Spiritual Survival Guide
1: Starting Well: Surviving Spiritually on the Inside
hard to escape the moral logic that when I’ve done something awful and unacceptable, therefore I am something awful and unacceptable. Why? Because . . . I did it. And I (not someone else) keep doing it. This is the fatal equation that keeps so many of us bound in our secret shame. Here’s the second way we get our identity wrong: We’re tempted to reject the whole premise of shame altogether. We say, “Who I am inside has nothing to do with what I do on the outside.” This way of seeing our- selves actually separates our being from our doing. So, we can say, “Yeah, I’m doing all these things, but you know, it really doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t really touch who I am on the inside. I am who I am, and I do what I do, and shame has nothing to do with it.” Here’s the problem. If the first way of understanding who we are leaves us feeling perpetually shame-bound, this way leaves us shame-less. It also leaves us without a functioning conscience, disconnected from ourselves, lacking in integrity, and operating with a false self. Jesus has a word for us when we go this route, too: Hypocrite! The good news is, there’s actually a better way than either of these. There’s a deeper, more honest, more profound, more hopeful, and more healthy way to understand our identity. There’s a biblical way, a both-and way: We have both an old self and a new self. Dwelling in us are both sin and the power of the Holy Spirit. We have both an outer nature and an inner nature. We’re both slaves to sin and part of the body of Christ. You can’t get more both-and than the famous passage in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I
don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.— Romans 7:17-25, The Message Paul knew that Jesus Christ can and does help us in the very midst of our shame. That’s why Paul went on to say, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view. . . . So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17). Are you putting these two pieces together? The Christian life is living with this double-self—the old self that’s still kicking but passing away, and the new self, the Christ-shaped self, that’s coming into being. And so all the shame that you and I still experience is the residue, the conse- quence, the ingrained patterns of our old self, the self that’s on the way out. Our painful ongoing shame is associated with all of that. And it’s real. But (and this is crucial) our sinful, shameful old self doesn’t define our identity. Because there’s something even more real about who we are and whose we are: our new life in Christ, the new creation, the rebirth, the abundant, free life in him.
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