends. He was in my canoe on the float trip and played the starring comedy role in the play I wrote and organized as tribe coordinator. He was a cagey little performer and stole the show with his quick grasp of humor. Although they teased Mortey about his weight and the fact that he wore glasses, he was outgoing and had lots of old-fashioned guts and intelligence.
The little guy used to reach up and take my hand when we were walking alone, as if I were his dad. And I would look down on him and smile. He tended to be a little cocky about everything, including his relationship with me—though he never acted that way when he thought I was around.
At the end of eight weeks the time came for the camp awards. The counselors met to vote on the honor camper trophies—the most important symbols of acceptance and success a boy could win. When the preliminary weeding out had been done, two boys remained in the race for junior honor camper: Mortey and Bobby. Wanting to have integrity, I decided I was so biased I could not vote, but when the ballots had been counted, both boys had the same number. I had to vote to break the tie.
At that time in my life I was an obsessive compulsive on the inside, a joking character on the outside. But I had been taught that absolute integrity was the highest value. When decisions which seemed to concern my integrity were to be made, I really strained to do the right thing.
As I looked at these two boys and their camp records, I tried to be objective. Bobby was a much better athlete and had broken some records, but Mortey definitely had the edge in the human understanding department. They had both helped their tribes by winning contests and by being friendly kids. It was easy to see why the vote had been tied. I was miserable. Little Mortey had done a great job… but he was a little cocky, and he did have a few faults I knew about. This definitely gave Bobby a slight edge. Everyone knew how close we had been; I was afraid that if I voted for Mortey the other counselors would think I was voting for him because of our friendship. It was strange that such a trivial thing could have been so momentous, but my whole integrity seemed to be on the line, and I felt sort of sick at my stomach. I did not want the responsibility of deciding.
My hesitation over the simple decision was delaying the meeting, and the other counselors became irritated. Under the pressure I decided—against Mortey. And we went on.
Only inside I didn’t go on. I knew that although I had been honest, I had somehow been wrong. While sitting there, I got the idea that I ought to level with Mortey about what had happened. I tried to dismiss the thought, but it kept coming back. And I felt I had to tell him the truth “in order to have integrity” in the situation. This was my problem.
On the last morning at camp, as all the boys were getting on the bus, Mortey came up to me. Everyone was yelling for him to hurry. His face was streaked with tears, and it was obvious that he had been crying and did not want me to know. As we walked away from the others, I told him how much our friendship meant to me. I went on to tell him how close he had come to being elected honor camper—that in fact the vote had been a tie. His eyes got very wide, and I continued in my nineteen-year-old total honesty, “I hadn’t voted up till that time, Mortey, because everyone knows that you and I are such close friends. But they made me vote then…and I voted for Bobby.” As I started to explain why I had done it, the look on his face caught me completely off guard. I will never forget it. It haunts me still, because I saw the look of a soul betrayed by his dearest friend. In an instant I saw how wrong I had been and why. This little boy really loved me. And I realized that he had done a much finer job than Bobby at camp. But because Mortey had loved me, he had revealed his faults as well as his good points to me, and I had used this knowledge to judge and condemn him (from his perspective).
He just stood there and stared at me in disbelief. After his dad had let him down by leaving his mother, he had trusted me. I had the chance to give him all he had ever wanted, but I had tossed it to another boy in a different tribe, a boy I hardly knew. He covered his face with his hands and ran towards the bus. I tried to grab him, to explain my feelings, but he broke loose and, wriggling between the last few campers, disappeared onto the bus. The door closed and the bus pulled out. I ran along beside it, hunting for Mortey in the windows. But all the other kids were pressed against them, and I didn’t see him at all. In the midst of the shouting and singing of the camp loyalty song, Mortey rode out of my life in a cloud of dust.
It was years later, after I became a Christian and began to understand myself and my problems more clearly, that I began to see the trap “honesty” can be. It had become my highest value—“honesty at any cost.” This meant that I worshiped honesty. In my struggle to decide who should be honor camper, I had been so intent on maintaining my own integrity that the broader values in the judging situation had escaped me. And in any case, I was blind to the consequences of trying to clear my own skirts with Mortey by telling him all—not realizing that a nine-year-old boy could not understand me. But now I realize that maybe he did understand me: A Christian Pharisee who cared more about “being pure” than loving him. Maybe that was what broke his heart.
For this little boy saw the world through a different set of eyes that I did. It was to be almost ten years before I began to surrender and put myself into the hands of the One who sees life in the same way that Mortey did. For in his world there was a higher value than raw honesty with which to judge people… and that value is love.
If he actually did it (was honest) for the sake of having good conscience, he would become a Pharisee and cease to be a truly moral person. I think that even saints did not care for anything other than simply to serve God, and I doubt that they ever had it in mind to become saints. If that were the case, they would have become only perfectionists rather than saints.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Lord, help me to realize the limited nature of my ability to judge the total circumstances in any human encounter. Forgive me for being blinded by needs for integrity and putting my adolescent desire for rightness ahead of Mortey’s need for love. But, God, thank You for teaching me through that little boy the importance of the kind of loving loyalty You have for us, which—for me—transcends all Your other gifts, including faith, and that your love even transcends Your judgment of our sins.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1, 2
Squelching a Word of Love—to Keep from Being Hurt
Keith, not long ago a good friend, someone I like and respect, complimented me on some design work I’d done. I knew he meant it and at one level I was very pleased—especially since we work in the same field and he’s very good at what he does. But I was also, sort of… embarrassed, and felt like he could spot the defects and might just be buttering me up. So I laughed and shook my head and said, “I was lucky they even accepted it! I tossed it off in about thirty minutes from an idea I had in junior college.” Actually, that wasn’t true. I worked for days on that design. My friend looked at me as if I’d hurt his feelings, nodded his head and walked off. Why would I do that? Have you had a similar experience?
Good question. This is how I recorded my experience years ago in Habitation of Dragons: Squelching a Word of Love, page 118.
***
“That was a great job, Keith!” The man who was speaking is a person whom I deeply respect and love. I had just given a talk in our church, and he was enthusiastically and sincerely affirming me.
“Thanks, but I’m afraid I was too direct,” I replied. “I was tired and felt a little hostile.” He looked at me strangely, and I went into the educational wing to get ready for Sunday school.
While walking away, I realized what I had done. I had very subtly and unintentionally devalued him as a person. He was trying to tell me that I had done a good job, and he had really meant it. But instead of thanking him for his affirmation, I had told him in effect, “Actually, you aren’t really very smart. I heard some negative things about my talk that you didn’t hear.” Although I had not said that, I saw that my negative reply had in some way rejected him and his kindness in complimenting me in the first place.
Thinking about what had happened; I realized how often I turn people off when they try to say something nice to me. If I happened to make a high score on an exam in college, for instance, and someone said, “congratulations,” I might have laughed and come back with something cute like, “As much time as I spent studying for that one, an orangutan would have done well.” I seemed to turn attention away from their attempts to affirm me, thinking somehow that I was being humble.
But now I am beginning to see that instead of humility, this inability to accept praise or affirmation is really an insidious form of pride and insecurity. Further, it represents a completely thoughtless attitude toward the needs of the one trying to offer congratulations. If a person is sincere with a compliment, he or she is going out on a limb to identify with me. The person is reaching out to say, “I, too, feel as you do or appreciate life as you do.” Or, “In some sense we are related or I would not have responded to what you said.” But my reply of supposed humility has turned the attention away from the person giving the compliment and toward me and my cleverness. I have devalued the offered love by joking or saying in effect, “No, we are not alike, because you misinterpreted my performance.” Or, “Your perception is faulty.” Or, “If you are like me, you are really a dummy, because any dolt could have done what I have.”
My dear friend Bruce Larson finally confronted me one day about squelching a compliment by saying, “Keith, you are a good giver of affirmation, but you’re a stingy receiver!” It was clear to me in that moment that with all my apparent willingness, as a Christian, to love other people, I fail to love them when I refuse to hear their attempts to love me. I suppose I reject their love because I’m afraid it is unreal, and I cannot risk being hurt—in case they do not mean it—or sometimes I evidently want to appear humble, if they do mean it. So I protect myself from being hurt or from looking proud by dismissing as insignificant any attempts people make to say affirming things to me. Never before had I realized fully the negative, squelching effect of refusing to accept another’s kind word.
Since making these discoveries, I am going to try to look people in the eye and say simply and warmly, “Thank you,” if they try to say something positive to me. At a deep level I know that anything worthwhile I have is from God. And somehow, by letting people express positive feelings to me through a handshake and a few words, I think something is completed in the attempt to communicate the love of God in human terms.
“Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power. By words one of us can give to another the greatest happiness or bring about utter despair. . . . Words call forth emotions and are universally the means by which we influence our fellow creatures. Therefore let us not despise the use of words. . . .”
Sigmund Freud
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis[1]
Thank you, God, that You are willing to receive my stumbling and often half-sincere attempts to praise You. Since You showed us in Christ that it is important for us to be able to receive, please give me the grace I need to do so. I am grateful that You take these praises of mine seriously rather than rejecting me with a denial or a joke, which would leave me alone and sorry I tried. Help me to learn how to love. But, O Lord, give me the serenity to risk receiving from other people . . . love, which I fear may not be real.
It is hard to receive:
Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”
John 13:8, 9
[1] Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (New York: Washington Square Press), 22.
Finding the Life We’ve Been Looking For
Keith, I keep running into people who can’t seem to believe there really is a God—and honestly I don’t know if I do. These scientists are almost making fun of people who believe that God is real! And if God is real, they ask, how can he change the basic character of people who believe in him? Could you help me with this?
This is an excellent time to be asking those questions. With regard to the reality of God—think about all the brilliant men and women who have claimed that they have had a relationship with God (e.g. C. S. Lewis, St. Francis, Luther, Augustine, Martin Luther King, Jr. and scientists like Blaise Pascal, not to mention all the men and women who were not writers but the witness of whose lives changed the generations in which they lived. They wouldn’t all have to be right for there to be a God who interacts with people—if only one person in all of history was right about having a personal relationship with God, then God is real, and interactive.
There are all kinds of philosophical arguments for and against the hypothesis that God is real, but Christianity is about a God who has a “personality,” that is, a God who can be “known.” And the New Testament makes the claim that if a person wants to know if God is real, the only way that person can know is to take the hypothesis that God is real and commit his or her life to God and to the discovering and doing of God’s will in that person’s whole life.
I understand that you are saying to take God that seriously is to take a big risk. And of course that is true. But even scientists have to take risks and face rejection sometimes when they take an idea and assume that it is true (when they take a hypothesis) and then scientists (and people on spiritual journeys) make experiments in the real world to see if the idea holds up in relation to things and situations the scientist already believes are true.
So how would you prove for yourself that God is real?
When I came to that place in my life, I was frightened. I was afraid that if God were real and I surrendered my real life to God and to trying to live according to the principles attributed to God, then God might change me into some sort of pious religious nut that my family and friends wouldn’t want to be with.
But when I finally decided I had to know if God were real, and surrendered my life, my future, to God, that was when I began to realize that the life that God offers people who are in relation to him was the life I’d always been trying to find, to discover by becoming successful and prominent somehow.
A long time ago, a wise Christian told me that God doesn’t change us into something that we are not already. Rather the truth is that we have almost from birth been adding unreal things to our lives, personal characteristics. For instance, I tried to appear to be a strong, self-confident Western male—stronger and smarter than I really was. It was as if I was wearing life like a suit two sizes too large, hoping I’d grow into it.
When I decided to surrender my whole life to God as I saw God revealed in the Biblical story, and began to do the disciplines of prayer and helping other people in ways I felt God would want me to do those things, it was more like taking old ill-fitting clothes off and discarding them. Because I didn’t need the exaggerated characteristics in order to feel that I was enough.
As I met some strong beautiful Christians with integrity and humility, I realized that what God offers to do for me is not to transform me into something I never have been but rather to help me remove things I and the culture I live in have added to my natural self that I had used to cover up, to hide the person God made me to be. And the unconscious fear of being revealed as the imperfect person I really am, tainted all my relationships—particularly my close relationships.
So the big news for me is that when I am being the loving child that God designed me to be, I am free not to hide or pretend to be more than I am. And that means that I could learn to be myself and risk being rejected when I set out to become the authentic human being who was in one sense always inside me, waiting to get free enough to live and be happy being who and what I am.
That’s why I began to learn how to write as a vocation and finally left the oil exploration business—not because the oil exploration business is evil somehow, but because I was a writer hiding inside the life of an oil business entrepreneur. This has not been an easy or trouble free journey, and may not be one that you should take. But I thank God every day that I decided to trust God in this way.
It’s a long trip to the Beginning—clear back to Square One.
Lord, thank you that we already have everything we need to be the people you designed us to be. Help us to learn how to remove the extra characteristics we have “put on” trying to be happy and successful, and to gradually discover and, where appropriate, reveal ourselves the way you meant for us to be. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.”
Matthew 18:2-5, The Message
Note: For a clear account of what actually happened when Keith made this beginning in his everyday life as a husband, father, and young business executive see the newly republished The Taste of New Wine.
Spiritual House Cleaning
Keith, I’m not a pious person and have never liked doing things that sound like they will look more “religious.” But I was fascinated to hear that God wants to transform me into the person God designed me to be. Can you suggest an approach to spiritual transformation that has its feet on the ground?
Great question. In my case, before I could begin a serious journey toward the radical transformation that they said would follow the daily disciplines of living a new life, I needed to clear my path of the pitfalls and snarling vines growing out of the past that kept tripping me up, and also to inventory the assets and gifts I had.
When Jesus said specifically to “worry about the beam in your own eye,” (Mt. 7:4-5) I think he was referring to whatever is in my life that prevents (or hinders) God from working within me to transform me. For me these blocks seem to come from the virtually universal tendency to put ourselves in the center where only God should be, which is Sin (with a capital “S”). And in my case, all the other “sins” (lower case “s”) stem from that one act. And these dishonest, petty or terribly destructive habits or controlling acts in relationships are what block God’s transforming work in me.
I needed to see clearly what was in my life now (and in my past history) so that I would have nothing mysterious (denied) to hide that could jump up and scare me; because by this time I knew that my Sin would use anything that “pushes my buttons” to threaten me with: the specter of failure, fears, guilt, shame, rejection, and spiritual death. For me it was crucial to make as clean a beginning as possible if I hoped to stay close to God.
So I was helped to begin by confessing what I could see of how I have hurt others. I learned that when I began to think about these things, the natural response was to feel sadness and/or guilt about what I had done. But as I kept focusing on the damage my controlling and self-defeating behavior had caused, the resulting sadness began to produce the motivation to turn away from a particular sin and confess it to God, asking for his power and help not to repeat the harmful behavior. So I had to confess not only the act of putting myself in the center where only God belongs (Sin with a capital “S”) but also make explicit (in detail) as many of the shadowy deeds and thoughts as I could see at the time. I was told to make a list of all people my behavior had injured. This act of confession of what I could see brought a number of hidden sins and unconscious self-centeredness and habits out of my unconscious and into my memory and helped expel them and their destructive power from my heart.
I had to find a small group of men on this spiritual journey to find the courage to even see much less confess before another person. But I discovered that was evidently normative behavior for the early Christians (e.g. “Make this your common practice. Pray together and confess your sins to each other so you can live together whole and healed.” James 5:16, The Message).
Over the years as I confessed to God all the specific sinful acts I could recall, the past felt clean and not as painful. I began to realize (and it took a number of years and different groups and mentors) that I am forgiven. I could embrace the gift of a new chance at life. It is as if God has erased the black board on which the sins I had confessed had been listed and handed over a piece of chalk and said, “Here, you can write a new chapter for your life.” The peace, joy and motivation to live for God that come from these actions is incredible to me: one’s spiritual life can come alive! But it has not felt like I was getting more religious, but rather more caring and sensitive—and real somehow—than I had ever been both to God and to the other people in my life. And in looking back, I realize that the transforming work of God had begun to occur in my life.
In addition to the gift of a new life, God has given me the security of his love and forgiveness. As a forgiven person, I don’t need to hide my Sin from God. On the contrary, I can afford—and want to see even farther—even behind walls of delusion and denial—and begin to have a clearer and deeper view of the harmful behaviors and attitudes that have been brought on by Sin. Then I pray sincerely for God to remove them. I never thought I could do that. Most of the things I’ve discovered about my selfish attitudes and behaviors were not even conscious to me when I began.
But how do we do this specific housecleaning today when everyone seems to be embarrassed by the idea of confession and horrified at the prospect of revealing anything that might make them look inadequate or sinful? The saints have given us an answer to this dilemma regarding the exhuming of our buried sins—as a bathing and cleansing of the infectious self-destructive material. But this course of action is so terrifying that many of us in contemporary religious denominations have discarded it as too severe a remedy—“exaggerated” by the writers of the past to pressure their disciples. But this very attitude of thinking that they exaggerating their “righteousness” was an example of my projecting my own Sin of pretending to be better than I am. And this hiding my own Sin by doubting the saints’ sincerity is just another universal habit that is part of my Sin that has kept me from growing and finding the freedom and courage to receive and give love.
This is one way it works: we begin cleaning out the debris of the past by making a thorough examination of our own lives and bringing what we find out into the light (see 1 John 1:5-9). We face these character defects and moral transgressions as thoroughly and honestly as we can—and go back and make things right where possible. (See Matthew 5:23)
And we also need to include the positive character traits and abilities that God has given us along with our list of sins. Because these are some of the assets through which he will work to transform us into the people he designed us to be.
When we seriously commit our lives to God, it’s as if we are agreeing to transfer to him all the assets and liabilities of a business we own. If we were doing that, we would take an inventory of the damaged goods and the valuable assets that are stored in the warehouse of the past. And to transfer to God these things we must make the inventory very specific.
For instance, for years I would, on occasion, do something helpful for someone that might cost a significant amount of money or time. I would tell myself (and sometimes the one “helped”) that I didn’t expect anything in return. But if the person I’d helped did not express what I considered to be “reasonable” gratitude, I resented him or her—a lot. I finally realized that my real motive was not just to be loving, but that giving of my help had been sort of an “investment” for which I expected a dividend: to feel like and look like a good Christian. My dishonesty about my expectations also set me up to resent people I wanted to help. So my failure to clean my own house made me into a “generous” Pharisee.
This may sound bizarre to you. It did to me for years. But I was fortunate enough to get caught in a serious moral failure and that destroyed and/or almost destroyed my deepest relationships. I hope you won’t have to do that to find the life, love and settledness about who you are and what you’re “designed” to do and be in your life. Thanks for asking that question. It made me feel closer to you, and my prayers come with this for this new chapter in your adventure with God.[1]
Lord, thank you that you forgive us our Sins, especially when we can become aware of them and confess them to you. Help us to allow you to transform us into the people you designed us to be. And Thank you for such an incredible opportunity. In Jesus name, amen.
“This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.” (Matt. 5: 23-24) (In other words this kind of honesty takes precedence for Jesus even over public worship.)
“If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.”
1 John 1: 8-10 The Message
[1] If after reading this piece you would like to examine an in depth approach that uses the principles expressed here, you might want to read the book A Hunger for Healing: The Twelve Steps as a Classic Model for Christian Spiritual Growth (Or study the twelve-week DVD course by the same name.)
