My sin

So, in good, characteristic fashion, I am doing my fight club homework at the last minute (yes, it is 4:30...), here are my reflections on my pet sin... (cut from a chat I had the other day with my brother-in-law... hope he doesn't mind)

Our convo started off talking about spiritual warfare: "I think some of it is ppl just imagining stuff, exaggerating for attention type thing but then I can't discount other experiences... I really don't know... I tell you, after watching the exorcism of emily rose, I'm not really sure what is possible... I guess it depends on teh source of the "report of warfare" if you will... source skepticism". Then he had some questions about people believing that any adverse reaction is "from Satan" is a belief that is spreading in the US. My response was that I didn't think it was spreading, just prevalent in certain faith groups.

I can tell you that I do not believe that God kills people because they "reject" him either seriously or not. God did not send Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans to punish that city for its sins or anything else. We do this shit to ourselves. If God really did kill people for denying him, I'd definitely be dead too. I've done my own share of denying and nay-saying and hate language. And what about Jonah? That man did everything he could to go against god, but he wasn't killed. I think it makes people feel better to say that god did this or that, so that they don’t have to take responsibility for their own actions (or inaction). But, that doesn't mean that there can't be adverse action going on in the spiritual realm. There is a verse in Peter that talks about the devil walking about as a roaring lion seeking who he can eat up. More often than not, though, we are our own devil; we eat ourselves up.

It is amazing what we do to ourselves to try to "fix" things, or to cope. My own pet deadly is envy. I am quite envious when it comes down to it... My favorite incarnation of it is rejoicing when others take a dive ala our current president isn't enjoying the best time right now and I'm happy about it. Or my friend from college, who started dental school but then couldn't stick it out – I was glad because I didn't want her to have more education than me. Sorry, sorry stuff. I didn't even know that was an instance of envy at all. I thought it was justified rejoicing. But I have learned that we ought never to rejoice when others are suffering, no matter how we feel we have been wronged or they deserve it. Honestly, how often have we deserved to suffer and haven't? Or when we are suffering wish that others would help us in our suffering instead of saying "I told you so".

Envy's problem is judging others as less than yourself so you don't have to treat them as equals in love, or life, or anything really. Envy says, “I deserve this, they don't” or “they totally deserve that huge failure, but I don't”. Jealousy is a type of envy, but envy involves some sort of wish for something bad to happen to the person who has what you want. I think about jealousy in terms of love relationships rather than say, among women. For example, I can say I am jealous of that woman's body, but I'm really envying her that body and wishing she would get really fat. Actually, I learned that these things can be good in the right context. We just usually tend to use them way outside their healthy bounds and then get addicted to it as a coping method.

What is my coping plan? I need to learn to love people where they are at. I need to be content with my life, here and now. I need to rejoice in what I have been given, good or bad, and keep my eyes not on others, but on the one above. And when I am tempted to rejoice in other's falls, I need to put myself in their shoes and react accordingly.

Sounds easy enough, but I know it is quite difficult to implement. I need someone to help me stick to it and to call me on it when I don't.