Justified by Law

 

“You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ…” Galatians 5:4a

Justification by law tends to be interpreted and understood to mean the Old Testament laws of the Jewish faith. 

However, any legalism or non-legalistic self-justification is, I believe, applicable.

And while we tend to easily name all of the usual legalistic suspects—the strict “do’s and don’ts” of any given religious denomination—the self-justifications are more difficult to discern.

Take, for instance, conceit that manifests as thinking more highly of one’s self due to an ascribed sense of “super spirituality” or "refined intelligence." This personal “law" of thinking more highly of one’s self than one ought leads naturally to thinking more highly of one’s self than of other people as well.

To be self-satisfied, spiritually or otherwise, goes against every one of Jesus’ words on humility.

“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:

‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’”

Luke 18:9-14

Legalisms in and of themselves, alienate, but so, too, do the haughty, arrogant attitudes they breed.

Copyright Barb Harwood

The Peace of Repentance

 

If we do not understand repentance, then we cannot admit mistakes and faults to God, and if we cannot admit mistakes and faults to God—in private and from our heart, mind and soul—then how can we ever admit our mistakes and faults to another human being?

St. Mark the Ascetic, a fifth century monk and a father in Eastern Christian Orthodoxy, said,

“He who repents rightly does not imagine that it is his own effort that cancels his former sins, but through this effort he makes his peace with God.” 

It works the same way with people: repentance—saying “I’m sorry” and “let’s talk about this” and “my bad” and “I stand corrected”—is about making peace with others. And if that attempt at peace is rejected through the other person being defensive in any way towards our outreach, then we can still repent to ourselves and God, and find peace there. 

That is how we can move on from the cloudy and dark aspects of our past, so as not to revisit them in the future, compounding the sin even more. 

In the case of anonymous run-ins with strangers, where we may never have the opportunity to make amends or verbalize our sincere apologies, we can still repent to God and ourselves, and in that way clear the way to agreement that that was no way to act, speak, or even think. That is how sin is washed away by God’s mercy of forgiveness to us, and thus, our being able to show mercy and forgiveness to ourselves.

Repenting to God is alway first and foremost (along with accepting his forgiveness), but I believe we must also then repent to ourselves for having let ourselves down by immature or ignorant behavior or attitude (and gift ourselves our own forgiveness right along with God's).

Only then, having reflected enough to have noticed what kind of person we were in that moment, can we make peace with it, learn from it, grow away from it, and move on, forgiven by both ourselves and God. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

Self-Perpetuation vs Self Overcoming

So much negative stress and struggle in life is due to unresolved inner-personal issues: harms that we fear will happen to us because they happened once—or often—in our past; personal injustices and slights that we self-righteously continue to nurse, things said about us behind our backs that got back to us through a third party, and on it goes. 

Oftentimes, when we were/are the brunt of someone else’s thoughtlessness, jokes or put-downs, we dysfunctionally respect their opinion of us more than the many other friends and family who do not put us down or minimize our person. 

(Why would we fret or feel diminished because of someone’s snarky attitude, gossip or chronic negativity—it is their very coldness and lack of integrity that renders them unworthy of our paying them any mind at all). 

Whether it was how we were raised within our family, our school, our social network, our church/religion, our culture—although all or some of it held sway over us at one time, as adults, that sway is now under our own control. 

We no longer have to be swayed, because we also no longer have to be controlled by it: the pressure  to continue to conform to its mandates is gone because we have removed ourself from its grip. 

Or have we? Have we indeed left it behind physically but continue to grip it mentally and emotionally via resentment, critical sentiments and an over-correcting into behaviors and belief systems motivated by that hurt and residual anger? A sort of getting back at?

In other words, what we haven’t dealt with to the point of final closure (with learned wisdom the sole remainder), will continue to balloon into our life in other manifestations.

Let’s take me, for example:

Raised in an über liberal church with a hard emphasis on community social standing, I fled from this church as an adult when I experienced a spiritual crisis. I realized this church/denomination offered no underpinning truths to draw strength, perseverance and maturity from. 

So when I found Jesus via the conservative church, and my life began to experience worth, courage and joy, I continued to seek and remain in that conservative, evangelical community. Until, that is, that same religious entity began to negate my courage, worth and joy and I began to find myself in the very same boat in which I had begun: peer pressure to be and believe a certain way, all under the guise of “love,” just like the liberal church I grew up in!

Ironically, it was the inner junk of having come to despise the liberal church for its lies and superficiality that had led me right into the arms of the conservative church with its own lies and superficiality. I had merely traded one for the other.

So I quit all church and religion. Instead, I set off with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit to do and accomplish, at long last, the difficult task of dealing with my inner junk.

I came to understand all of this by placing those who still attempted to negatively control me in their own context, and by initiating a hard, long, objective deciphering of why I was still allowing their power over me every time I  obsessed over old or new wounds. How I was living out the emotional and behavioral habits I had developed throughout my lifetime became exposed so that I could begin to behave and think accurately and appropriately--independent of all the junk (theirs and mine). 

I researched books online, ordered them and read them. I did not choose “Christian” books. I selected excellent books that did not promote any agenda or blame-games, but taught me how to discern the contexts of others (who have never dealt with their junk), as well as my own contexts along the way. 

I filled out journals and workbooks, and answered honestly (the benefit of God being right there with me!! He knows anyway, so why lie?)

I didn’t read my Bible all that much. I just focused on the God-given gifts of authors who could explore and progress over rocky ground with me.

And I came out, finally, unscathed, after all these years of feeling scathed!

We’ve all read the interviews with famous folks who say, at the end of the article,

“I am more content now than I’ve ever been.” 

I used to always wonder about how true that statement is for them.

But it can happen. It does happen. 

I won’t say that every once in a while I don't have to check a rising resentment, or an angry inner frustration with one of the usual, unchanging suspects. 

But I quickly go to their context, and the context I was in when I was forced to live and interact with them, and I find compassion for both of us: for them, because they know not what they are suffering from, and for me, because that was myself at one time. 

I thank God for his insight and patience that nudged me time and time again to deal with my junk and then to at last, move on, begin anew and live in an entirely new, empowered manner.

copyright Barb Harwood 

In Times of Dismay

 

Each one of us has, or currently is, living “one of those weeks,” or series of days, where no matter what we do or say, we come away with the very strong conviction that we are damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.

And the harder we try to analyze the situation—what we could have done differently, why it mattered at all to begin with, will it happen again and will we handle it better next time?—the more maze-like our inner life becomes. 

Finding our way out seems a fantasy and we fear we’ll continue to make things worse if we try.

These are times when even close friends or spouses, who lend a sympathetic ear and embrace us in hugs, cannot quite set everything to rights. 

We know we have made mistakes, and don’t like ourselves much for having made them. 

We know others have made mistakes, and we are frustrated with ourselves for not knowing how to graciously respond! 

And then we feel guilty for being so hard on our self and on others, but aren’t quite sure what to do next.

That is when God is indeed our refuge. That is when we wait on Him: 

“Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

“So my spirit grows faint within me;

My heart within me is dismayed.” Psalm 143:4

“I spread out my hands to you;

My soul thirsts for you like a parched land.

Answer me quickly, O Lord,

My spirit fails.” Psalm 143:6-7a

“Let the morning bring me word of your

unfailing love,

for I have put my trust in you.

Show me the way I should go,

for to you I lift up my soul.” Psalm 143:8

copyright Barb Harwood

From Damaged to Undamaged

 

Half of the battle towards personal transformation is in knowing where we are damaged. 

This damage can have occurred due to any number of circumstances: 

An innate character flaw (nature).

 

A family history of dysfunctional relational modeling (nurture).

 

Mishandling of short or long term stress.

Past experiences that continue to haunt us because of our role either as instigator, participant, or victim. 

We can unpack this damage by retracing our steps from the current negative feeling, emotion or thought, to what came before it, and what came before that, until we get to the source.

For me, I could not do this on my own in my secular years because I actually did not know I needed to, and when I began to realize that I needed to, I was too afraid to face myself or to take the blinders off regarding loved ones. 

With God as our unconditional guide, however, we will not be led astray through the maelstrom of personal discovery, and he will keep his guardrails secure around us if we let him.  

We can begin by objectively acknowledging and accepting that damage has been done, that it resides in us, and that that is the only damage we have any power to address. By trying to fix the damage in others at the same time, or in place of ourselves, we wind up right back where we started: stuck.

The first thing to do when dissecting inner damage under our now unbiased microscope, is to accurately assess whether the damage is still indeed happening. It could be that the damage exists only in the form of ruminations. This is damage that could have healed long ago if it had not been perpetuated by our sucking on it like a pacifier.

Other times, what we see is that a personal character flaw that we’ve known about for years has continued to perpetuate because we let it. In that case, all subsequent damage has been, and continues to be, self-inflicted. This realization alone is enough to fix that one!

Another observation may be that someone from our past damaged us due to their thoughtless words or behaviors. 

But if that person is no longer in our life, or if that person no longer has the position of authority in our life, then any damage they have already done, or could possibly incur, is now really null and void. 

In other words, since they have no position in our life, why would anything they say or do have any position in our life? 

When we agree with and incorporate the objective truth that a certain person or persons have no power over us, and yet we still continue to over-rule that truth with a false appointment of control over us, we are giving them permission to what they have no right to. 

Again, self-inflected. 

Many more observations can come of facing into inner damage. The key is to center ourselves in the actual context, and see circumstances, past and present, as they really are, and stop filtering them through a lens of damage. 

And this lens of damage will find and see offense everywhere. It will sabotage healthy or potentially healthy relationships, not to mention keep inner peace and a blissful conscience well out of reach.

Cutting the cord to a damaged worldview, on the other hand, will open the floodgates of gratitude, positive realities, and abundant life experiences. 

As we view life through a motivation of open-minded reality, we see that there is much more to let go of, be joyful about and that is going well in life than there ever was when we saw everything through our damaged sense of self. 

Everything that had ceased to exist outside of the damage we so earnestly focused on can now come into view, and we can relish all of it, as if for the first time, as a wonder, a miracle and an absolute marvel. 

This is our new normal, our new context and our new way of being: undamaged.

Copyright Barb Harwood

The Definition of Dialogue

 

"Dialogue is a conversation on a common subject between two or more persons with differing views, the primary purpose of which is for each participant to learn from the other so that he or she can change and grow."

Leonard Swidler, as quoted in Harold A. Netland's book, Dissonant Voices. 

I would add that the "change" does not necessarily mean to change one's stance or position, though that may indeed occur, but rather that one would change in the sense of now having a greater, more informed understanding of one or more different perspectives. In this case, change and growth would be one and the same. 

The change that comes of healthy dialogue may also entail no longer fearing differing perspectives or the people who hold them.

What the above definition clearly negates is the self-centered motivation to force a change in another's worldview via strong-arming or arguing. 

Harold Netland, in his book Dissonant Voices, elaborates:

"The purpose of human dialogue...is to pass beyond preoccupation with beliefs and doctrines to the point where one genuinely listens to the other participant as a fellow human being and an "I-thou" relationship of mutual trust and acceptance is established."

Certainly this does not mean that we have to give up our own truth, convictions and worldview. However, timing, attitude and approach is everything. 

If the mutual trust and acceptance is not established, then getting to the point of civil dialogue on what's most important to all parties involved will never happen.

So often, what happens before any mutuality can be established is that the convictions are pushed out there, come what may, in a spirit of self-righteousness: the shallow surety that I am right and you are wrong. 

And when we are already in an established relationship? 

What then? 

Is it then okay to hammer home the convictions, come what may? Will the mutual trust and acceptance be able to handle that?

That depends on how mutual the relationship actually is, and the heretofore acceptance of each person's differences. 

If the relationship truly is well-established on respect and treating each other as equals, then I believe the tactless imposing of a viewpoint upon others will not even be a consideration. 

In relationships of proven integrity and approachability, there will be no room for the inconsiderate behavior of passive aggressiveness and superiority that almost always arises, and continues, out of fear and a need to control.

copyright Barb Harwood

Realistic Hope for This Current Day

 

Hope: we all need it. 

Sustenance for the heart, hope beats through our veins, erasing the limits and downfalls of the past and sketching in fresh rough drafts of potential for today.

A warm morning air that fills our lungs with the vibrancy of all things new, forgiven now of God and ourselves, we no longer cloud that forgiveness through an obsessive focus on the lack of forgiveness from another person or persons. 

Instead, we deeply inhale and gratefully take in that the forgiveness from two out of three isn’t bad; in fact, it’s the greater of the three to be forgiven by God and ourselves (how can we accept forgiveness from others even if it does come if we haven't received the other two first? It would be like putting water into a pail with holes). 

With great humility we soberly understand that the reality of life is that those two forgivenesses are the only ones in our power to seek, find and redeem. Though we seek forgiveness from others, it may never, and often more than likely, never come. 

And so in hope, we live the truth that we have been and are and always will be forgiven by God, thus enabled to always forgive ourselves too.

In that hope, we are the most gentle and fascinated of beings, with the utmost compassion for the individuals who hold unforgiveness towards us—a wretched state of being we know all too well because we too have been unforgiving, and we know its misery fed by its source and motivation—pride built upon years of storing up wrongs and insecurities based on what the world (not God) thinks of us. 

We know how much that hurts, and how it makes us lash out at others in defensiveness and animosity, holding people forever accountable.

In that state of being lies a total lack of hope—in God and ourselves. 

Hope then, is hope in God which permeates deep down into our soul, nurturing hope in ourselves for ourselves, which emanates outward in an objective, practical outlook and manner which doesn’t resort to the false hope of illogical and often self-centered, wishful thinking. 

It is a hope that is not expectant when it comes to other people, but peaceful and clear-eyed, not pie in the sky. 

Hope is a serious matter of knowing from Who it derives and how, and forgoing the often inadequate lofty platitudes (most of which people neither truly adhere to or admire in others) or the vindictive "should's" of the world and opting instead to thrive in the strength of a quiet and confident meekness. 

Hope is not about putting faith in the impossible, as in hoping for people to change. 

Hope is putting faith in the realistically possible: as in hoping for ourself to change in the power and presence of God, Jesus and His Spirit, through whom all blessings have always and only truly flowed.

Copyright Barb Harwood