Four Aspects of a Controlling Heart
Harvesting from Facebook's On This Day is one of my rituals. Since much of what I deposit there are notes to my future self on what I'm reading, God can use this habit to remind me of aspects of His glory or my depravity. Nothing new under the sun, these tend to remain largely consistent from year to year.
I was especially struck by a note I made on Alex Haley's Roots. He commented that there is nothing slave children like better than to enact the role of master and slave. Catch that.
Children haven't felt slavery's full weight, yet they are preparing themselves willingly for its most horrible aspects. They are close enough to its demonstrated depravity to know even in their tender years that it is wrong, yet they take it to their bosoms as a plaything.
Do we not do the same thing, Christian, with the most insidious and coercive of the world's systems? Let's look at three reasons why our interactions tend to borrow from slave and master as the world repeats such roles rather than looking to Christ for renewal and true humility.
(1) We don't trust Christ comprehensively.
I was struck with that aspect of our "faith" as I weighed John 4:8 this morning. It simply says that Jesus was resting by himself at the well in Samaria because His disciples went into town to buy food. He was by Himself, and yet He is about to establish a new frontier and pattern for His Church.
We would never spell it out like this as His heirs and His Church, but often we don't quite trust Him that much. We want His pattern and His inspiration. Especially once there is a group of us, we will use those to set up a human organization within human norms. We tend to tame Him and His expectations. We excuse that He would do the same thing if He were physically in our church on our block. Revelation says He is still among the candlesticks of His churches, and He is not silent.
(2) We bring our habits with us.
Man has been about making an idol out of controlling others made in His image at least since Cain slew Able. He is genetically familiar with the results of the Tower of Babel. He has seen, as Newton confirms, that things in this fallen world go from a state of order to a state of disorder.
We pantomime master and servant, then, even among the brothers and sisters who stand and fall before Christ because we are accustomed to doing so. Just that none of us pause and consider each word before we utter it, our interactions with our fellow humans are freighted with the assumptions that have gone before.
This expectation worked, more or less, so we keep loading it onto our equals in Christ. This motivational phrase didn't come in outright rebellion, so we will use it again rather than asking Christ the Word made flesh to provide the script and stage direction in each interaction.
(3) Squeezing ministry out of others excuses our self-indulgence.
In His parable, Jesus says two things typify the servants who don't expect the master to come soon. Those servants will beat their fellow servants, and they will get drunk themselves. How much of our manipulation of others to coursework and ministry out of them is designed, consciously or not, to keep us unchallenged in point we would rather be doing?
Even if getting drunk while our fellow servants work doesn't hold much allure for us, other enticements make manipulating our brothers and sisters in Christ palatable. My friend Dr. Chris Morris has self-mastery of a neurologist. Yet he confesses broadly, "Comfort is the introvert's idol. It's what keeps us from doing anything."
(4) Manipulation and coercion is intimately familiar from our self-conversation.
Even as I confess that different varieties of our laziness can exacerbate our tendency to misuse fellow Christians, I simultaneously admit that the most focused, driven aspects of our flesh provide no better tutoring for our relationships. Much of what we achieve, even that which is worthwhile, is achieved because we tell ourselves we would not have worth without it.
Accustomed to that fear echoing within us at various volumes depending on the situation, we do not recoil when these insinuations escape our mouths and are used to control others with the same chains that bind us. Even spiritual ends do not guarantee liberating motivation and means. Remember Martha? Her service directly to Christ was out of burden, distracted obligation.
I was especially struck by a note I made on Alex Haley's Roots. He commented that there is nothing slave children like better than to enact the role of master and slave. Catch that.
Children haven't felt slavery's full weight, yet they are preparing themselves willingly for its most horrible aspects. They are close enough to its demonstrated depravity to know even in their tender years that it is wrong, yet they take it to their bosoms as a plaything.
Do we not do the same thing, Christian, with the most insidious and coercive of the world's systems? Let's look at three reasons why our interactions tend to borrow from slave and master as the world repeats such roles rather than looking to Christ for renewal and true humility.
(1) We don't trust Christ comprehensively.
I was struck with that aspect of our "faith" as I weighed John 4:8 this morning. It simply says that Jesus was resting by himself at the well in Samaria because His disciples went into town to buy food. He was by Himself, and yet He is about to establish a new frontier and pattern for His Church.
We would never spell it out like this as His heirs and His Church, but often we don't quite trust Him that much. We want His pattern and His inspiration. Especially once there is a group of us, we will use those to set up a human organization within human norms. We tend to tame Him and His expectations. We excuse that He would do the same thing if He were physically in our church on our block. Revelation says He is still among the candlesticks of His churches, and He is not silent.
(2) We bring our habits with us.
Man has been about making an idol out of controlling others made in His image at least since Cain slew Able. He is genetically familiar with the results of the Tower of Babel. He has seen, as Newton confirms, that things in this fallen world go from a state of order to a state of disorder.
We pantomime master and servant, then, even among the brothers and sisters who stand and fall before Christ because we are accustomed to doing so. Just that none of us pause and consider each word before we utter it, our interactions with our fellow humans are freighted with the assumptions that have gone before.
This expectation worked, more or less, so we keep loading it onto our equals in Christ. This motivational phrase didn't come in outright rebellion, so we will use it again rather than asking Christ the Word made flesh to provide the script and stage direction in each interaction.
(3) Squeezing ministry out of others excuses our self-indulgence.
In His parable, Jesus says two things typify the servants who don't expect the master to come soon. Those servants will beat their fellow servants, and they will get drunk themselves. How much of our manipulation of others to coursework and ministry out of them is designed, consciously or not, to keep us unchallenged in point we would rather be doing?
Even if getting drunk while our fellow servants work doesn't hold much allure for us, other enticements make manipulating our brothers and sisters in Christ palatable. My friend Dr. Chris Morris has self-mastery of a neurologist. Yet he confesses broadly, "Comfort is the introvert's idol. It's what keeps us from doing anything."
(4) Manipulation and coercion is intimately familiar from our self-conversation.
Even as I confess that different varieties of our laziness can exacerbate our tendency to misuse fellow Christians, I simultaneously admit that the most focused, driven aspects of our flesh provide no better tutoring for our relationships. Much of what we achieve, even that which is worthwhile, is achieved because we tell ourselves we would not have worth without it.
Accustomed to that fear echoing within us at various volumes depending on the situation, we do not recoil when these insinuations escape our mouths and are used to control others with the same chains that bind us. Even spiritual ends do not guarantee liberating motivation and means. Remember Martha? Her service directly to Christ was out of burden, distracted obligation.
Comments
Post a Comment