Finding My Humanity
Marty wrote something profound last weekend. (Yeah, dude, you now have me on record saying that. :~)
He wrote, “If a person is forfeiting their humanity to appease someone else, then there is no way a person can actually enjoy that. It has to break down the body and mind at some point.â€
Forfeiting your humanity to appease someone. Those are exactly the right words to describe it. And I believe that in those situations, we are ultimately forfeiting our humanity to the devil. Much as that sounds like wacko-talk, I came to believe in the reality of evil forces years before I believed in a God.
My hubby Dave and I have been “depth-reading†2 Timothy for awhile now. This means reading a chapter or two at a time, then starting over again once we get to the end of the book, and just going through it a bunch of times. Like a lot of times.
Tonight, what hit me was the opening sentence. Paul calls himself an apostle by the will of God, which he often does. But then he adds, “according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus.â€
I guess I look at that phrase, “the promise of life in Christ Jesus,†and I hear church jargon. It sounds like a long way around saying “salvation,†or “born-again.â€
Or maybe there’s more. Paul says his whole life-calling is in agreement with life in Christ Jesus. So that makes me think about the weird phenomenon of being transformed by God’s Word. I was scared as a new Christian when people talked about a “changed nature†or being “a new creation.†I got the distinct impression I was supposed to magically become someone totally different.
Actually, I’ve become myself.
It seems that God changes me in ways I don’t notice at the time. I’m always busy fighting Him on some other front, in mortal combat against the changes I think He’s trying to make. Instead, He does this aikido thingy where He sort of flips me around on myself, and the change is done – and different than I was expecting – before I even catch on.
The sin stuff gets cleared out of the way a little more all the time. In the last twelve years, I’ve been turned towards the person I was meant to be. I’m not there, and I won’t be in this lifetime. But I’m started on a path, the door to which is trusting that Jesus paid for all my sins.
God doesn’t ask me to forfeit my humanity to keep Him happy. Not to gain a relationship with Him; not to maintain it in good condition. He’s my Creator, not my destroyer. He doesn’t live to break me. I’m transformed by the renewing of my mind. (Romans 12:2) Not by some kind of personality lobotomy.
As I’ve been thinking about spiritual abuse and spiritual sickness, perhaps that’s what grieves me most: watching people waste years to appease a God whose wrath was already dealt with on the cross.
Like Marty said: It’s a simple faith. Really.
