We're All A Bunch Of Junkies ...

Sounds bad, doesn’t it?  The idea that humanity in its present state is nothing more than a collection of addicts, how depressing.  But those who have been acquainted with God for a while, and begin to see the wisdom of choosing right for their lives, are invariably puzzled by some of their own behavior.  In short, we know that choosing good is what we should do in a given circumstance, but this knowledge does not prevent us from making the wrong choice.  What’s wrong with us?  And why do we keep on doing it?

To understand this phenomenon, one needs to closely examine the behavior of an addict.  Nobody starts out in life addicted to anything in particular.  When you are born, you have a relatively clean slate (crack babies notwithstanding).  Over time, and as you grow, you begin to establish patterns of behavior, both in the choices you make, and in the actions you take.  These patterns somewhat define who you are, because every time you do them again, an electrical impulse travels through your brain along a predefined route.  Each time the process repeats, another electrical impulse travels the ‘same road’ if you will, and reinforces the ease of traveling this pathway.  Over time the pathway builds, and the inclination to repeat the behavior becomes greater.  All of this occurs without the use of foreign chemicals or substances.  It is the natural function of our brains, as we understand them today.  These pathways never really go away, but it is possible to build alternate routes in the brain, and make alternate behavior even more popular than the habits you formerly followed.

Given that normal brain function is affected by repeated patterns of behavior, when you introduce an external chemical into the pattern, it can act like an accelerant, altering the very chemistry of the brain to require repeating the act.  Chemical addiction is far less likely to be simply undone by alternate choices.  It becomes much harder to go ‘cold turkey’ off foreign chemicals, than as an example, to simply choose to eat your vegetables first in a given meal (i.e. changing a normal behavior to something new or different).  And not all brain altering chemicals are external, some of them your body produces naturally, like endorphins.  When you exercise vigorously your body produces internal chemical endorphins that make you feel like to could ‘run for miles’.  They make you feel good.  And they are natural.  It is said, when a woman eats chocolate for example, the same chemical response occurs in her brain, as when she engages in sex.  These internal ‘feel-good’ chemical reactions can also prove to be quite addictive, accounting for behavior we don’t always understand – gambling addictions, romance addictions, sex addictions, exercise addictions, etc..

This means that when we choose poorly, we begin to ‘teach’ our brains to repeat the choice.  The more we engage in a behavior, the more we feel like it is natural to do so.  Heredity also plays a role in this, as the habits our parents develop will both influence how we think, and likely pre-incline our chemical responses.  How do we break this cycle?  Let’s continue our analogy of a drug-addict as an example.  Drugs are highly addictive as they alter brain chemistry.  For the common drug addict to quit – they need to recognize they are addicted (step 1), and begin to seek outside help (step 2).  Someone who is an addict, but refuses to see it, will not soon change his behavior.  After all they are not even trying to change.  But realizing the need is not enough to break the cycle either.  We must seek help, outside of ourselves.  The odds are stacked against the common drug addict for him to solve his problem on his own without help.  Depending on the length of the addiction, the severity of the chemical alteration, the genetic predispositions he faces, and the ease in which his environment facilitates his access to the drug – he faces a nearly impossible challenge to quit.  Every addict knows the behavior they engage in, is destructive to themselves and others.  They realize this, but are quite literally powerless to change it.

Often we blame an addict for the conditions they find themselves in.  After all, if the drug addict never took that first hit of cocaine, or smoked that first joint, they would not be so messed up now.  And yes, the drug addict is solely responsible for that initial wrong choice.  But once having made a wrong choice, the propensity to repeat it grows greater at an exponential rate.  Within a very short period of time, the addict is out-of-control, and powerless to resist what they have begun.  Not every Christian can identify with a drug addict’s rational or behavior.  They think themselves too pious to be caught in this trap of addiction.  Yet every Christian knows in their hearts, a certain sin (or choice of evil) that they repeat, despite their guilt over doing it.  Yes we are forgiven for the poor choices and misdeeds we commit.  But we want much more than simple forgiveness, what we crave is reform.  We wish not to engage in wrong choices ever again.  But this desire is not enough to prevent us from screwing up again.  The reason, we are all a bunch of junkies, addicted to our sinful behavior.  If you find yourself looking-down on a street walker who is plainly addicted to drugs, realize when you get home, the mirror can show you that sight once again.  It may not be drugs you are addicted to, but a pattern of wrong choices is every bit as hard to break with.

Confrontation is rarely effective in long term recovery.  Smacking someone in the head with what they are doing wrong rarely helps them see the value of the alternative.  Instead, focus on the power of positive reinforcement.  Whether trying to show someone else the error-of-their-ways, or simply trying to get past something you don’t like in your own character – stay focused on the cure.  What is our cure, who can save us from the fate of every addict?  Why our Creator God of course.  Jesus not only is our master physician, who healed every variety of sickness while here on our world.  He created us.  He knows our owners-manual very well, as He wrote it himself.  The advice He gives us in the Bible of how to stay healthy is from the perspective of the one who made us.  He does not want us to suffer; this is why He saved us.  And Salvation after all, is not about waiting to escape pain, it is about escaping it right here, and right now; even the pain of addiction.

When confronted by a desire to choose the wrong path again, try to focus your mind on Christ, and ask Him to take control of your circumstance, your desires, your actions, and lead you away from your pain.  This is why it is so important to be able to trust our God, or else how could we learn to give up our control to Him.  We need to allow Him to change the very desires of our hearts, if we are to affect real positive change in our lives.  Our desires are suspect, after all.  We have been trained to want what is harmful for us.  We have abused our brains and built large pathways of destructive behavior patterns.  Only God can take these away from us.  Now that we recognize our condition, we must learn to release our will to Him.  This is how to affect healing.  And like the addictive behavior we have talked about so far, it is not a one-day effort.  It is a continual struggle.  Do not be fooled into thinking you only have to beat the bad decision once to gain the victory.  No, you have to trust God to save you, every time you face it.  You have to yield your will to Him perpetually, as the minute you seek to take back your control from God, you find yourself falling once again.

The good news about our God is that His forgiveness he offers us, is unconditional, and unlimited.  But the better news about our God, is that we do not have to resign ourselves to a life of pain from bad choices.  He can remove these hurtful things from our lives.  He is able.  He is strong enough.  You do not need to make yourself stronger, to fight the urges of evil – you need to recognize your own weakness, and allow God to win the battle for you.  Take no glory in your own strength, but give glory to God, for what He will do on your behalf.  Herein we learn that God interacts with each of us on a very personal, a very intimate level.  He knows about us, what we hide from our families, and our friends.  He knows what needs to be changed in order for us to escape pain, and it is different for each one of us.  Through this process of reconciling with God, He will begin to reveal to us, where we need some help.  Keep in mind Christians, it is HIS job to DO the work, it is only up to you to ALLOW Him to do it.

It therefore requires great trust in God, for us to allow Him the chance to change us, and to change those we love.  But He alone is qualified to do it.  This is the beauty of our God, that he loves us, even while we are junkies, and He treats us with acceptance, love, and hope.  I love the hope, our God gives us all, even to one such as me …

Getting High ...

There is quite a debate about whether marijuana should be legalized.  The basic arguments stem from the idea that this drug is no more harmful to you than is that of alcohol, or for that matter, cigarettes in general.  So many people in our world crave the escape of getting high, whether to turn away from problems or just as a way to really “feel good” when nothing else seems to accomplish that for them.  What’s wrong with getting high anyway, after all, isn’t marijuana a naturally growing plant?  If nature makes it, how harmful can it be?

From a purely logical perspective consider that when in a state of chemically induced euphoria almost never does anything “good” actually happen to you.  People m

ake poor decisions when judgment is impaired, or perhaps more accurately, they make even worse decisions when under-the-influence.  Sexual promiscuity is increased under-the-influence and seldom without making the experience memorable, let alone better.  Impaired judgment leads to increased rates of pregnancy, and STD’s.  Driving a car, operating heavy equipment, in short any behavior that requires concentration to remain safe normally becomes a virtual death sentence when carried out while being “high”.  The best we can hope for in this state is a minimizing of the number of brain cells irreplaceably killed, and ideally a safe place to sleep off the after effects.

So assuming we have a safe environment that will minimize personal risk, and eliminate risk to others, is getting high OK under those conditions?  The real question here is twofold.  First, the reason we seek to get high should be examined.  If the common answer is again – a way to escape our problems – we should stay sober.  The problems do not disappear while we induce a chemical high to effectively forget about them.  And as a result of our inclination to escape our problems we develop habits of avoiding them.  Under these conditions, problems tend to get worse, not better.  We would be far better off confronting our problems and learning to overcome them, than to seek the solace of an empty liquor bottle, or burned out joint. 

Second, If we are just looking to get high for “fun”, it begs a different question.  Why?  Is the risk of killing brain cells and becoming chemically addicted to this substance worth the momentary pleasure it offers?  Over time the human body does not react well to chemical stimuli.  Alcohol destroys the liver, the brain, and increases risks for heart attack and stroke.  Smoking is severely detrimental to health.  Injections pose a huge health risk, eating the stimuli is about the safest way to introduce it into the system – but this does not negate its power on the body over time.  We are effectively trading the health of later years for a brief moment in time here and now.  Sound familiar?  Isn’t this the argument that evil is constantly making to us.  Don’t worry about later, live life for now.  Who cares about the future?  The problem is, this argument centers focus on self, and again away from others.  This singular behavior is the worst of its kind.  The biggest problem we face is looking inward for fulfillment, rather than finding it in service to others.  Getting high fosters the idea of indulging self at the expense of others.  We trade years for minutes in this way.

There is nothing wrong with feeling good.  God wants us to feel good, and feel that way all the time, not just for a brief moment in time.  But all the good feelings that come from following after God and learning about His character and love for each of us, has nothing to do with any form of chemical induced impairment.  The joy and happiness that come from God, come to the clear-headed.  You get to feel good without the side effects of forgetting everything about them right after they are done; or spending the next day throwing up.  Again this is the beauty of following God.  He leads us away from the things that would cause us pain and suffering.  He leads us towards the things that would make us truly happy without the baggage of guilt, or worry of risking our very health and lives.  And He does this for us EVERY DAY.  We do not need to wait until a future heaven to start reaping the benefits of embracing good and rejecting evil.  Those benefits show up right here, and right now.

The difference between God’s idea of happiness and evil’s – is the forfeiture of your conscience to achieve it.  God offers fulfillment found in service to others.  Knowing what impact you can have to help someone else, can bring you a peace the world can never touch or take away.  The changes in your character that occur as you learn to care, are profound.  They are deep.  They are meaningful in a way that does not ever require shutting off your mind to hold them.  The absence of self, is the beginning of happiness, not the end of it.

Evil offers you self indulgence, self preoccupation, and an insatiable feeling that no matter what you feed this beast, it will never be enough.  If you have 3 girlfriends you will need 5.  If you get 5, then perhaps 7 will make it all better.  If you make a million dollars, then perhaps with just another 5 million you can relax.  If you smoke that joint, you will feel better, but only long enough to remember you need another one to stay this way.  There is never an end to seeking self, and it is an empty, meaningless journey.  Looking out for Number One, is staring at a face in the grave.

What a contrast the idea of service.  The impact we make doing it may not be fully appreciated in our lifetime, but its echo is felt through the ages.  Divesting of self and investing in others yields a return we did not expect – a change in the core of who we are.  Getting high begins to pale in comparison with experiencing meaning.  Getting high looks foolish next to true fulfillment.  The real problem with getting high, is that the experience is just not good enough.  Real joy is so much better than a façade of joy.  It does not matter to me whether marijuana is legalized or not.  It matters to me if we allow our blindness to others to turn us into self-junkies (addicted to our own self interests and unconcerned about anyone else).

If you have spent your life looking for a way out, looking to fill a hole that just never seems to fill up, consider learning about who God is.  Consider accepting the life He offers.  Learn how much more to life there can be than the misery this world packages as “fun”.  Learn about true joy, true happiness, and true contentment.  This is what comes from following our God …

Ugly Prognosis ...

To see evil in a proper light is to understand its proximity to cancer.  Often evil is masked with momentary highs, lapses in judgment, and a marketing campaign that encourages risk and danger as key ingredients of life – all the while selling Russian roulette with only one empty chamber (odds don’t look good).  But therein is the point, when we finally realize what evil is in our lives, its effects, and what is required to treat it … we cringe.

Ectomy does not work; be it lumpectomy, mastectomy, pick your ectomy; when it comes to our character, attempts to remove a portion of evil are ineffective.  For starters, we usually pick the wrong surgeon.  We begin by believing we are fully capable of self-surgery given the proper motivation.  After a few botched attempts, we may seek help from fellow sufferers.  This is akin to getting directions for critical surgery from Wikipedia, put there by failed patients who died in the process of sharing their singular advice.

But were we to find a magical surgeon skilled enough with a blade to open us up and begin to remove the poisoned tissue, our doctor would be horrified to find there is no end to it.  The problem with the cancer of evil is just how deep it runs in our souls.  The deeper you look the more you find.  It permeates everything.  It spreads without notice infecting every single impulse, almost every single thought, or deed.  A doctor after such exploratory surgery would be giving us quite the ugly prognosis.

People criticize the Old Testament for being arbitrary, or too explicit in its directions to us.  But I pose it was probably easier for Israelites to rationalize they were “good” people when only having to compare their actual actions against the finger of the law on stone tablets.  If I had not actually killed someone, I could count myself “good”.  But when Christ came along in person, He reminded us that motives and thoughts always have counted and always would.  Just to hate someone was “in effect” to kill them in my mind.  Just to lust, was like committing adultery.  Even my thoughts would be measured for evil.  And to be fair, not many crimes are purely impulse without any pre-consideration.  Most crimes are thought out intentions, plans, and then actions.

No there is only one outcome to get rid of all this evil.  We must die and be reborn.  Re-Genesis is our only option for treatment.  Not the replacement of just a part of ourselves, but of the whole of ourselves.  Completely reborn in Christ; having died to self.  Everyone is fine with the living part of this equation.  Living a life that is governed by impulses sent from heaven sounds great.  Being freed from evil sounds fantastic.  Being a servant and loving it, is beyond words.  But didn’t I mention dying in there somewhere?  Dying seems antithetical to living doesn’t it?  Why must there be any kind of death in order to live?

At the root of all evil is self.  Down past all the symptomatic behavior, past all the predictable human weakness outcomes, past all the rationalization about how comparatively we are really not so bad, is the root of all our evil – our focus on self.  What happens when I am at the core of my illness?  I gotta go.  It is me that must be killed, and a new me constructed if life is ever going to worth living.

Being sick, really feeling badly, stinks … literally.  I hate hurting, cramping, nausea, and of course pain.  The cloudy head, and unclear thoughts, the dizziness, the tingling, sniffling, coughing, stuffy head, fever, so you don’t ever rest sickness.  It is nasty and I hate it.  Yet for no apparent or explainable reason it hits me like a ton of bricks.  And while in this decrepit condition, I remember this is what it is like to live with evil within my soul.  The effects my illness has on my body and mind, are matched by the effects that evil has on my soul and heart and hands.

But being sick, and living in pain is NOT what our Creator God ever intended for His created children.  Pain is a reality of sin, not one of perfection.  Disease and suffering are hallmarks of evil, not of perfection.  God did not intend for us to exist in such a depressed or downtrodden state.  He aches that we sometimes embrace our own conditions, relish ourselves in it, and seem to prefer living in the sty with the pigs, than in the mansion with our real families.  None-the-less, our conditions as horrific as we sometimes find them, are useful if they point us to alternative way to live.  A way to live past the death we see all around us.  A way to live after we give up the death of ourselves.  Real life.  Real existence.  Past the real pain, is real life.

This is the beauty of a creator God.  He is uniquely able to re-create what sin and evil have systemically so gutted.  Our God is able to bring life to the ashes we once called our existence.  Past the letting go, is the rising up, free from everything that once bound the human soul.  This is the life He offers.  Not a life filled with soul-less self pursuits to satisfy a craving that can never be filled – but a life of service, ordained for the benefit of others, wherein the serving is the reward, and no small amount of it can ever be truly measured in full.  Instead of a hole we cannot fill up, we are given a cup that won’t stop overflowing.  Insatiable transformed to complete fulfillment, contentment, and peace.  No more hunger, no more pain, no more darkness.

Illness cannot stand in this light, nor will evil tolerate its presence.  It withers and dies in the face of He who so easily can transform the soul.  Other purported deities match good against evil as if the odds were even of the outcome; this is folly.  The only true God is complete good with no evil within Him.  And He is not powerless against evil, but all powerful over it.  Evil flees from love, as it cannot defeat its power.  Evil would have you believe it is powerful and that you cannot defeat it, or get it out of your life, thoughts, and soul.  But that is a lie.  You cannot remove it, but Christ can.  He will.  He does.  And Evil cannot stand against it.  This is your hope.  This is the good news of the gospel.  That evil has and will be defeated inside of you, as well as everywhere else in creation.

There is no end to the love that could save a wretch like me.  There is no hope like the hope I find in the only one true God.  And there is no power like the power of love, for nothing can defeat it, and it has conquered all.  I stand in awe of the creator God who cares enough to still love even me …

Hidden Sin ...

There are sins we hide from others because we know they are wrong, and we want to avoid the embarrassment of being discovered in wrong doing.  Public humiliation is something we want to avoid, so our ‘pet’ sin is kept hidden.  At least in this situation the wrong doing is understood and evident.  Were it to be revealed in the light-of-day we would stand convicted, embarrassed, and just as guilty.  But there is a more insidious kind of sin that lies hidden deep in every soul, affecting our actions, our speech, and our destiny.  This sin is hidden and of its own power seeks to remain this way.  Finding it takes no small effort, getting rid of it – a lifetime.

Public sin, things like sexual misconduct, drunkenness, theft, unwarranted violence – things that can be easily seen and discerned by others are the sins most Christians spend their lives focused on.  They develop false senses of righteousness based on comparing their own lives to those caught in public oriented sins.  Instead of measuring your life and deeds against those of Christ, it is easier to compare against other imperfect humans.  The entire process is mistaken.  But more to the point, it involves a pre-occupation with sins that are easy to define.  Sins that live in motives and thoughts, the internal kind of sin – those are far more dangerous, and far more destructive.

Consider for a minute the sin of murder.  Most of us have not committed this sin, so it is easier to discuss.  But the act of the murder is seldom a completely spur of the moment action.  It takes some time to develop the idea of murder into the action of murder.  Christ addressed this phenomenon when he stated that “hating your brother” was the same as “killing” him.  The action begins as a thought.  Once the mind has embraced the concept of murder, the hands seem to find it easier to follow.  The entirety of military training programs are based on the concept of ‘breaking’ down the mind of the young soldier and rebuilding it to take orders to both kill and even to die if needs-be to accomplish the objective.  Replace individual morality with ‘group’ think.  This process is not unique to murder, it is the same for every public oriented sin.

But there is even yet a deeper sin that hides even below motive.  We witness its symptoms, but remain clueless as to its cause.  Turns out, it is the origin or all of evil.  Everything you see that is evil around you came from one small seemingly innocuous little concept.  Murder, Lust, Greed, Glutony, Theft, Lies, Sexual misconduct all have their roots in just one place.  All of these greater crimes are ONLY possible if you adopt the underlying core sin and make it part of your character.  None of these greater crimes would have ever been committed first, in fact, it just would have been unthinkable save for the core of all evil, the tiniest of faults – namely pride.

God can save the murderer, He can save the thief, the adulterer, but we make His job an order of magnitude harder to save us because we refuse to recognize the core of our evil within us.  It is our pride.  Our arrogance is reflected in how we think.  It is self motivation that leads eventually to theft, lies, and ultimately murder.  It is selfishness that comes from valuing ourselves above all else, even God.  Pride.  The entire world of evil is slave beginning and end to simple Pride.  It caused the downfall of the highest created being in the Universe.  After the Godhead, Lucifer was the considered the highest of all of God’s creations.  And it was he who fell victim to this insidious cancer called Pride.

Pride turned the focus from others to self, in so doing it catapulted evil into existence.  It was effectively the opposite of God.  The opposite of God is not hate, it is pride.  It is self-obsession.  Christians do themselves enormous harm in ignoring humility to pursue victory over sin.  Instead of accepting their inadequacy to really change their own character they stubbornly attempt to change who they are.  And we fail.  Over and over we fail.  It is because it is not up to us to truly change ourselves, it is up to us to come to God in abject humility and accept His power to change us from who we are.  He makes the changes, not us.

Paul said we are saved by Christ “and not of ourselves, lest any man should boast”.  Even our faith comes from our God.  It too is a gift.  Christ stated plainly that “a Leopard cannot change his spots”.  This was not intended to cause us to lose hope, but to put our hope in the only Savior who CAN change a Leopard’s spots.  We are powerless to remove our sin, but God is not powerless, He is all power.  Love alone will change us.  Love given without merit by God to us.  Our role is not to ‘work’ at perfection, it is to ‘accept’ perfection from God.

We do not seek to find sin, FAR from it.  We seek the complete destruction of sin within ourselves, but we will never accomplish this goal of our own accord.  We do not work in partnership with God either, somehow implying there is a work for us to do in this.  We can claim NO credit for the changes that will come, for ONLY God can change us.  It is God’s work from beginning to end.  It is NOT ours.  It is our Pride that causes us to think somehow we can.  We are deceived into thinking there is a way for man to rid himself from his evil traits.  Maybe some sort of 12 step program for sinners will get us clean and sober from evil.  But even the 12 step plans recognize the need for a higher power.  In the case of ridding ourselves from sin – it cannot be done by man – this predicates our so desperate NEED of a savior.  We as a species NEED a savior, or we are doomed to die in our sin.

Again it is not the salvation that leads us to an eternal life in heaven I am referring to.  It is the salvation that makes the concept of eternal life worth living because we spend every second in the total absence of sin, all sin, especially the core of sin – our pride.  We need a savior to save us from ourselves.  We need a savior to help us see our need.  We need a savior, or we are doomed.  How little we see our need.

Evil’s marketing plan is right on target with most devout Christians.  It distracts them from seeking God in humility, rather having us seek God in guilt.  We come to God after we have already transgressed with empty promises that ‘we’ will not do it again.  But we do.  Over and over and over again.  We’re doing it wrong.  We need to see our NEED of a savior.  We need to recognize what a savior is.  Someone/something that can save us from us.  The only way we will not be back on our knees asking God for forgiveness, is if HE does the work of removing the evil traits from our character.

Victory over sin is a tricky thing.  So few achieve it because so few realize how it is done.  When God does act on our behalf, often we lose the victory because we being to think it was us that did it in the first place.  We arrogantly site our ‘victories’ to our peers, and before you know it – our ‘victories’ disappear.  The truth is we have NO victories, Christ has ALL of them.  It is HE who is worthy, we are less than nothing.  Our value is only measured in the love God gives to us.  Of ourselves we are fragile clay, dirt, nothing.  Our existence has value because God gives it value.  Everything we need, everything we are to become, is found ONLY in God.

I worry so much; for me it the torment of Jacob’s trouble, will I ever LET God kill the pride that lives within me?  Or will I stubbornly cling to my deeply hidden sin, masking evil with the pretentions of righteousness without any of the substance?  I fear that the evil within me has such a foothold that perhaps I have so warped my own thinking that I will somehow prevent God from healing me.  Oh Lord, let it not be so.  Save me Oh Lord, Save me a sinner.  Kill the pride from within me, and kill it to the uttermost.  I am overwhelmed at how desperately I need a savior.  I am overwhelmed at how completely Jesus Christ fills this need.  Only He is worthy …