Does Jesus live here?

Romans is reminding me about that great divide between being forgiven and being perfect.

I am no longer dominated by my sinful nature but I still have lapses into selfishness or greed or envy or impatience. At what point does the amount of sin outweigh the Spirit living in me and freeing me?

Perhaps I'm too pedantic and literal in my approach?

It's not measured by my mistakes. It's not weighing up my strengths. There's no movable cut-off point or comparative marking.

Just yes or no to this question.

Does Jesus live here? (~points to chest~)

Do I see actions in my life that are prompted by Jesus? Do I listen to him as he guides me, teaches me and pushes me from within? Do I spend time with him? Do I take every opportunity to know him and to nurture his spirit in me?

Jesus can only live in me if I give him space in my life.

But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.)

Romans 8:9

We need someone to carry the pain

It's a day to ponder suffering, with a crown of thorns and a whip laid on a table saying CRUCIFY HIM!

And I'm trying to understand that a man can see his father tortured and executed, while his hands cannot escape the grip of their captors. How he must have fought to free them. That his tearing guilt is for failing. And surviving.

He goes back, he tries to help. He cannot keep away from the place that wants to kill him. He cannot surrender. His sleeplessness torments him. His gut-turning memories are more real than now. He's there, rather than here in the room.

It feels flat and strange as I turn it in my mind. And I think I'd find it hard not to giggle because I do that when I can't believe what's happening. I concentrate on symptoms because the story is too terrifying to let it be the focus of  my attention. I'm protecting myself. I make a plan to hear more and let this installment slowly absorb into me, at a manageable pace.

His story is just a sock in my load of washing. I heard it at one-thirty and there's another by three. I fold it and lay it on the orderly pile. Ready to be placed in the drawer, because compartmentalising is the way. And I'm just putting away the stories that I listen to. There's millions more. How many of the seven billion stories contain pain?

Could one man carry all that pain? that guilt? all those stories? Perhaps that why he cried out, forsaken.

I have to shut drawers and pack carefully for my listening, otherwise I would disintegrate. Perhaps you do it, too. We're surviving, aren't we?

Sometimes we need to stop. Ponder the suffering. Then we can really see what this world is about. That we need someone to carry the pain. And it's not humanly possible.

Men get depressed

She's never called it depression before. I know it's taken me years to say it.

Last week she said he's depressed and I nodded because my soul gets stretched like that too. Depressed husbands make themselves push through. They twist their heart darkness into any other possible shape. They call it frustration or they label themselves "the melancholy type" or they just constrict to the necessary, hiding in bed but barely sleeping. They don't say "I'm depressed" very often.

Some have such rigorous self standards that they face a mountain of daily disappointment. Some wrestle with inadequacy bred into their bones and they doubt every urge or idea. Doubt paralyses them, and risking new notions fills them with terror. Fear that they cannot admit or perhaps cannot see.

Grace is the only solution. But depression conceals grace because it is born of self-criticism and failure. Failure to be what we long for, failure to see another's love for us.

So we talk about counselling and 'strategies' for self-care and the last thing he needs is strategies. He's all strategied up and he's worn out because it's another way to 'do the right thing' and be a good husband or father or person. His fear is of giving his all to God and finding nothing left for himself. That God would steal his soul if he offered it.

Someone else fears that God has nothing good to do through him. The fear robs him of passion and motivation. It leaves him misunderstood, dissatisfied and frustrated with himself. Another friend thinks others don't really like him and that man's wife reflects that she's 'a bit of an annoying person'.

It maddens me, this blindness. That we measure ourselves along such human scales, and our inadequacies become an obsession. Arrogance and pride can be about our achievements. But self- criticism is a type of pride too.

I see us all carrying self-critical burdens and they sap the life from us. God wants us to be free of this. Maybe freedom would come from seeing them more clearly and being willing to give them up. Willing to stop defining ourselves with them. To stop letting our imperfections be the barrier to God using us.

Let's turn the measuring around. Stop applying it to ourselves. Put it up against God, measure the life of Jesus. Start looking for achievement and adequacy where we're guaranteed to find it. Give up the flurry to be good enough. Accept ourselves, not to excuse failures but to stop the distracting internal war.

God is not stealing our souls, he's renewing them. We'll never find ourselves empty or soul-bereft trusting him. He's doing more than we can imagine in us (and through us), if we'll let him.

*NB. I write this, not knowing your particular experience of depression or self-criticism. Please forgive me if this does not ring true for you. I'm just reflecting on some things I've been thinking lately. This is not an exhaustive treatise on depression.

Paradox and Pain

We always laugh at Wesley in The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." Buddhist rhetoric buried in a fairy tale.

No one wants to have pain. It's uncomfortable, distracting and makes most of us feel miserable. Chronic pain can lead to depression and stops many people from working.

No wonder we fight it. Or numb it. Or try to forget it. We're desperate to escape it.

What if it's all the fighting and avoidance that makes pain unbearable?

The third wave of behavioural therapies advocate accepting, rather than fighting, pain. A paradox is emerging. That softening our approach to pain, entering into pain is a step towards lessening it.

Does chronic or repeated pain make you feel tense or upset? Do you fight it?
Try an experiment next time. Instead of becoming distressed, notice it and accept it. Turn it over in your mind and describe it to yourself. Rest in it. Do a careful scan of your body, noting where there is pain and where there is no pain. Don't judge it, just focus your awareness on it.

Let me know what happens.

Surely human/sinful nature isn't that bad?

Sometimes I forget the mess we are in. Dinner turns out well, or Simon kicks a goal at soccer, or we have a fun Saturday night with friends.

Strange how insular I am. How inward-looking.

Then I see a woman who cannot breathe as she cries for her murdered son. And another who believes she can never recover from abandonment and loss. I read a prayer message about an under-thriving baby who probably has fetal alchohol syndrome. And...(insert your example here)

We are torn by our natural hostility to God. And nothing I do can protect me from the ugly possibility of this world. Nothing I do can make me pure, or holy, or wise or truly kind.

Paul carves it in rock here. He needs to shock us, so we stop trusting we can be good enough. We just can't. Human nature is hostile to God - it fights and resists him, it undermines him and lies about him. It struggles to even know what is right, and then forgets to do it.

That's my human nature, my heart - I struggle to know right. I often forget to do it. Sometimes I even decide not to do it. I didn't drink so much that my baby will struggle through life, but I am so enthralled with my own needs that my children have to shout for my attention, and my husband sometimes doubts that I care for him.

Listen to Romans 8:7-8. God, we need help.

For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.

Romans 8:9

Humility/Humilitas

"Humility is the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself.

More simply, you could say

the humble person is marked by a willingness to hold power in service of others." Humilitas, page 24.

This is John Dickson's definition of humility, in his recent book, which aims to explore the ancient meanings of humility and it's role today. It was transformed from it's roots in humiliation, an imposition, to a loftier virtue springing out of choice.

Dickson gives many examples of great or famous people who have lead with humility. They are people who have no need to boast or to remind others of their power, instead they act graciously to everyone. Despite insisting he has few credentials to teach on leadership, John Dickson has provided a really clear exposition of the role of humility in good leadership. Perhaps my own ignorance of the leadership literature is evident in this comment. But what more can I say other than I learnt something and that there is a level of scholarship and understanding which is needed to explain concepts simply. John Dickson has that gift.

I wondered if the book was an attempt to sell humility by explaining its value - ie. it makes a good leader into a great leader, so if you're keen on being a great leader, get some humility. Despite the history of bad press, there's some evidence it is the secret behind some business success stories.

There is an uncomfortable tension about finding the reason for humility in greater achievement. I think it discounts the value of humility in small communities and in relative obscurity. It buys into the myth that true human value is found in fame and world-renowned attainment. I've reminded myself before that there is value in living a quiet life and that being seen by the one who sees everything is what matters. What is the value of famous leader humilitas to me? Of course that is a caricature, but it is a possible end-point of this book. And perhaps it is the danger of concentrating on the powerful to explore humility.

Having said that, there is no simple way to explain humility, without encountering paradox. The biblical archetype of humility is Jesus. He began this humility paradigm shift from humiliation to the choice of power surrendered in humility. He is the most powerful being we can imagine, and yet he suffered degradation and was murdered. He never doubted his purpose or his mission, and yet he wept in pain. He rebuked people who got it wrong, but forgave sinners.

And I like John Dickson's upfront way of acknowledging the paradox. He's right, the idea of writing a book on humility and holding oneself up as an authority on it is a little ridiculous. But he tackles that one in the introduction, and aligns himself among us - the ones who struggle to grasp the wind. True humility is elusive and fleeting, and difficult to pursue without running right past it. I believe it is found in seeking to serve others rather than in seeking to be humble.

Let's not mention the death thing

Death lurks. We'd better not talk about it, because we can't escape superstition. And nobody wants to remember that we're all headed there one day.

Dig right down to the heart of the process and find that death comes from one thing - turning away from God. Sin. I am so humanly trapped in it that my mind is utterly controlled. My brain is washed in it. My heart pumps it out around my body and each contraction poisons me. 

And in the midst of this stupor, I think that life is a new iPad, or being liked by my friends more, or not failing, or getting more hits on my blog.

The only remedy is the breath that brings life - the spirit of Jesus soaking my mind, rushing in my heart and veins. Who knew that life and peace were to be found in giving control rather than taking it?

Don't we all hunger for life, for peace?

So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. 

Romans 8:6

Romans 8:7-8