Peripatetics: The Art of Walking
Friday, April 22, 2005
The anger didn't set in until much later.
My dad died when I was 13. There was chaos in my home in that first week with funeral arrangements and family coming from all over the place and then the funeral and it all was busy and blurry.
The next few months were a whirlwind of activity, too. Trying to focus on school while becoming a latchkey kid since my homemaker mom had to get a job and go back to school to renew her teaching certificate. Again, it was busy and blurry.
Then summer came. My mom loaded up on school stuff and me and my friends played baseball and mowed lawns to get some cash. It wasn't all that much work, we had plenty of time and a few bucks to boot.
And, for some reason, my mind at that time started focusing on all the ways I had somehow gotten slighted by...well...I don't know...
I just wound up seething all the time. I was mad at everything and everybody even though I wasn't missing any meals, had good teachers, good friends and I had plenty of time and a few bucks to boot.
And I stayed that way for almost three years.
There weren't any real outward manifestations of the anger. I mean, I didn't become violent in the classroom. I didn't become a recluse and write manifestos. I didn't feel the need to overthrow the system by starting a grass-roots revolution. I didn't drink, do drugs or any of the other things I could've excused because of my "situation." About the only evidence of it was that I got into punk rock music and I hit an obscene amount of baseballs at the batting cage by my house...that's pretty much what I did with my time and my few bucks to boot.
So, how did it go away?
I simply made a choice one day my junior year to just stop being angry.
Really.
I was being discipled by a guy who told me that I didn't have to be angry if I didn't want to.
And, you know, I didn't want to be angry any more.
The guy that discipled me simply talked about my new life in Christ...that I was a new person and the old things had passed away.
Now, I know that he didn't use this passage to talk about how this information that I was a new creature should affect my life, but there's no question that being a new creature SHOULD affect your life...
...and after Paul discussed what a walk with Christ WASN'T (two days ago) and then showed us our calling in Him (yesterday), that calling should have some outward results:
"Therefore consider the memebers of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come, and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the One who created him--a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all and in all."
First of all, note that because we have been hidden in Christ and set our minds on things above, we can not simply consider ourselves dead to the things our flesh desires. They simply don't have the "life" that they once did. In yesterday's terms, we don't have to drink dumpster juice.
Secondly, we have an active role to take...we can actually choose to "lay aside" all sorts of dumpster juice behaviors. The idea is similar that you would take off your dirty clothes and put them in the dirty clothes hamper. You simply have to take them off, walk them over to the hamper, and drop them in. But it's a choice. You could leave them on if you want...or you could leave them in a heap somewhere, but if you really wanted to make sure to get them out of sight and mind (at least until you decided to wash them) you have to simply put them in the hamper.
Before, we never had the freedom to do that before we came to know Christ. We simply wore the old clothes around, and likely, we didn't even know they were dirty. Now, because of Christ, we can make that choice if we want.
So, I simply chose not to be angry and I still make that choice consciously almost every day (anger is the "chink" in my armor)...and focus on the new life in Christ (more on that tomorrow).
For today, think through what dumpster juice you're drinking, and just make a choice to lay it aside...because now you don't have to drink it. So, think through what you're struggling with, and how you think about that sin...and what you're going to do to lay it aside.
Brent 4:49 AM
Comments:
A blog like this would be the perfect setting to ask everyone to reveal their deepest, darkest sins...haha
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