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It was Freudian psychology that really made ego a popular term. It describes one’s personality and in many cases the guilt that is often times associated with a person’s ego.
I have walked in my fair share of guilt. I have rolled in it. Put it in a backpack and carried it everywhere I went. Guilt raises its ugly head when I think I am being less than perfect. And for some reason I trick myself into thinking that beating myself up over coming up short is going to make me feel better. Wrong.
So I turn to my faith often times and say, “Look at how terrible you are. God, I am so sorry I am like this”, is a holy thing. Why do I continue to participate in the endless cycle of crucifying myself over my guilt? I remember a person saying, “what you do in any given moment is the best you can do. If you could have done better, you would have”. I don’t know if that’s good doctrine or not or just a way of letting yourself off the hook, but for now I am going with that.
It’s hard at times to be sold out to my beliefs and passions because I might fail and if I fail the guilt sets in. It comes in like a twelve-foot closeout wave, tumbling me in the white water of a wave that I know I should never have tried to surf, until it pushes me onto the shore where I arise out of the water battered and bruised.
Since I am scared of failure, I like to say, “I’ll give it a try”, that’s really just a copout. I’ll try to love my wife the way God loves the Church, I’ll try to be a good dad, I’ll try to get in shape.” I have found that “I’ll try” if I’m honest with myself is “I don’t believe I’ve got what it takes to make it happen”.
Really guilt is just the reaction of my Ego. And when I react to my guilt I am only feeding the uneasiness I already feel. It is my Ego that is concerned about how others see me. It is my Ego that makes me O.C.D. in a lot of areas of my life. It is my Ego that gets pissed when I fail at something. It is my Ego that is ill logical and it goes like this, “Good Christians never stumble, never sin. You had a fleeting thought you must not be a good Christian.”
A person’s Ego can make a person do or not do a lot of things out of fear. Like why can’t I just lay it out there to a good friend that I might have a sin that I am struggling with, why can’t I be more real with others (why can’t we all)? I only let people know what I want them to know about me no more or no less. And the times I feel like I can open up to a friend my Ego tells me, “you’ve done it now they think you’re a nut”. Like a child, my Ego always wants to get it’s way and sadly it usually does.
But I’ve realized something recently when my Ego raises its ugly head, instead of trying to fight it I let it take it’s course. Then I pick up the pieces and move on with my life. I’ve come to the conclusion that my Ego is part of who I am, for better or worse, and has molded me in many ways into the person I am today. But I am the owner of my Ego; I don’t have to partake in its silly games if I don’t want to. And I no longer engage in the nonsense of guilt because I am aware of my Savior’s grace and how he will make time stand still for me if I need it to.
To be free, you have to see yourself as being good enough, today, tomorrow, and even in your not so flattering past. We have all got to stop saying I’ll be Ok later and realize we are Ok now.
When I fall, I know that God is there for me and the fall doesn’t seem quite as bad.
The next step is to chill out on every body else and let them wrestle with their own Ego. Maybe I can even share with them a little grace a long the way.
To feel envy is to have a gnawing, aching pain eating away at our insides. It leaves us no peace and takes away all pleasure in the things we might otherwise have enjoyed.
Advertisers use envy to lure us into desiring something that we don’t yet have. It’s crazy if you think about it what envy will make us do.
A key reason for buying a 60-inch, 3D capable, ultra thin LED TV is that it will become an object of envy for your friends. Really there’s no way to justify a TV that big especially for some of the small family rooms I’ve seen them in. When a TV takes up the entire wall space of the wall its on it looks terrible.
TV aside all envy is a selfish emotion that no one desires, but the ability to inspire it in others definitely is.
How do you curb the envy emotion when it stirs inside of you?
OK, so I’m stopped at a traffic light and look over and there is this lady talking to her kid not paying attention to the light that just turned green. The car behind her beeps their horn for her to go and the lady talking to her kid throws her hands up and says a four letter word. It’s the curse words of all curse words, in front of her KID. What a sad world we live in. The kid was eight or ten at the most.
So here’s my question? Is it OK to beep the horn to get someone’s attention? If not, when is it appropriate to use your horn?
Disclaimer To anyone who might be offended with curse words. Chris Tse towards the end of his poem drops the “F” Bomb. But please don’t let that one word stop you from hearing what he has to say, his message is a wake up call for many Christians!
This young man stood up in front of a crowd that was non-Christian and said I’m sorry for how we Christians sometimes act towards people.
I would love to hear your thoughts on his poem!
There’s just something about being in a group or club that cost you something. When I was in college, I belonged to a fraternity and it felt good to belong to a group that not everyone was a part of. Anyone that knows anything about fraternities of sororities knows that you have to be sponsored be someone already in the group that vouches for you and they say that you would be an excellent addition to our group. However, this does not guarantee a spot in the group. First, you must rush, in my case for a week, where your fellow brothers, as they are known, can get you to do pretty much whatever they want. Then they drill you with questions in an interview and if they like you, you’re in! You are now part of the brotherhood! You’re a big dog on campus now. You’re part of an exclusive group that many want to be a part of and yet only a few ever get to opportunity to join.
Not much has really changed since my days as a member of the Phi Simga Cia fraternity. Yes, I am no longer a college student who likes to hang with my brethren, but I am part of another exclusive group, the church. In many ways, the church feels a lot like my fraternity, for we have the tendency to be exclusive as well.
Many members of the church world will call themselves the insiders and they want to separate themselves from the outsiders. We don’t dare say we’re exclusive, but it’s how we act that gives that perception. We have set in place external practices that separate us from the outsiders – our vocabulary or dress, who we associate with, and so on.
We have become proud and judgmental toward the outsiders. We often pride ourselves on how righteous we are, so much so that we can just look at someone and tell right away whether they are an insider or outsider. However, with Jesus, the leader of the church, this wasn’t the case at all. His messages and mission was to have everyone be an insider. Not just to belong to an elite group of people that are super spiritual, but to belong to a group of people that wanted to be transformed into “new creatures”. Jesus didn’t focus on what someone looked like or how they acted, rather he looked at the persons heart.
I have been a part of some wonderful churches in my life and every one of them has added to my spiritual walk with Christ. Nevertheless, each one of them, some more than others, had their own bench markers. Some of them could have had a pastor consumed with pride and was a glutton, but as he was growing or at least maintaining the church, he need not worry about his job. But if by chance a church member saw him on the golf course smoking a cigar with a friend, you wouldn’t see him next Sunday at church. Why is that? Well probably no one would ever say that smoking a cigar on the golf course would be a worse sin than a life consumed with pride or a glutton. Although for many in the church world smoking has become a bench marker for many. It is one of the churches ways to tell if you are a wolf or a sheep.
We all know that smoking is not the unpardonable sin, but it breaks many churchgoers unspoken bench marker. Something like this could upset a church’s sense of identity. It doesn’t matter really if you are Baptist, Catholic, Pentecostal, or Greek Orthodox I bet you can come up with your own set of bench markers. This type of spirituality puts most of the focus on your position. Are you in or are you out?
However, Jesus is more concerned with people’s hearts. He wants to know that they moving forward in their spiritual life, do they have the love of God and their fellow man in their life. That is way many people were shocked in his day when He said that many of the religious leaders were outside of God’s kingdom, because they were more concerned with the bench markers than peoples heart. John Ortberg in his book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted,” said it well. He said “The ‘righteous’ were more damaged by their righteousness than the sinners were by their sin.”
Here is a Sobering quote that I ran across the other day. “Only one thing haunts me more than the sins of my past: What sins am I blind to today?” Philip Yancey A quote like this will make you stop and think for a minute. Any comments on this?
“1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” This passage of scripture shows God’s amazing love He has to His wayward people. It seemed at first that Jonah did everything he could to resist God’s calling the first time around, after Jonah repented God called him again. God chose to do this out of his grace and mercy.
It is very interesting that God in verse 2 tells Jonah to preach the message that I tell you. Suggesting that Jonah does not know what he will be delivering to the people of Nineveh. God simply tells Jonah to go and wait for instructions. It’s funny for I see God working like that a lot in my own life and my flesh often times finds it very irritating that He does.
The story of Jonah demonstrates why God so often leads us one step at a time. Because when God told Jonah the first time in chapter 1:1 what to say, Jonah discarded the call. So often times God only will tell us what He thinks we can handle at that time. Then in verse 3 Jonah realizes that resisting God is useless and can get you into a lot of trouble. Thus Jonah goes to Nineveh, obeying God’s call.
Then in verses 5-9 we do not see the actual word repentance being used, but we can see through the passage that is what they did in their fasting and wearing sackcloth. Repentance starts with believing God. And repentance is turning away from your evil ways, which is what the people were doing. These people were so serious about their repentance that they even made their animals fast.
Then finally in verse 10 we see that God honored their repentance, even though their sin was reason enough for harsh judgment. The people in their repentance appealed to God’s mercy and grace and not his judgment. I am so thankful that God acts more on his mercy and grace than He does on his judgment. For where would any of us be if it where not for is mercy and grace.
In Jonah 1:17, we see Jonah is swallowed by a large fish, it does not say a whale – but a fish. I think this is very import to note for a couple of reasons. One being when I think of a whale, I think of a large stomach with lots of room inside to move around. A fish on the other hand, from the pictures I have seen, even the large fish have a small stomach in comparison to a whale. So to be in the belly of a fish must have been extremely tight and uncomfortable. I can only imagine the scene that Jonah lays out for us in chapter 2, where the seaweed is wrapped around his head. Imagine also the stench inside the fish’s stomach, with all the other dead and decaying things the fish has eaten, mixed with the fish’s stomach acids. The stench alone would make one cry out to the Lord for help. Then to make it even worse not being able to move around, lying prostrate on your back, not able to move your hands or feet. Being in total darkness and feeling every jolt and move of the fish had to be a horrifying experience. Jonah must have truly thought he was going to die in the belly of a fish.
God is giving Jonah here a HUGE wake up call in his disobedience. Like Jonah we got to understand that God responds to disobedience by making conditions oppose us. God knows what will grab our attention, what will cause a change in our hearts and behavior. Jonah must have been one stubborn man if it took this to make him realize the sin he committed in his disobedience. Then I think of the times that I can be stubborn and realize that it would take a real attention grabber to make me change my actions as well.
It just goes to show that God will go at whatever the cost to grab our attention, when we veer of the course that He has set for our lives. To me this shows that God loves us so much that nothing but his pure and holly plan is what we deserve, not the leading of our own frail and limited mind’s plans.
To really grasp the agony of Jonah read chapter 2 in the Message or New Living Translation Bible. These two versions really capture Jonah crying out to the Lord. You can go to Biblegateway.com to find these two and many more.
Out of all the sins we will be covering over the next several weeks,
envy is different. It is different because it is the one sin, out of
the 7 deadly sins that has no pleasure in it whatsoever. From the first
hint of envy to the last part of it, envy is no fun at all. It is the
most dismal of habits. For the most part, just about all the other sins
can be enjoyed at least for a while. The most prudent of persons has to
admit the pleasure of lust or the adrenaline rush one gets when you lash
out in anger at someone. Even gluttony, taste good for a while. But
no-one chooses to spend their time secretly delighting in covetousness.
Henry Fairlie said this about envy; “It’s appetite never ceases, yet
it’s only satisfaction is endless self-torment.”
Envy is like a leach, once it latches on it is extremely hard to lose.
Envy is self-harming and self-abusing. We beat ourselves up over
objects that we don’t have. Even the sound of the word envy sounds evil
and depressing. Yet many devote hours, weeks, and even years of their
lives to it. It is a sin to which people rarely admit, but many
struggle with on a daily basis.
Whatever happened to the punch that the word sin once had? Just the very mention of the word “sin” in the 19th century and earlier struck fear in the hearts of most people. Now today the word “sin” has lost its fear. We live in a culture that has made the word almost playful. We see the media use the word “sinful” as something that is naughty, but nice. We find ourselves saying, ‘I know I shouldn’t really, but it will be fun, and I’m sure it won’t hurt anyone’. Somehow in our twisted minds we have incorporated the word sin, with the word heavenly – two words in my opinion that are polar opposites. People make statements like ‘it is heavenly sinful.’ Please tell me how something can be heavenly and sinful at the same time. Given the sheer negativity the word had in the past it should not be surprising that people want to take the sting out of the word and make it a little more user friendly.
I believe we should be more like our ancestors at how we view sin. Sin describes a pattern of life that is simply destructive. Sin destroys people’s happiness, friends, and families – there’s nothing heavenly in that. Sin is destructive. We need to see sin not just as breaking the rules, but rather as something that kills and devours everything in it’s path. Life would have been a little easier if God made the things that were good for us beautiful and the things that were bad for us ugly, unfortunately He did not. Augustine said it well when he talked about his youth when he was a thief, ” It was foul, and I loved it”. Sin has a seductive way about it for some strange and twisted reason; the devil really knows how to push our buttons.
So how do we begin thinking about sin? One traditional way that dates back several hundred years is to categorize it into types of sin. They all knew that there is no sin greater than the other, but they were also shrewd enough to realize they needed to know their enemy. So the idea of the ‘seven deadly sins’ was born as a way of remembering some of the chief ways in which this deadly pattern of behavior can manifested itself. Then by the end of the middle ages it became a normal way of organizing sin – a useful classification of misconduct.
History shows us that every generation has a way of making sin unique for them. Graham Tomlin in his book The Seven Deadly Sins And How To Overcome Them, states it well; “at a glance through the traditional list of the seven deadly sins raises an obvious issue for anyone with any sense of contemporary life and morals: these are not the ones we would identify as the chief causes of evil in our world. If anything, our culture tends to admire these qualities, not avoid them. Lust is a sign of a healthy sexual appetite, pride a perfectly valid pleasure in our own achievements, and greed an essential motor for the economy.” What Tomlin said is sad, but very true our world says that a lot of what is bad is really good for us and should be strived for in life. Even many Christians have bought into this way of thinking hook, line, and sinker.
As is stated earlier, these seven are by no means the only sins we need to worry about, nor are they more severe than any other sin. It is just that these sins seem to come up quite a bit more and the culture that we live in has told us that some of them we should strive for and as for the others they are not all that bad. Here are the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ in no particular order pride, anger, gluttony, lust, greed, envy, and sloth.
Now my aim for all this is not to package a neat little list of heavy sins that we need to avoid. For that would just be useless and a stupid approach of ‘keeping the rules’. Rather my aim is to have these ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ as a reminder for us to build a better quality of life that enables us to weed out bad habits and build up good ones. In other words living a life that is pleasing to our Lord.
