Think the thought

 

Romans 7:14-8:6, Preached by Tom Lacey at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, January 15, 2012

 

Two men get into a dispute they can’t resolve. They decide to talk to the town sage. The first man goes to the sage’s home and tells his version of what happened. When he finishes, the sage says, “You are absolutely right.”
The next night, the second man calls on the sage to tell his side of the story. The sage responds, “You are absolutely right.” Afterward, the sage’s wife scolds her husband. “Those men tell you two different stories and you tell them both they're absolutely right. That’s impossible—they can’t both be absolutely right.” The sage looks at his wife and says, “You are absolutely right.”

We perhaps look at Paul as if he were a person with all the answers. After all, he is in the bible; in fact, his writings make up a majority of the New Testament. If he can’t get his act together, then how are we supposed to? So we look to him, to scripture, for a description of how to overcome sin. But in our text, Paul is the one struggling, and it sounds like he isn’t winning either. In fact, just two weeks ago, we heard him say he couldn’t beat back the thorn in his flesh, some powerful negative issue in his life. He couldn’t beat it even through the power of prayer. The only way to overcome it, he confessed, was through God’s grace giving him the strength.

The truth is the power of Sin, with a capital S, is immense. The power of our bodies, our emotions, our impulses and compulsions is vast and too often seemingly overwhelming. We want to do a or b or even c but we end up doing x, y, or even z. One moment we're in our right mind, the next we've thrown away our family, job, future. Sin is irrational, incredibly dangerous, and not to be played with. We don’t call them the seven deadly sins for nothing.

Greed is not to be toyed with, lust isn’t to be fooled around with, envy is not to be followed, gluttony isn’t to be indulged in, pride shouldn’t be elevated, anger mustn’t be obeyed, and laziness shouldn’t be permitted. And yet we all do one or more, even though in our right mind we don't want to, which reminds me of the guy looking to buy a shirt. He sees one with a label that says, "Shrink Resistant." He asks what this means. The clerk explains, "The label means the shirt will shrink, but it doesn't want to."

In today’s world, it’s not really possible to talk about what we’re talking about and not speak to the issue of addiction, and whether it’s human will gone bad or a disease. Paul writes, “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells with me.” To many people it appears Paul is just excusing his behavior, that he's justifying his lack of will power to do what’s right and good. Others who view addictions as a disease consider Paul’s words to be taken from their own struggles and lives.

But here's the thing: Paul's not ultimately talking about us and our powers to be good or bad. I know that sounds strange because it seems like that’s exactly what he’s talking about. Still, what he’s really talking about is a war, a war that occurs within us, but is between two primary antagonists: Sin and the powers and principalities aligned with Sin, namely death, and God and the powers of Good, namely Jesus Christ. They are fighting over and within us, and, Paul’s final point is, we cannot defeat the crushing, dominating power of Sin on our own. And so he desperately asks, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” And he answers triumphantly, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Whether this excuses addicted folks in your mind, that’s up to you. What it does say however is that the battle is the same in all of us, and yet still different. Why someone has to fight a tiger of gigantic proportions, and often lose gigantically, while some struggle with a much smaller cousin, a house cat in comparison, and merely lose minor excursions, who can say. But be grateful if you’re fighting kittens. Pray for those who struggle against monsters and demons. Pray for their recovery, their strength, and a new life.

If you're struggling and losing, don't give in. Call upon Jesus Christ. Get some help. Don't mess around with a power that can completely dominate one's life and soul. As AA and other such groups say: Believe in and hold onto a higher power, the Lord your God.

Tommy Lasorda, the former LA Dodgers manager, describes his battle with some bad habits: “I took a pack of cigarettes from my pocket, stared at it and said, “Who’s stronger, you or me?” The answer was me. I stopped smoking. Then I took a vodka martini and said to it, “Who’s stronger, you or me?” Again the answer was me. I quit drinking. Then I went on a diet. I looked at a big plate of linguine with clam sauce and said, “Who’s stronger, you or me?” And a little clam looked up at me and answered, “I am.” I can’t beat linguine.

In his book The Life You Always Wanted, John Ortberg shows us what our struggles are like quite often. For many people, we’re talking smaller things. He says, "I look in on my children as they sleep at night, [and] I think of the kind of father I want to be. I want to create moments of magic, I want them to remember laughing until the tears flow ... I want to have slow, sweet talks with them as they’re getting ready to close their eyes. I want to chase fireflies with them, teach them to play tennis, have food fights, and hold them and pray for them in a way that makes them feel cherished.

"I look in on them," he writes, "and I remember how the day really went. I remember how they were trapped in a fight over [a game] and I walked out of the room because I didn’t want to spend the energy needed to teach them how to resolve conflict. I remember how my daughter spilled cherry punch at dinner and I yelled at her as if she’d revealed some deep character flaw; I yelled at her even though I spill things all the time and no one yells at me; I yelled at her - to tell the truth - because I’m big and she’s little and I can get away with it. I remember how at nights I didn’t have slow, sweet talks, but merely rushed the children off to bed so I could have more time to myself."

"I’m disappointed," Ortberg says, "not just with my life as a father. I am disappointed with my life as a husband, friend, neighbor and human being in general.”

Now maybe to you this is a little too self-critical or just natural, the way life is. But it certainly doesn’t belong in a message dealing with such intense things as Paul is. The children still love their father, and he them.

And yet what if this happens basically every night? What if there's the hope, the vision, the spiritual mind that sees things as they should be and as they could be, but when the day comes and the pressure's on, we lose it? We lose the spirit and hold onto the flesh. We forget the vision and go with the impulse. We think not of others but of ourselves. We want to be better for our children, spouses, ourselves, we want to do what God calls us to do, and yet we don’t. We say yes to God in our mind but our lives do something else. This is precisely what Paul is talking about. It's like we’re paralyzed.

Joni Ericson Toda was only 15 when she was permanently paralyzed from the neck down as the result of a diving accident. She describes her first distressing realization of the grim reality of her paralysis. She was immediately rushed to the hospital to determine the extent of her injury. As she lay unclothed on a hospital cart, the sheet covering her slipped to the side leaving her partially exposed. In her modesty, Joni desperately wanted to cover herself, a small task easily, quickly accomplished beforehand. But now, as much as she wanted to make her arms and hands move, they simply wouldn’t respond. Joni knew in her mind exactly what she wanted to do, but her body was totally unresponsive.

You and I can only taste of Joni’s struggle in small portions. Joni, and others who share her physical condition, have no choice whatsoever, unlike us in our spiritual condition. We're not spiritually paralyzed permanently. We have a choice.

Some have heard of Arfa Karim Randhawa, the computer programming prodigy who became the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional at 9 years old. Tragically, she passed away this year at the age of 16. She suffered an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest. Having become a bit famous by being so young and so accomplished, one reporter, who interviewed her at 10 years old, upon her death went back to the tapes and listened again. She said that at 10 years old Arfa had appeared to settle already on her philosophy of life. She says, “she told me about it after our interview, when she was having her picture taken outside, so I turned my recorder back on and asked her to repeat it for me on tape. She said, ‘If you want to do something big in your life, you must remember that shyness is only the mind,’ she said. ‘If you think shy, you act shy. If you think confident you act confident. Therefore never let shyness conquer your mind.’”

This girl knew she had to a battle to overcome. For her it was between letting shyness and fears dominate her life or getting more out of life. She wanted more, and so she refused to give in. She thought thoughts that helped her do amazing things. She thought with the Spirit, and refused to think with anything less.

Do you know what’s so amazing about this child? Somehow she knew that she and her shyness were not the same. She had a tremendous insight: Not all her thoughts are her. She freed herself from following ideas that would have kept her afraid and unable to live up to her God-given potential.

Too many of us believe that our thoughts and we are the same. We’re not. This is going to get a little thoughtful: What I mean is that we believe if we think it, we own it. For example, whatever you’re thinking about right now you believe is you. Your thoughts are your private you, your private world, that make up who you are and who you're not. If you couldn't think those right thoughts in Geometry class, you didn't get A's or go onto a career in Geometry. If you’re thinking thoughts about how confusing this is, well, that’s you (and perhaps me, sorry). If you're thinking, man, that pastor's a genius, well that’s you (and definitely me, haha).

Here’s the thing: Your thoughts aren’t necessarily you, or at the very least they don’t have to be. Your thoughts may reflect the less-than-you, the compulsive you, or perhaps a bit better to say the compulsive brain in you. Others may say it is the alcoholic brain in them, or the gambling addicted brain in them. What I want you to hear, especially if you're struggling with an obsession or an addiction, is that we're not merely our thoughts. We are the captain of our thoughts. We can reject thoughts as not us, and not follow them where they lead.

So if it’s a bad thought, recognize it. You don’t have to follow because a thought came in your head, an impulse flickered into your brain, a compulsion lit up your synapses. In order to battle this and win, think instead the thought that recognizes that a part of you may not be as healthy as you would wish and need to be.

In other words, call crazy what’s crazy. Call wrong what’s wrong. Don’t give into the compulsive mind, the hurt mind, the addicted mind, the self-seeking mind. We don’t have to go there. It is an option, and a bad one at that. Shrug it off. Look to God to help you overcome. Call out to Christ to give you strength. Let the Spirit empower you to face down the monster, or turn and run like the dickens; because there are definitely other options. There is a whole world out there that is free of such things.

Think instead then what Paul tells us to think about, “… whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things…and the God of peace will be with you.” Phil.4:8

Think the good thoughts. Go to the good places. Love the good people. There is the hard work, and the honest wage, and the struggle with your spirit that brings life. So stay on the high road, with the higher power, the Lord your God, leading your way.