As I read this Psalm over and over in preparing for today, I
kept being reminded of another “woe is me” passage in the bible. At first, the
connection was tenuous at best. But as I continued to look at the 2 passages
next to each other, I saw more and more parallels. So bear with me, and I will
try to get to the core of their shared message.
The New Testament passage that kept coming to me as I read Psalm 120 was this one:
Romans 7:19 -25 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
I often read the stories and songs of the Israelites as my own spiritual journey -their battles and failings as my own struggles with temptation and obedience. The lying lips in the Psalm I saw as my own. And the lies are deep within my deceitful heart. These lies gnaw at me and they make me say No to God. The big lie that the church has bought into hook, line and sinker is that the life of the godly is a life of success, happiness and safety. So when the pain of life hits – we lose someone we love, we feel betrayed, we are lonely in the midst of our marriages and families, we are sick and discouraged – we don’t believe that God is near. Or worse yet, we believe God is near but that He doesn’t care. The pain is the only reality and in our pain, we look for ways to numb.
Addiction can be defined as attempting to control rather than learn. It is more pleasurable to make the pain go away than it is to sit with it and learn from it. We have lost the art of lament. Some addictions are destructive and life altering and some are more socially acceptable. We know people can be addicted to drugs, pornography, gambling, or alcohol. But we use other things to numb us: food, the internet, fantasizing, television, shopping, work, video games, busyness.
As a young teenager, I discovered the enticing power of sexual attraction. The way I felt if I could get attention from someone was intoxicating. Flirting was fun. I felt powerful and beautiful. But it wouldn’t last. So I needed a better fix or a bigger risk. This desire to get attention was like a game to me until I started to realize the danger of my actions. What exactly I was playing with. Then I tried to tame it, ignore it. But, I had made a rut in my heart, in my thoughts and with my body that the wheels kept falling into: coming back to haunt me again and again in the form of fantasy or temptation.
When sin is dominating our lives, we are surrounded by lying lips. We are “dwelling in Meshek, living among the tents of Kedar” as the Psalm describes, far from home and surrounded by barbarous cravings. We find this law at work: Although we want to do good, evil is right there with us. For in our inner beings we delight in God’s law; but we see that other law at work in us, waging war against the law of our minds and making us prisoners of the law of sin at work within us.
We know we are in trouble when we start saying things like: “What’s the big deal?” “I can quit any time” “I deserve this” “I’m not hurting anyone else” “This is just how I am” “I’m not as bad as fill-in-the-blank” “I just want a little relief” “no one will know” “just one more time”
We feel defensive if someone asks us about the behavior, we feel edgy if we cannot engage in it, we think about it when we are doing other things. It has a pull on us that is beyond our control. We call out like Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” and the Psalmist answers, “I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me.”
These Psalms are the Psalms of Ascent – as we learned last week – the Psalms of steps. The first step in recovery is that “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable.” As Eugene Peterson says in this chapter of our book, “[we] have been wrong in supposing that [we] could manage [our] own life and be [our] own god…”
This realization, this shift in thinking is often called repentance. Let’s look at the Greek word that is used for repentance: metanoia – which means literally “change of mind”. It has a counterpart: paranoia “baseless or excessive suspicion” which is the state in which we find ourselves at the height of our addictive behaviors. Metanoia is not the kind of changing of the mind brought about by will power or moral strength – Recognize here the prefix –meta: the same as in the word metamorphosis – changing from one form to another. Likewise, metanoia means changing from one mind to another.
Treadwell Walden, a19th century theologian wrote an entire book "The Great Meaning of Metanoia" to describe the power of this word and the inadequacy of the word “repentance” as its translation. He argues that the word repentance gives a completely different meaning to the preaching of Jesus and His apostles. It is the difference between the two statements: "Repent! Feel sorry for your sins" and "Metanoia! Think a new way"! He goes on to describe metanoia as “by far the grandest miracle recorded in Scripture. No exhibition of blank power – not the arresting of the earth’s motion, not the calling back of the dead to life – can approach in grandeur to this miracle which we daily behold, namely, the inconceivable mystery of having written and sculptured upon the tablets of man’s heart a new code of moral distinctions, all modifying – many reversing – the old ones.”
How does this metanoia take place? Let’s look at the physical counterpart metamorphosis as it happens in the caterpillar. The caterpillar phase of life is the eating and growing stage. The caterpillar cannot mate or reproduce. His job is simply to get fatter and bigger. At some point, this can’t go on any longer. And so he stops. And completely encloses himself in a chrysalis. Inside of his new home, the caterpillar digests himself from the inside out, causing his body to die. Some of the caterpillar's old tissues are salvaged to form new. This remnant of cells is used to create a new body.
In Rebecca Hill’s latest post, “The Still and the Absolute” she describes this process:
“It just doesn’t work anymore, no
matter hard I try.
I tell Neil again, how I try. I try
so hard to stay sane. To stay sober, to stay present, to stay married, to be
good.
‘Maybe you need to stop trying.’”
When I am alone with God and genuinely still, sometimes I see myself like Queen Orual standing before God the Judge - but the book I have written is against myself and not Him. I tell him all the ways I have hurt people and walked boldfacedly into sin and thought ugly things and said ugly things and God is listening and I am looking Him in the eyes and telling Him because He already knows. And He lets me go on because He loves me to my very core and He knows how good I will feel when I get this off my chest. I can do this because I know I am His and because I know He loves me and accepts me. exactly. like. this.
This is step 4 of the 12 steps: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Frederick Buechner reminds us in his book Telling Secrets: “It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing.”
And when I am done telling my secrets to God, we sit
together in silence. And it is a good silence because I am known. and loved.
And He says to me, “are you done, now?” and I nod and then He says, “good,
because now I have something to say to you: The day is coming when you will
call me ‘my husband’ instead of ‘my master.’ I will wipe the many names of Baal
from your lips, and you will never mention them again. You will live unafraid
in peace and safety. I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness
and justice, unfailing love and compassion. I will be faithful to you and make
you mine, and you will finally know me as the Lord.”
Now we see only a reflection as
in a glass; then we shall see face to face. Now we know in part; then we shall
know fully, even as we are fully known. 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.
“Just give up, surrender, be still, because some things are absolute, and we are loved.”
