The Unworthy Saint

“All our heartaches and a great many of our physical ills spring directly out of our sins. Pride, arrogance, resentfulness, evil imaginings, malice, greed are the sources of more human pain than all the diseases that ever afflicted mortal flesh.”

-AW Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Why do we spend so much time and money researching diseases? Are we treating the symptoms and not the problem? Perhaps Tozer is right. Perhaps we should be looking for a cure to our pride. Perhaps we should find a way to fix our resentfulness. Perhaps we research a deliverance from this plague of the soul that is our sin. Perhaps we should research ways of living out love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And maybe, just maybe, the whole world should participate in this research project.

Reading is listening… through your eyes.

“But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.”

I believe I am called to suffer, rather than flee from, the pains and temptations of this world insofar as the pain or temptation is not completely routing me. And perhaps, in an instance where I am being routed by sin, I should flee, but only temporarily. The fight I fight is a mental one; it is the fight of being in the world and not of it. And part of this world is facing the pain and temptation rather than fleeing from it every time.

How amazing it is that God can work through even a lousy wretch like me!

What’s better to behold than God’s glory? Nothing.

Like a dirty rag from the garage floor He lifts me up, washes me and sets me high to dry… until, from such great heights, I slide off and fall to the ground where I am once again soiled.

I suspect distractions are a mind game. The cricket chirping, the baby crying, these are natural life occurrences. Perhaps our resistance to natural life is why we label these things as distractions. The weaker of us will always run from these occurrences, or seek to destroy the occurrence, while the stronger will learn to see it not as a distraction, but as part of life. In the process, the stronger will learn to live with it or ignore it and will be able to focus on God in the midst of such life occurrences.

Labeling something a distraction is, in a way, a way of catastrophizing.

Another thought: If you turn the occurrence into an opportunity to worship, it’s not so bad. An example is a plane. Say a plane flies overhead and you think “that’s distracting.” If you catch that moment, you can immediately thank God for the ability to fly, ask Him to keep the people in the plane safe, marvel at the idea that He created air and propulsion, etc…

“‘Catastrophizing’ is what happens when you think that the worst possible outcome will happen when anticipating danger or difficulty, especially in circumstances where this is actually very unlikely.”

-Self Help Magazine

You’ve all heard people do this. Usually it involves words like worst, horrible and ever. For instance: “If it rains today it’d be the worst, most horrible thing ever.” Now, I’d also say that you can catastrophize something that has happened in the past as well. As in: “That was the worst day ever.”

Here’s my thinking: Catastrophizing comes from a pessimistic attitude and only serves to further the pessimism and usually brings about (extra) stress. I believe that changing the physical changes the mental, and the mental changes the physical. In other words, if you stop catastrophizing, if you catch yourself and stop yourself from doing it, your mind will change from a catastrophizing, pessimistic state as well. It’s speech therapy induced realism I suppose. And all it takes is changing “if it rains today it’d be the worst, most horrible thing ever” to “it might rain today” or “it might rain today, what can i do to be prepared?”

The means by which we pursue Christ should be any means necessary but no means exclusively; lest we find an end in the means. We should be ever asking “what can I do to become more like Christ?”