The Sidekick

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. -- Galatians 5:16

The more we seek God and seek to have our minds renewed by the truth and our lives transformed in that renewal, the less power the old nature has over us. 

Sometimes I think my natural, conscious mind, the one I’ve used so much and, God forgive me, been proud of now and then, is like the comic-relief sidekick in an old Western serial.  He’s kind of along for the ride, more trouble than he’s worth, and is prone to take undue credit for his part in a happy ending.  We would wonder about a heroine who was more taken with the empty bluster and bravado of the side-kick than the hero’s selfless courage, honesty, humility, and competence. 

The soul is the heroine.  She can listen to the spirit and love him, or she can be enamored of the flesh and his banter.  The flesh has a lot on his side in that he and the whole world system are in agreement and alignment.  They share a lot of values.  The flesh’s views get reinforced by everything in popular culture.  We are inundated with news and information and politics and all the rest telling us that the flesh is right.  All that matters is what can be experienced by the five senses, and you had better get it while you can.  YOLO.  I have to look it up every time I see it. 

If we live to the flesh, we are dead while we live – dead now in our sins and trespasses.  But if our heroine binds herself instead to the spirit, we enter into life.  It’s a good thing to remember that the life we receive from Christ, the only kind of life He has, is eternal life, beginning not when we die physically but as we turn and begin walking with and according the Spirit. 

One more thing about not gratifying the desires of the flesh, most of us have had the unhappy occasion to stumble and go wrong.  Even when it works out, even when I’ve gotten “my way”, I get no satisfaction out of it anymore.  I remember when sin was fun.  If wickedness had been as empty and unfulfilling when I was seventeen or eighteen as it is now, I would have quit a lot sooner.  Once you start walking in the Spirit, the old thrills start fading.  Part of that might be a natural result of the passing of time, but I see men and women my chronological age and older that still haven’t gotten the message.  It doesn’t mean that we won’t be tempted or that we won’t fall; we’ll just feel worse afterward, every time.

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.

Be Hatin'

O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent?

Who shall dwell on your holy hill?

He who walks blamelessly and does what is right

and speaks truth in his heart;

who does not slander with his tongue

and does no evil to his neighbor,

nor takes up a reproach against his friend;

in whose eyes a vile person is despised,

but who honors those who fear the LORD;

who swears to his own hurt and does not change;

who does not put out his money at interest

and does not take a bribe against the innocent.

He who does these things shall never be moved.

 -- Psalm 15:1-5

We generally think we ought to be kind and forgiving and tolerant of everyone, but are there people we may despise?  Paul warned the church at Corinth about be too accepting:  But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. (1 Corinthians 5:11)

Jesus did not despise those who were in need of the Great Physician.  He did, though, tell us that we could not follow Him unless we were willing to hate:  If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  (Luke 14:26) 

Wait, “even his own life”?  Jude, of all people, might help us out:  And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. (Jude 22-23)

It’s the flesh that is the problem.  The old nature, my old nature is vile and to be despised.  In each one of us, even the most fallen and wicked, is the potential for the new life.  It is bond and imprisoned by the carnal mind and worldly ways of thinking.  Do we not hate and are we not right to hate those who oppress and enslave others?  We ought also to despise the self which denies liberty to the spirit. 

Hand in Glove

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him … – Colossians 1:21-22

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.  Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. – Romans 8:6-8

I have done bad things.  I do both fewer and less these days – that is, fewer bad things and those are less bad (mostly).   While disobedience is to be avoided, our real problem is defiance, a mindset that refuses to accept our status as branches drawing life from the Vine.  We start thinking that, because we are walking around in a seemingly separate cloud of atoms, we are somehow independent and able to act according to our own intentions and desires. 

We are alienated in our minds.  We can’t really be independent anymore than a marionette could walk around without strings or Kermit the Frog could sing without a little help from his friends.  I could try duct-taping my gloves to the chainsaw, but I don’t think they would cut much wood.  When your glove fetches a beer from the refrigerator, your hand is usually going to be in it.  

From God's point of view, the flesh -- that is, our old nature --  never accomplishes anything of lasting value.  The "glove" of the physical body can be animated by either the old fleshly nature or the new spiritual nature.  We should set our minds accordingly.

  

Cagematch with the Mountain

The Spirit is the One who give life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life – John 6:63

On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, drive out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your name?’ Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you! Depart from Me, you lawbreakers!’ -- Matthew 7:22-23

Whatever it born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit – John 3:6

The flesh can build buildings, but it can’t build the kingdom.

The flesh can raise money, but it cannot lay up treasure in heaven.

The flesh can increase membership and teach morals, ethics, and good behavior, but it cannot make new creations.

The flesh can preach inspirational and motivational messages, but it cannot change the heart of man.

The flesh can wield political power and get out the vote, but it is spiritually dead and powerless.

In fact, man in his fallen configuration can be a very powerful force for good in the sense of achieving material progress and offering help to his fellow man. Conversely, the human soul apart from the Spirit is capable of great evil, self-justification, self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement, and God-defying arrogance.

The more talented we are, the more intellectual capacity we have, the more we are likely to rely on our own strengths rather than upon the Spirit as He indwells us and empowers us. Those who are wise in this world are tempted to be less dependent upon God and His guidance. To walk in the Spirit, the wise do not need to become foolish. They need only to lay aside all they know and understand in themselves and seek the wisdom that is from above. “My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts are higher than your thoughts,” said the Lord to the prophet Isaiah.

I have no desire to criticize what others do, their motives, their intentions, or their accomplishments. For my part, I think I would rather do nothing than operate in the power of the first Adam. I may not be able to always adhere to that standard. My surrender may be lacking. I may take up the banner of self from time to time under duress and pressure, but it is not my intent to do so.

My prayer today is that I may accept all that comes as from the Lord, and that I may not lean on my own understanding but upon Him.