The Problem Within

God has called us to walk in His light, and that involves identifying the darkness that resides in our hearts and take the necessary steps to begin to walk in victory and eradicate, or at least reduce, these
harmful patterns. Romans 13 says:
12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.
13 Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.

The activity of "putting off" and "putting on" is instrumental in the Christian life.  We recognize that in our flesh, our humanity, we carry with us certain patterns that are contradictory to the Scriptures. It takes more than willpower or mind over matter to experience God's victory, won for us in Christ.  We must humble ourselves before the Lord, allowing Him to accomplish His work - from the inside - so that we can walk in a manner that pleases Him and so that we can have peace and satisfaction in our souls.

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Throughout the Bible, we can see the call for believers to "put off" old attitudes and behavior - the 

flesh - and "put on" the things of the Spirit. Ephesians 4 lays this out simply and beautifully:
21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:
22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,
23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

We are now approaching the end of the Lenten season, that time of year between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, 40 days which are designed by celebrants to focus on self-denial and greater religious devotion.

There are always some interesting things that people give up during this time period.  According to a Christianity Today article, Stephen Smith of Open Bible.info analyzed over 73 thousand tweets and compiled a list of what was given up. He said, “This year, alcohol topped the list for the first time,” adding, “It’s been hovering in the top five for the past few years, last year landing at a then-record No. 3." According to the OpenBible.info site, social networking, chocolate, twitter, and chips rounded out the top 5.

CT notes that in Smith's analysis, "Overall, food items were three times as popular to claim abstention from as technology items or personal habits."

There are productive ways to observe Lent, and what I would consider non-productive - in that category, you have an online writer, who is found in a number of places online, who seems to position himself as aligned with the evangelical community, but who has a definite progressive bent.  Read his material and he routinely exhibits sympathy for the LGBT community.  He says he's tired of apologizing for the church's bad behavior - now he won't define it in the same way that perhaps you and I do, and he enlisted a progressive church leader to lend credibility to his contention.

In a Religion News Service article, he quotes this kindred spirit, who once felt a need to "apologize" for ways that the church has behaved badly, in her estimation.

I found myself in the checkout line at Marshalls, apologizing to a total stranger in a Sikh turban for every bad thing that had ever been said or done in the name of Christianity. He seemed surprised that I could be responsible for all that.

But that’s how I used to talk about Christianity, constantly apologizing, in advance of anyone even asking, hoping to beat them to the punch...

So in one sense, I would say they definitely need to give up this critical spirit, but the whole article came across to me as an expression of what they were talking about giving up.

Far more productive, I think, was the declaration by author and blogger Annie Downs, who writes:

It’s not a complicated story.

I gave up makeup for Lent.

And it’s terrible.

It’s about control. I knew it as soon as the idea was dropped into my heart the week leading up to Ash Wednesday, the start of the season. It’s about how I try to control everything, including what you think of me. And what you think of my face.

She continues:

And it’s terrible. This no makeup thing? It’s a daily struggle. It’s not like every person I see I get to explain, “by the way, I know what you’ve seen in pictures but I’m not wearing makeup right now but it’s really me hi will you still be my friend?”

Sigh.

It hurts. It’s bringing up all sorts of muck from the bottom of my emotional ocean that I never intended to be stirred up. Old insecurities. Fears. Worries. And it’s constant...

She says, "I never escape it. It never leaves my mind. In every place I go, in every face I make eye contact with, including my own in the mirror."  She had a photographer take her picture to reinforce the point.  So, except for conference speaking, she is makeup-free, and God is using that act of sacrifice to do an inner work.  Annie says, "I’ve never found the best things in life to be free or easy or without struggle."

So, you can make the choice - you can exhibit a critical spirit toward others, or you can look within you and allow the loving Holy Spirit to do a profound work in your life.  And, that's takeaway number one for today: we are prone to look to others as the problem; as pastor Kynan Bridges highlighted on The Meeting House the other day, we can become caught up in gossip, slander, and offense, even become a provocative force to stimulate that behavior.   Sure, there are problems in need of solutions, but if we tear others down to get to what we feel is the resolution, I have to question whether we have accomplished anything.

I am sorry that there are individuals who are "embarrassed" by the Church.  And, in the case of the article I cited, it seems that the root of this embarrassment is that Christians aren't tolerant enough, not inclusive enough.   The way I see it, and as you'll hear on my radio show over the next week or so, the message isn't necessarily politically correct - people don't get it right, there is something wrong with humanity - it's called "sin."  Identifying sin certainly may not appear inclusive or loving, but it's Biblical, and the power and promise of the gospel message is that Jesus came to fix things, to set things right, to change us into people who exhibit His character.  If we tolerate everything, we set up a construct where there is no need for the radical transformation He wants to bring.

Finally, I think it's an ongoing struggle to look at ourselves.  We need to ask the Lord to shine the light of His Spirit in our hearts, and take the necessary steps, by His power, to address the issues of selfishness in us. Fortunately, the Spirit Who illuminates is also the Spirit Who empowers. If we take our eyes off our own hearts and denigrate others for their shortcomings, we miss the blessing of that inward work that God wants to do.  We have to humble ourselves, not set ourselves up as the judge of other people's behavior and be embarrassed for how "they" are not living the Christian life.  How about us?  How are we doing?  God wants us to put our eyes on Him and allow Him to accomplish what He has begun.