114. More than obedience

Hebrews 10:16 "This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds."

So it is Friday night, I am alone in the office, the kid is out seeking mayhem, and Wanna is downstairs reading or meditating. Since I was baptized Wanna has become more devoted in her practice of Buddhism.  For those hoping that the witnessing of my act of faith and obedience may have spurned her to turn to the one true religion, well, it did not quite work out that way.  And I finally have time to sit and work on my next blog post – which if I am successful you are reading.

          It is not that I have been putting it off. I have been struggling to find the words.  But I find when I am dragging my feet, that I am not saying what I want to be saying.  It has been a rough start to the year.  To protect the sensibilities of others, I won’t go into any great detail into these struggles.  Suffice it to say, there has been a temptation that I have been resisting.

          Temptation for me is nasty, and truthfully terrifying.  Most of my drug and alcohol use was done against my will.  I would wake in the morning swearing never to do that again, and by lunch it would be that I would do that differently, and then by the end of the work day, I would simply repeat the same mistake over again.  So this time, as the temptation rose, so did the level of my stress – please don’t try assume what the temptation was about – for it was not about booze or drugs and really is not central to this post.

          There are few people that I am completely honest with, and to those people I turned.  A concept that I learned in the twelve step fellowships is to tell on myself, and I did and asked for their support in prayer.  For even while I could feel this temptation at a cellular level, I knew it was a clusterfuck shrouded in misery waiting to happen.  And I could feel the regret even before I had the opportunity to even indulge the slightest inclination to give in.

          I am not sure what it is about me that causes me to obsess, but obsess I did.  This struggle, and understand it was totally imaginary, occupied much of my thoughts and energy while I was awake and asleep.  There are other things that I will obsess about, but this was monumental.  In the end, the obsession passed, and like the breaking of a fever, there was relief that it had passed.

         

Curious as during this I had been writing on the concept of obedience.  So much of what we talk about in our faith gets shorthanded.  When I talk about obedience I know that for a number of people there will be an image of God the accountant.  He will have his ledger book, and like Santa will keep track of your sins, which are violations of correct behaviour.  This is legalism in a nutshell, which still thrives in our community.

          So, in this situation, I knew wrong from right.  I knew even before this all began, that the temptation was wrong.  But it was wrong, not because I was breaking a rule, or commandment, or one of the thousand odd laws in the Old Testament. It was wrong because of the hurt and harm that it would do to those involved. 

          I am much more of a fan of the image of God as recess monitor, making sure that we play nicely with each other.  It fits better into my understanding of him, and into my understanding of what he wants from us – to be decent human beings.  And it was this aspect that had me most resistant to temptation.

          But there was more, and maybe it is the remnants of my addiction, but I simply did not want to be that person.  I did not want to be the kind of person that would do that kind of thing.  Maybe it is self-centred, but it feels more like that as push came to shove, that I was simply not willing to be that kind of person.  Maybe it is the idea that I am a new creation in Christ?  I don’t know. I still swear, tell off colour jokes, and look at pretty women.  But through this trial, I found that there were things that I was not willing to do – for I did not want to be that kind of person.

Micah 6:8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

The temptation has passed, as I mentioned.  And as if I had been in the grips of a fever, I still don’t feel fully recovered.  Has my righteousness increased?  It is not even a consideration as I still relieved that this has passed.  But I have my post on obedience.

          Obedience is much more than just doing the right thing, or not doing the wrong thing, or following a scripture verse.  It is more profound. It is hard to explain.  In many ways it is losing the obsession of self and growing up.  It is about allowing ourselves a greater authority than our own wants and desires.