A married woman once asked me what
I would call the dysfunctional behavior of her husband. I responded, “I would
call it sin.” She paused, sat back, and didn’t say a word. Of all the things
she, her girlfriends, the world and psychology had called her husband’s
behavior, nobody had ever called it sin. But sin is what it was. She learned
its definition that day. And it opened the door to her being able to not only
understand it, but acknowledge it in her own life as well.
For many of us, a saving faith in Jesus Christ comes down to
one thing: will we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to be vulnerable before Him? Will
we allow and admit, in vulnerability to Christ, that there is such a thing as
sin, and
that we are not exempt?
In order to see our sin, the solid doors of stoicism must be
splintered and the terror of being found out must go.
Stoicism puts up a false front by re-directing our efforts to being
good at something else: exercise, triathlons, charitable giving, education, high job position and volunteer work.
Stoicism also “preserves” marriages by one or both spouses
putting in longer and longer hours at work, full immersion in the children’s lives
and activities, and a weak hope that the marriage will just keep on keepin’ on
of its own will. It’s a stiff-upper lip way of living. If we just keep telling
our self everything is fine, then it must be true. Vulnerability cannot enter
in at any cost. We’ve recovered from enough pain in life by building a fortress
around our inner life: we’re not going to ever risk it crashing down.
When I talk of vulnerability, I don’t mean sentimentality.
Many people who have built impenetrable protections around themselves can be
surprisingly sentimental.
Sentimentality is safe, you see. Novels and movies like The Bridges of
Madison County, for example, which ought to make us sick to our stomachs, find
an all-too willing audience in people who want to keep everything on a
superficial level. The saccharine, sorry love affair in that novel appeals
to the person who has so over-corrected in life they don’t even know what
legitimate love is or feels like. Life has never measured up to the fantasy
they imagined, so they go through the motions day in and day out, and when a
gooey love story appears, they eat it up like cotton candy. But sentimental
love isn’t legitimate love, in fact it’s very self-serving (to see its
opposite, go to 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 where we find that love is not
“self-seeking,” “proud” and “easily angered” but is “patient,” “rejoices with
the truth” and “always perseveres”).
Biblical love is not found in pre-marital sex and sexual affairs
(and will never condone either no matter how “right it feels,”—which is
sentimentality at its worst). Biblical love does not ignore ones spouse, and does
not fantasize about another (either real or fictional). Our marriages will
never get better by bringing in an imposter. But many men, through pornography,
bring in imposters, as do many women who endlessly read and watch romance books
and films (in which romance almost always involves some sort of sentimental illicitness).
Secret worlds and adult fantasy is a distraction that
diverts us off the path of Godly love onto the unfulfilling and often addicting
road of worldly lust and/or sentimentality.
So the vulnerability I’m talking about is not sentimental.
It is also not the navel gazing sharing that stagnates in many recovery and
other small groups.
Vulnerability, on the contrary, means being open to God’s
honest assessment of our condition, as painful as that might be. It means being
open to the wounds of sin, overcome by a contrite spirit. And through the pain
of realizing our deplorable condition, in vulnerability that we lack any
solution of our own, we repent and ask God to forgive us and change our ways.
Vulnerability, then, is the humble admission that I need
God.
Vulnerability is what allows us to let God love us.
Vulnerability is what then allows us to love ourselves. Vulnerability is then
what allows us to love others out of a Godly love, in a Godly way, and not in a
warped, twisted, lustful, worldly, sentimental way.
The vulnerability that opens the door to God is the
vulnerability I opened this post with. It’s the vulnerability to first ask the
question, “What is the problem? What is my problem?” “What would you call
it?” And second, it’s to accept the answer: Sin.
“but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is
dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to
sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” James 1:14
“Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your
hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” James 4:8
“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you
up.” James 4:10
“Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the
world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.” 1 Peter
2:11
“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not
retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself
to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so
that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have
been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to
the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” 1 Peter 2:23-25
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