01 October 2023
It's a major sickness in American culture that underestimates the power of God.
I'm not going to tell you about all my character flaws; I don't have enough time left in this world for such a monumental task. Besides, it would be boring. What I will tell you is that my God is able to overcome them all. More to the point, I can testify that He has done so, and is still doing that work in me.
In our American culture, we are taught to believe that certain flaws are so much worse than the others that those who carry such tendencies cannot be healed. They must forever be treated with suspicion and kept away from the rest of the world. Notice I'm not referring to things these people actually did, only that their fleshly nature possess the character flaws that make them want to do such things.
In other words, our culture insists that the God who makes every one of us cannot fix some of us.
Part of it is simply our fallen nature itself working en masse to avoid God's demands. That's the nature of the flesh, so totally arrogant in its abilities that it simply will not bow the knee to God. The flesh is loath to release that control, to trust an outside power. It's the childish fear of losing control and all the imagined consequences of bad things we cannot prevent.
Granted, it's a mark of maturity that we can tie our own shoes, but this transcends taking responsibility for yourself. There are a whole range of things God says we should not try to do for ourselves, and this distrust is rooted in a fundamental rejection of His claims as Maker. Because we have failed to trust Him to change us internally, we cannot imagine He is able to do it for anyone else.
But peculiar to America is a certain range of fears that amount to worshiping Mammon. It's not that America is unique in materialism, but there is a unique brand of it here. We are so full of ourselves over what we think we know about the physical world that we cannot imagine the power to remake reality on the fly, unless it's in our own hands. God has done that very thing from the beginning of His dealings with humans, acting in favor of those who serve Him.
This rejection of God's claims and promises is burned into the American psyche as the dire necessity of living. The laws, economics and everything we think, do, and say are predicated on a bitter assertion that God must be lying. We assert the ownership over things we cannot possibly control and refuse to let God have what He claims as His due reverence.
I'll tell of you of one small flaw that God has rescued me from: narcissism. Others have noted that there are two basic tendencies to this flaw. The first is an overwhelming self-will; the other is a fearful introversion. Either way, narcissism is the underlying insistence that one is a sort of gravity well, that being the star of the show is an inherent right. The first rages when they are disappointed, the other engages in dramatic self-harm for the same reason. I was more the latter type, whining and bitching about all kinds of things.
This is whence my dictum: "Don't take yourself too seriously." It's the lesson God taught me on the way to being healed of that madness.
Do you realize that every flaw of human nature is the reverse of some mighty gift that God has made for us? Narcissism is the bad side of divine confidence, of the calm assurance that God has called you to a certain mission.
Narcissism is a part of the madness of American culture. It spoils everything we do. It is lauded in popular culture as the way to get what you want out of life. It reflects that particular lust often translated into English as the "boastful pride of life". It's the ugly, perverted face of what ought to be the calm assurance that God will back you when He sends you.
We insult God when we don't believe the glorious testimony of His servants whom He has healed. I'm not suggesting that people won't lie about it to gain that narcissistic pleasure of attention, but that you should be willing to take some measure of loss on certain things when someone seems genuine. Our Lord says that some measure of trusting His servants is actually trusting Him to make good on their failures.
In 1 Corinthians 8 & 9, Paul teaches that God has granted us broad privileges as His children. Yet, Paul was quite willing to bear certain burdens, to set aside some of those privileges in order to get someone to hear the gospel message. He talks about subjecting himself to the fustiness of Talmudic restrictions to reach Jews, of playing along with Gentile pagan fears in order to show them God's mercy, etc.
That's the real power and authority of God in our lives.
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