Antagonists in the Church?

Warning: Dangerous people

Man seeks benefits from God while fleeing God

Encountering God in Church

The ‘Wretched Man’ of Romans 7

The conflicted man of Romans 7

Romans 9-11

Unfortunate debate over Romans 9-11

Why people persist in damaging behavior

• Whether these behaviors amount to sin or symptom, the prescription for dealing with them may turn out to be just about the same.

Why do people persist in behavior when they know the misery it brings on them? Why does an addict return to his drugs or his habit of gambling? Why does the abuser return to his violence? Why does the abused remain in an abusive relationship? Why can’t the depressed break their cycle of depression? When I began pastoral ministry 40 years ago, I had a simpler understanding of human behavior than I do now. I learned early on that there are often deeply complex reasons for why people do what they do. 

The sources of human behavior are often a mixture of physical, psychological, social, and spiritual factors. God created humans with each of these dimensions and each one can have a seriously adverse effect on the others. Those who struggle with depression, anger, or even impulsiveness might discover physical causes for their emotions and behaviors. Those who were significantly deprived of certain elements of nurture or endured trauma during childhood, often react with harmful behavior as adults.

Is the label “sin” adequate for all of this?

“When one observes the rifts and scars of children whose parents took turns slapping, deriding, ignoring, bullying, or, sometimes worse, simply abandoning them; when one observes the wholesale life mismanagement of grown-ups who have lived for years in the shadow of their bereft childhood and who have attempted with one addictor after another to fill up those empty places where love should have settled, only to discover that their addictor keeps enlarging the very void it was meant to fill — when one knows people of this kind and observes their largely predictable character pathology, one hesitates to call all this chaos sin. The label sounds smug and impertinent.  In such cases, we want to appeal to some broader category, perhaps the category of tragedy” (Cornelius Plantinga Jr., “Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be”).

“Tragedy,” however, “implies the fall of someone who is responsible and significant. It refers to someone whose significance has been “compromised and crushed by a mix of forces, including personal agency, that work together for evil in a way that seems simultaneously surprising and predictable, preventable and inevitable. A tragic figure is, in some intricate combination, both weak and willful, both foolish and guilty.”

It is important, in most cases, to start with an assumption that people have a full line of moral credit; that they are people who can accept and pay for their debts. “In general we ought to pay evildoers, including ourselves, the ‘intolerable compliment’ of taking them seriously as moral agents, of holding them accountable for their wrongdoing. This is a mark of our respect for their dignity and weight as human beings. After all, what could be more arrogant than treating other persons as if they were no more responsible than tiny children or the mentally maimed? What could be more patronizing than the refusal to blame people for their wrongdoing and to praise them for their right doing and to ground this refusal in our assumption that these people have not caused their own acts or had a hand in forming their own character?” (Plantinga).

When helping people understand their behavior, it is useful to consider all dimensions of human existence.  Information about a person’s past, for example, may help him arrive at a better understanding of his present behavior. Yet such information should not be used to excuse present actions. I often remind people that the only thing we can change about the past is how we allow it to affect us in the future.

“Remarkably enough at the end of the day it might not matter very much how we classify damaging behavior.  Whether these behaviors amount to sin or symptom, the prescription for dealing with them may turn out to be just about the same.” 

“Nobody,” for example, “is more insistent than Alcoholics Anonymous that alcoholism is a disease; nobody is more insistent that A.A. on the need for the alcoholic to take full responsibility for his disease and deal with it in brutal candor.” (Plantinga).

In the spiritual dimension, however, it is important for us to be willing to admit to our sins – yea, sins. Even if we do not feel we are fully to blame for all our behavior, in most instances we can find ways in which we have been guilty. Since God has made provision for the forgiveness of sins, it is important for us to avoid excuses and accept responsibility for our behavior. Scripture says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).

Ultimately, all evil and damaging behavior traces back to what theologians call the fall of man (see Genesis 3). This fall records the first act of human rebellion against God and the adverse effects it brings on all dimensions of human existence.  Our first need, therefore, is to be brought back into a right relationship with the creator. When this happens it provides the starting point for breaking the cycles of destructive behavior. To learn more about the way God provided for us to be restored to himself, see John 3:16-17.  

Steve Cornell

A dangerous sense of entitlement

Free in prison

How does it feel to be a Christian?

Abundant life includes pain and struggle

the complexity of self-hatred

The painful cycles of self-hatred

Check this out to moms

Amazing discovery for moms!

Dungeons beneath the castles of despair

Great leaders battle depression

In a letter written on Jan. 23, 1841, Abraham Lincoln revealed that he was suffering an intense battle with depression.

“I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.” (Abraham Lincoln)

Lincoln is not the only great leader who struggled with depression. The Psalmist wrote,

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? ” (Psalm 13:1-2)

C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) was one of England’s finest pastors. It is no secret that this great preacher suffered prolonged and intense battles with depression. Noting the depths of his battle, he once wrote: “There are dungeons beneath the castles of despair.” 

“Fits of depression come over the most of us. Cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy.”

“There may be here and there men of iron to whom wear and tear work no perceptible detriment, but surely the rust frets even these; and as for ordinary men, the Lord knows and makes them to know that they are but dust.”

“Knowing by most painful experience what deep depression of spirit means, being visited therewith at seasons by no means few or far between, I thought it might be consolatory to some of my brethren if I gave my thoughts thereon, that younger men might not fancy that some strange thing had happened to them when they became for a season possessed by melancholy; and that sadder men might know that one upon whom the sun has shone right joyously did not always walk in the light.”

“The lesson of wisdom is: Be not dismayed by soul-trouble. Count it no strange thing, but a part of ordinary ministerial experience. Should the power of depression be more than ordinary, think not that all is over with your usefulness. Cast not away your confidence, for it hath great recompense of reward” [Heb. 10:35]. 

“Even if the enemy’s foot is on your neck, expect to rise and overthrow him. Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord who forsakes not His saints. Live by the day—aye, by the hour.”

“My witness is that those who are honored by their Lord in public have usually to endure a secret chastening or to carry a peculiar cross lest by any means they exalt themselves and fall into the snare of the Devil. Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are. When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon your consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed of being full, except in the Lord.”

•  “To be disappointed in yourself is to have believed in yourself” (Miles Stanford).

Scripture to guide us

• “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17). 
• “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence” (Psalm 42:5)
• “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten” (Joel 2:25)
• “In that day you will say: ‘I will praise you, O Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me” (Isaiah 12:1)
• “…weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).
• “Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful” (Jeremiah 31:4).
• “You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy” (Psalm 30:11).

What did Jesus experience for us?

• “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering…” (Isaiah 53:3-4).
• “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).
• Jesus came “to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair” (Isaiah 61:2-3).  

Pray this (often)

“Father of Mercies, Hear me for Jesus’ sake. I am sinful even in my closest walk with you; it is of your mercy that I did not die long ago; Your grace has been given to me in the cross by which you have reconciled yourself to me and me to you, drawing me by your great love, declaring me as innocent in Christ though guilty in myself.”

“Giver of all graces, I look to you for strength to maintain them in me, for it is hard to practice what I believe. Strengthen me against temptations. My heart is an unexhausted fountain of sin, a river of corruption since childhood days, flowing on in every pattern of behavior; You have disarmed me of the means in which I trusted, and I have no strength but in you.”

“You alone can hold back my evil ways, but without your grace to sustain me I fall. Satan’s darts quickly inflame me, and the shield that should quench them easily drops from my hand: Empower me against his schemes and assaults. Keep me sensible of my weakness, and of my dependence upon your strength. Let every trial teach me more of your peace, more of your love.”

“Your Holy Spirit is given to increase your graces, and I cannot preserve or improve them unless he works continually in me. May he confirm my trust in your promised help, and let me walk humbly in dependence upon you, for Jesus’ sake.” (From: The Valley of Vision)

Still learning,

Steve Cornell

See also: Discouragement: A closer look & Depression – a balanced understanding