I want to begin what will be a very long thread on freedom today. I suspect that I’ll be blogging about this for the next couple of months. The kind of freedom I am writing about is freedom from the domination of sin and Satan in your life. I would really appreciate your prayers as I write. I’ve had some very stiff opposition as I’ve begun to put this thing together. I guess that’s a good thing. It means that I’m on the right track. But please pray for me so that I will get this written down the way the Holy Spirit wants it done.
I do not think it’s inappropriate to begin at the beginning. In this case the beginning we are talking about is the beginning of evil. As Christians we spend all of our lives in a battle against evil but I don’t think we spend enough time thinking about the very nature of the thing we are fighting. What is evil? What is sin?
Apparently the whole thing started with an angel who was in a highly exalted position. His name was Lucifer. There is a great deal of irony in that name, because the name means “morning star” or “light bearer.” He was in the kingdom of God and there was no one or nothing to seduce him into becoming evil. He had never seen evil. In the act of rebelling against God, he literally had to create evil. He had to seduce himself.
I’ve tried to imagine what this must have been like, but I can’t quite pull it off. Where did it all begin? Did he analyze the way all existence was centered on the love and worship of the Creator and begin to imagine himself in that position? And as he imagined it and began to fantasize about it, did the desire begin to get stronger and stronger? We may never know exactly what went through his heart and mind that led him to rebel, but there is one thing we can know for sure.
It was crazy. Have you ever thought about how crazy it was? You and I are born in sin and without very much knowledge of God. Lucifer knew God. Lucifer knew about God. That means that when he first began thinking about rebelling, he knew that God was listening to what was going on in his mind. He also had to know that God was omnipotent. Sin began as a rebellion against an omnipotent being who was hearing the thoughts of the rebels while they were making their plans. And you thought you’d pulled some stupid stuff.
I’ll spend some time on Thursday speculating on why they thought they could pull it off, but the one thought I want to leave you with is that sin is insane. There never has been, and never will be, a sin that was ultimately in the best self interest of the person committing the sin. Sin is crazy. And I was born with sin in my nature. So that must mean …
I can still remember the moment when I first realized that I was depressed. I had been sick for about six weeks. I felt weak and listless. I thought I had come down with something. So I went to the family doctor and he checked me out and he couldn’t find one single thing wrong with me – physically. He didn’t actually come right out and say it, but he led me right up to the point where the realization hit me like a bucket of ice water right in the face. “There is something wrong with my mind.” Independent (sometimes to the point of arrogance), tough minded, above average IQ me? Something wrong with my mind?
For those of you who don’t know, I have seasonal affective disorder. Our bodies react to light and produce what I call “happiness chemicals” up in the brain. Apparently, my body doesn’t work right and I don’t produce as much of those chemicals as you do. So in the winter I have to battle depression. I don’t see pink elephants or come to believe that I am Napoleon Bonaparte (everyone knows I’m really Elvis). I just get sad. Very sad. Sad like someone very close to me just died sad. Like a lot of these mind-body things, they don’t seem to fully manifest until your college years. I’ve been fighting this annual battle since 1972.
I am telling you this story because I want you to come to the same place I had to come to. As far as I knew, the old noodle was working just fine, until I finally confronted the evidence that led me to understand that something was wrong up there.
We are born broken. When my kids were born I looked them over, counted the fingers and toes, and thanked God that they were healthy. But even in the delivery room, contemplative and philosophical soul that I am, I knew that they weren’t fine. They were born poisoned. They were born with sin in their natures. And I knew that my battle with evil was entering a new phase. Instead of just fighting evil in my own nature I was going to have to do everything I could (with God’s help) to help my kids grow up to be as sane (good) as possible. I’m not sure how much help I was, but they have a good mother so they turned out fine.
So how about you? Have you ever come to the place where you have come to realize that something is wrong with your heart and mind? I’m not just talking about the presence of wrong desires. We all know about that. But what does the presence of these wrong desires tell me about myself?
The temptation and the tendency is to think to yourself, “I’m okay, I just need to stop making bad choices.” This simply isn’t true. You are making bad choices because you are not okay. You are making bad choices because there is a power inside of you that is evil and irrational. Every sin is an act of madness.
How in the world could Lucifer have sinned against an omnipotent God who was reading his mind? He did it because he made some choices that literally warped his heart and his mind. In a very real sense he became insane.
Lucifer sinned against an omnipotent and omniscient being. When we sin, we are sinning against perfect love and perfect wisdom. God is the almighty beating heart from which pours all the love that is in the universe. He loves you with a passion and intensity that is beyond any other love that you will ever know. And He is perfectly wise. He has a perfect mind. When He tells you to do something, it is always the very best thing for you to do. Isn’t it just as crazy for you and I to rebel against perfect love and perfect wisdom as it was for Lucifer to rebel against omniscience and omnipotence?
In our fight with evil we tend to focus our actions, on what we do. There is a place for that, but the real struggle has to do not with what we do, but with who we are. I need to be renewed in the spirit of my mind, not because my poor brain almost has it all figured out but just needs a little help, but because my poor brain is linked to a heart that is influenced by madness. True progress in the spiritual life comes as we learn to cooperate with God in bringing ever greater measures of sanity and health to our diseased hearts and minds. In the coming weeks I’m going to be sharing with you some of the things I have learned about cooperating with the Holy Spirit so that He can change me.
Let me leave you with this little thought. Sin hasn’t made us totally insane. We all have things we wouldn’t dream of doing. I don’t know about you, but I don’t struggle with the desire to rob banks or march Jews into gas chambers. We all have a long list of things we simply wouldn’t do. For us, to actually do these things is unthinkable. But what about the sins that we do not find unthinkable? What about the sins we actually do commit? What is God trying to do in our lives? Is He just trying to get us to quit doing things?
What God is trying to do is to transform you so that you begin to see what He sees, feel what He feels, and think the way He thinks. God is trying to transform us so that more and more thoughts, attitudes and actions move from the “things I do but I know I shouldn’t list” to the “things I can’t imagine how I ever did them and will never do them again list.” Real freedom is when God transforms me to the place where the irresistible becomes the unthinkable.
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