Sabotaging Resolutions

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  …  For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.  – Romans 7:15-25

And so, we start a new year with many making resolutions to live this year differently in some way from the manner in which they have lived in the past.  For the most part, resolutions to eat healthier, exercise, refrain from this, adhere to that will be forgotten before the calendar rolls to February.  Something seems to sabotage our good intentions. 

Many times as a Christian I have sought to break some habit or create a habit.  I have gone to the altar and confessed before God.  I have prayed and asked for help.  I have read the books and tried to follow the seven steps to success or the twelve sure-fire ways to get on the right track.  However, I find, time and again, that what Bobbie Burns told a certain mousie is true for me:  The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, Gang aft a-gley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain, For promis’d joy. 

It is true enough the plow which us turns us out into December’s cold is not always of our own making and may indeed be beyond our control.  Yet I think, more often than not, the cause of our disruptions and our failures to find that promised joy lies much closer to home.  Who is it that urges you to eat that second helping, skip your workout, or put off an unpleasant task?  Yep.

But there is something else I have noticed:  when I do something that, as Paul says, is “the very thing I hate”, someone is quick to jump up and condemn me for it.  It’s not for the sake of correction.  Instead the voice I hear asks how I could do/think/say such a thing if I were really a Christian.  It says because I fail to do or not do a particular thing that I am a failure in the sight of God.  The voice tells me that I am rejected by God because I failed to live up to this standard. 

Now a lot of people will tell us that it is the devil talking to us, the devil urging us to do something wrong or not do right, and the devil accusing and condemning us when we follow his advice.    I am sure the devil does get involved sometimes.  On the other hand, I have to give credit where credit is due.  I know that my old fleshly nature is itself devilishly clever and not in need of a lot of outside help to pull off some of these shenanigans.  Plus, it is my flesh, which does not want to cede control and authority to the spirit, who benefits.  By making me feel shame and disgust, it drives a wedge between me and my Father. 

Another ploy of the old nature is to deliberately make a mess of things, get me in a bind then blame God.  The flesh asks why I would trust a God who would allow such a thing to happen.

What we are really doing is sabotaging ourselves because there is a part of us that simply wants to be sovereign, to usurp God’s rightful place in our inner being.  It isn’t that we want to be serial killers or real deviants.  We may even choose, most of the time, to do good – give to charity, provide for our families, help others, and live morally.  But in doing so, we are further convincing ourselves that we do not really need God. 

I’ll use myself as an example.  First I will set unrealistic goals and expectations.  Next, I will distract myself and procrastinate.  I’ll get behind in a project.  I’ll stay up late and work extra hours to catch up.  I’ll get irritable and flaky.  My wife will complain about me neglecting her or working too many hours.  So now, I’m feeling unjustly condemned in one way.  Yet I also know -- since I know that reading “Comic Sins” on Lileks or clicking stupid lists on Cracked.com is what got me behind in the first place, that my wife’s complaint is actually legitimate.  At that point, any excuse to explode will do quite well.  I lose my temper, scream, cuss, and smash things – differing from Hulk only in coloration. 

Once all that is out of my system, I feel shame and guilt.  I’m not a real Christian.  No true Christian would do that kind of thing.  How can God overlook all that?  How can I ever go to God again?  I was never anything but a damned hypocrite.  And, of course, the flesh is quite ready to bring up all my past series of failures and ugly episodes to reinforce that point.

It’s all the work of the saboteur -- stealth, deception, and illusion.  It was never in my power to live the life of Christ.  If it had been, Jesus would never have needed to go to the Cross.  God never needed to look for a way to condemn us.  We condemned ourselves, from the first fall in the Garden to the guy who fell off the wagon this past New Year’s Eve.  We know we are wrong, and we want an excuse to wallow in it, an excuse to give control over to the old fleshly nature, to do it “my way”.  Take time to read Romans 7.  I’m not the only one this has ever happened to.  The Apostle knows the agony I feel because he has gone through the same conflict, the same dark, hopeless battle himself.  

The good news is that I’ve got bad news for the old nature:  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do (Romans 8:1-3a).

 

A Hitch in Time

But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. – John 2:24-25

I love most of the Hitchcock movies like The Birds, Vertigo and Rear Window.  I think it was Frenzy that I saw in a movie theater with a friend of mine.  We were thoroughly unsophisticated hillbilly kids, and it was about too much for us.  We agreed to not tell anybody we had seen it.  It was guilt by association.

A similar film from the ‘80s is The Hitcher with Rutger Hauer and C. Thomas Howell.  I noticed I mentioned this movie in a post a couple of years ago, but we're expanding it a little here.  It’s like watching a copperhead in the weeds, repulsively fascinating.  If you are familiar with the plot, you know that Howell plays a youthful character named Jim Halsey who is delivering a “drive-away” Cadillac from Chicago to San Diego.  He makes the mistake of picking up Hauer’s ominous hitchhiker, John Ryder. 

First of all, there really aren’t any homosexual, homo-erotic undertones in the movies.  I’m not saying that couldn’t be read into it, as some have done, but I think it misses the much bigger point.  Ryder and Halsey -- one hauls and is the vehicle while the other rides and controls.  I can see how someone obsessed with sex or told, at some point, by a sex-obsessed person that it’s like catcher and pitcher might start thinking that.  Halsey and Ryder do get accused of being homosexual by a flagman on the road construction crew, but that is deliberate misdirection on Ryder’s part to defuse suspicion. 

Ryder is a psychotic but a very capable and, we might even say, supernaturally intelligent murderer.  He’s demonic.  He is able to follow Halsey undetected, appearing and disappearing at will.  The reason, so it seems, that he picks Halsey and puts him through so much torment is that he wants to be stopped.

It is almost as though Halsey and Ryder were the same person, a kind of Dr Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Gollum/Smeagol, split personality.  Halsey wants to do the right thing, tries over and over to turn himself in, to escape from the avalanche of evil that he has innocently been caught up in.  Every time, Ryder comes from out of nowhere to intervene and keep Halsey trapped in the ever-tightening spiral.  The movie is on Youtube if you don’t remember it or have never seen it and want to watch it.  Most of the gore is off-screen.  There are dead, bloodied bodies around and a lot of implied horror, but we don’t witness so much of it as we would in the more current slasher movies.

Halsey might understand what Paul was talking about:  … For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out …  I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil is right there with me … ( a little loosely from Romans 7:15-25).  

Every time we want to set things right, to rectify and put everything back the way it should be, something will come out of “nowhere” to upset and thwart our best-laid plans and good intentions.

Now my very exclusive coterie of readers, all four of you, I’m sure don’t have this problem.  For me, though, it’s not really out of “nowhere”.  I suspect that I know exactly where my hitcher is riding as well as his real identity.  I’d like to deny culpability for these sins, point the finger, and blame Ryder, and there’s no question that he needs to be stopped – to die.  But I’m the one who is responsible for stopping him. 

Near the end of The Hitcher, Ryder has been taken into custody by the Texas DPS and is being transported in chains to prison.  Halsey is riding with a DPS captain – who represents the Law.  Halsey says something like, “You’re not going to be able to hold him.”  The Law is good, but it is inadequate to deal with Ryder.  He can’t simply be imprisoned and confined.  We can’t pass off our obligation to the authority of the Law.  We brought him here.  We have to stop him.  In his better moments, in his brief moments of clarity before his nature reasserts itself, Ryder wants us to stop him.  He gives us opportunity after opportunity. 

So, Halsey, after setting the Law out by the side of the road (a mirror image of how the whole thing started) and taking the vehicle of the Law, turns around and goes after Ryder, catching up with the bus just as Ryder makes his escape.  With this last one-on-one confrontation, it is Halsey who goes free.