As I write from the living room of another person's home, in a very different state (Washington), under very different circumstances, I am struck by these two very conflicting but reoccurring realities: 1. It is not the will of my Creator that I be comfortable purely for my own comfort's sake and 2. It is in my nature as a finite human being to be comfortable and seek out comfort at any cost. This always becomes evident the moment I am called upon by the Holy Spirit to step out in faith. In that moment any number of idolatrous practices I have replaced the pursuit of my Creator with is brought to light and with it, the inevitable consequences I must walk through, in order to properly let them go, which brings me to today.
Today I am confronted with the many varied ways I have chosen over the past six years to insulate my heart & my mind from the pain of reality & relationship. For example, I have filled more Saturday evenings than I care to admit with the pursuit of a good film to watch which I have not yet seen. Yes, you heard me correctly. I said the pursuit of a good film not a good film itself. In this day and age it is increasingly difficult to find a good quality film to watch which does not compromise the values of a heart fixed on eternity. But that's beside the point. The point is that I wasted time in a fruitless pursuit. And I think on some level I knew it would be a fruitless pursuit. And that's exactly why I did it.
I was attempting to intentionally distract myself from the pain of living. Instead of pressing in to the One who saved my soul in faith that He could or even would fill the void left by the pain of my life, I chose instead to medicate myself with a medication of my own devising. And it wasn't just perusing for a film either. Other times it was flipping through news articles online, vain & important, or searching for new music or playing a video game or reading a comic book. Sometimes it was just sitting up late at night by myself doing nothing at all. And none of that is wrong in itself. But for me, a high feeling introvert, it became a way to excuse my self from human interaction at church the next day, or unintentionally (maybe even intentionally) put space between myself and my wife & kids so I didn't feel so overwhelmed at the time. It was a way to numb myself from many painful current and distant memories. But it became the central preoccupation of my mind. And like an addiction it slowly took over my life. Replacing human interaction with a technological one, I began to distance myself from my Creator & savior first and then my wife and children until finally I shut myself off from the outside world, one fruitless pursuit at a time.
Now it would be easy to blame my behavior on having a son with special needs or my wife's cancer. But that simply isn't the truth. I never learned to deal with reality before I got married, as a single young man. And as a married man with many more new and difficult challenges I wasn't equipped to deal with the strain of ordinary life let alone the sort of life I have had to struggle through.
But why am I sharing this with you? What possible benefit could you derive from my seemingly pathetic confession? It occurs to me, writing in the small space my family & I have been graciously allowed to share with another family, that not only were the fruitless pursuits of the past several years not in vain but serve to reveal yet another very valuable lesson about life love and the pursuit of liberty in Jesus Christ. Allow me to explain.
Whether it is a fruitless pursuit like mine or a fruitful pursuit like church ministry for example (I have done both) why we do what we do (or how we do it) can be just as detrimental as what we do. For example if I serve in the church to fill a hole, an emptiness or meaninglessness I feel, or if I do it to make myself feel better about myself, or elevate myself above others, then I am seeking to do exactly what many others do by avoiding the ministry. That's because ministry (like anything else) can become the means of serving myself and my own interests (or in my case) a way of distracting my self from my own inner pain. Anything can become the means of medicating anything we have experienced. And this is detrimental for two reasons. 1. We were not created to medicate emotional & psychological pain on our own. And 2. The proof of that is that we hardly ever medicate with the right means.
Now you might not medicate with something as silly as me, or you might medicate with something much worse or even far better, but chances are you do medicate. It might be family that floats your boat or your job that sinks your ship (if you catch my drift), but whatever it is, if it is being used for something other than its intended purpose, chances are you are probably medicating your soul with it and it has already begun to hurt not only you but also the people you love. I know it did for me. But I digress.
So here I am, a native southern Californian living in the PNW, clinging to my Creator for dear life (because it is all so foreign to me). And you know what? I'm beginning to think that was His design all along. He wanted me to feel the sting of new challenges, the uncertainty of our living situation, the challenges of a job search so I could grow in my dependence on Him as a newly liberated mending former self medicator. He knows that it is only in my difficulty that I cling to him, only in uncertainty that I rely upon Him, which brings me to my main point, and the crux of this little blog. We cannot self medicate and rely upon the Lord because they are in opposition to each other. And we were created to do the latter not the former. If we are medicating our own soul, seeking to fill a void or escape from pain, then we are not truly (in the most biblical & practical sense) relying upon the work of the Holy Spirit or the finished work of Jesus Christ, which I might add is far more beneficial than any fruitless or fruitful pursuit we might conjur up.
That is because the work of God in the gospel was always meant to heal our hurts, ease & alleviate our pain, restore our souls and renew our lives. And the pursuit of whatever it is we are doing or seeking was not and cannot. And I would argue that it is many times the will of God for our lives that we see that reality by doing the very thing we should not. Now that's not to say that God condones sin in any form or any number of the fruitless or fruitful pursuits we use to fill a void, but rather that it is his gracious wisdom to interact with our human will by allowing us to engage in such destructive or detrimental behavior so we can know in a way that is most beneficial to us why it is far better to trust in Him than ourselves (which is what we are really doing when we self medicate). Now again I'm not going to argue for the supremacy, equality or autonomy of the human will compared to God. I believe that would be a fruitless discussion here at best. But I will say that scripture and reality repeatedly reveal both the folly & powerlessness of the human will and the subtle often miraculous way that God redeems the consequences of our choices. But again I digress. Back to the issue at hand.
I have found the best way to deal with these medicating tendencies of ours (once they have been discovered to us) is to confront the reality we have been trying to avoid to begin with. For example, the reality I was medicating was the practical inadequacy & inability I felt as an inexperienced father dealing with a child that has autism tendencies. And that quickly revealed a deeply rooted resentment I didn't know I had for both the way I was raised & the people who raised me, namely my parents. This became evident in every friendship I had that even remotely resembled a father son relationship, with every perceived "failure" resulting in a deeper & deeper resentment of my upbringing & the human race in general. This of course resulted in a greater & greater excuse for me to escape from it. Thus the deep rooted long standing nature of my dependence on social media & film.
So for me to truly be set free from what basically became an addiction to isolation and solitude, I had to begin by confronting the reality of my own feelings to begin with and work my way down to why I felt that way and what I could or could not do about it. And the only way for me to do THAT was to return afresh to the gospel of Jesus Christ and remember who I really am, what I really need and from whom I really need it. Only by seeing the extent of what God had ALREADY done for me in Christ, how accepted I ALREADY was in Him and what Liberty was ALREADY available to me in the gospel as a BELIEVER could I confront the bondage I had always perceived as Liberty and walk away from it. Only by returning to the cross was I able to see how far I had distanced myself from the One who hung upon it for my sake. Only by admitting my need and inability could I accept the life giving freedom and fulfillment I craved.
Now a few things before I close this already very long discussion. First faith is always practical. And whether you realize it or not we are discussing faith. Because faith is predicated upon uncertainty and difficulty, the desire to medicate or the medication of our soul is always counterintuitive to it. To medicate by definition is to alleviate ourselves from pain or difficulty. But pain is instructive. And in the universe our God has created, far from being the mere consequence of sin or poor decision making, it serves to reveal to our hearts and minds both the reality of who we are and why as well as who God is and how come. Sit on that for a minute.
Without sin there would be no curse. Without the curse there would be no need for a cross. Without the curse & the cross, I wonder would the mysteries of the gospel and redemptive nature of our God remain locked up and undisclosed for all eternity? It boggles the mind and the possibilities are endless. But as I was saying, pain is instructive even revelatory, especially emotional & psychological pain. To stifle it, ignore it or avoid it is to miss out on some of the most beautiful & wonderful revelations in the universe, namely who is this God at the back of it all and why has he allowed dare I say purposed it to exist?
Until we are willing to confront our own hurt & disappointment we cannot really be confronted with the reality & personhood of our Creator and Savior. In other words in order to actually know God we must be willing to get outside of ourselves. And the only way to do that is to accept the reality of our hurt and see our need for him. And the only way to do THAT is to return to the gospel.
So to review. We medicate because we are broken and we want to escape our brokenness. To stop medicating we have to admit we are broken. To admit THAT we have to be willing to accept the reality of why we are broken. And the only way to do that is to return to the gospel. Only in the power of the reality of God's unconditional love in Christ can we accept the way (for instance like me) we have not felt loved. And this willingness to confront such lovelessness is in essence a step toward depending on God in Christ to fulfill such a deeply felt need, which is walking by faith.
So why have I shared this with you today? It's simple really. We are each called by God to walk by faith because we were created to walk by faith. It is for our benefit to walk by faith. But it is also counter intuitive to our American culture. The culture says rely on yourself. Be your best you in your own strength (or in the strength of God (which more times than not in practice is still you). It says you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Nothing is impossible for you. But consider the following.
Addiction is not only excused in our culture it is encouraged. It doesn't matter what it is. Porn, drugs, alcohol, sex, employment, adultery, are all acceptable means of coping with life. But let's take it a step further. Ministry, service, missions and worship, even dare I say it, prayer meetings have become the means of breaking apart families, dividing churches & destroying relationships. Because these latter things look so much better than the former they can be far more and have been far more effective as a means to distance the creator from his redeemed creation.
Francis Schaeffer once stated that if the church doesn't fight the spirit of the age in its own generation it has done nothing in reality to combat Satan and his forces. A startling thought if you consider the spirit of this age is self interest. So what do we do? What can we do? I would like to propose the following.
First we need to saturate ourselves with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The prevailing & successful mindset that the enemy has promoted & promotes today is that believers don't really need it once they are in Christ. That's a lie and not founded on reality at all. We need it as much if not more than unbelievers because we are more prone to convince ourselves that we don't need it once we have been initially effected by it, when the scriptures clearly teach the very opposite: that it is our life blood & the source of our testimony in this world. It is the source of of our sanctification & development and it is the foundation of our relationship with God. The less we are confronted with the gospel, the more shallow & self seeking we will become & revert back to our old self medicating tendencies. The less we return to the cross of Christ the more willingly & blindly we will begin to forget how badly we need it to our own hurt & detriment.
Second, we need to be in community. A real Christ centered community of believers who think and act differently than we do. We need to resist the urge to be isolationists. And we need to resist the urge to be in control of everything all the time. And this begins by embracing the differences we each have or, as my new pastor would say, by pressing into the relationship instead of retreating from it. Only by having (decently) transparent relationships in a community of different people will we begin to see how alike we all really are and how we all alike need and rely upon the gospel.
Third we need to be honest with ourselves about who we are, what we've experienced and what we need. We need to stop hiding, excusing or blaming others for our faults. We need to own our own emotions and walk through them with our maker and with those we feel are the most safe and trustworthy with such sensitive information.
Finally we need to be okay with being weak and dependent. We need to embrace our frailty and see it as an opportunity for growth. Only when we have begun to actively do these things in the right way for the right reason will books on purity, or accountability groups or AA or any other form of treatment & self discipline be of any value to us and other people. In order to deal with the type of idolatry and self medicating tendencies I have just described and discussed in the right way we must first reckon with our own tendency to rely upon ourselves and be in control.
It took me a decade to learn this. Everything I'm sharing with you has been the fruit of a life time of learning. And I'm still growing in it. The sort of quality resources we have available to us today (even godly ones) can only be of use to us if we use them for the right reason in the right way. Otherwise we are only acting like Adam who thought that he could keep the reality of his newfound nakedness from the eyes of the all seeing God by sowing some foliage together. I don't know about you but I have found that dealing with reality is a lot more fruitful and beneficial than avoiding it.
In closing I hope that my transparency as a man has been a benefit to you, that you have profited or will profit from my many failures as a husband and a father, as a servant of the most high God. In my short life I have found that there is no shortcoming or failure, no tragedy or mistake, no devastation death or despair which God cannot or will not graciously redeem for our benefit, which in turn will serve as a blessing to others if they are willing to listen.
God bless you and grant you the strength, Patient Pilgrim whoever you are to confront the realities you have avoided, or ignored, be them ever so awful. May He give you the power & humility to rest in the One who went before you and loves you with an everlasting love. May you ever find victory & Liberty (again) in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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