Our Neuroses Don't Make Us Special

Many people, including myself, currently or at one time have operated out of the thinking that our mental faults or attributes somehow make us special: i.e. unaccountable and forgivable for our attitudes and actions.

Thankfully, I consider myself in the category of “who at one time” did this. Humorously, it could be granted that in this I am perhaps deluding myself! It is the risk one takes when one declares any level of victory over a personal dysfunction.

As it is, I do believe myself free of the moniker “special” for past addictions and past and current personality disorders.

And I have a Christian friend to thank for that.

It was to this friend, several years ago, that I was reciting the seriousness of and damage done by my past drinking. It wasn’t the first time the poor woman had to hear this.

In response, she said something I wish I had written down and kept, not only because it stunned my thinking, but because it was a perfect demonstration of Ephesians 4:15 which teaches that we are to speak the truth in love so that “we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ.”

My friend said something to the effect of, 

“Barb, your struggle with alcohol isn’t any greater of a struggle than anyone else has experienced.”

Wow.

I mean, to most people that would be a slap in the face—a secular counselor’s first rule of what not to do when “helping” someone.

But this woman—and it’s important to note that she and I had an established friendship—spoke in a firm but loving tone and manner—at a time when I desperately needed to hear it—Gospel Truth.

Her words were what the Bible itself actually teaches:

“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

I felt the golden nugget of conviction at her words.

Yes, I had overcome an addiction through the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.

But the fact that I had struggled, along with all of the reasons behind it, had begun to control and infect me and thus, my life, relationships and attitudes.

I was indulging in an interpretation of my struggle as being singular in importance and effect.

In addition, I was holding myself accountable to a past accomplishment only, ignorant of the work that remained to be done on underlying and newly emerging issues.

In this, I had anointed myself a special case: a Joan of Arc in the successful battle with egregious transgression, and now a martyr to that very victory.

This was my high-minded condition when my friend spoke her prophetic words and brought me needfully low.

It’s moments like these for which relationships, I believe, were made.

Yes, we can commiserate, listen to and comfort one another. All are necessary.

But a real relationship gains strength and is tested by loving honesty.

It is this honesty from a sister in Christ that opened me up to the Truth of Christ about myself and away from my own, and the world’s, estimation that I was justified to wear my past drinking on my sleeve and disavow myself of any further progress.

I could no longer idly blame the drinking, and the reasons for it, for every dysfunction in my personality and behavior. Nor could I continue to simply ride triumph’s coattails.

Only when my friend had the guts to point out that, um, I wasn’t really special, in fact, not special at all in what I had been through and overcome, was I enabled to measure myself as the sinner that I am, right along with everyone else.

Additionally, as a repentant Christian, I have been redeemed from all sin, also right along with every other Christian. Any victory in Christ is equal to others' victory in Christ.

Romans 3:23 doesn’t mince words when it says,

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

So we can’t claim uniqueness in that.

But Romans 3:22a, appearing just before the above verse, is also clear:

“...righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe...” 

So we are not to stymie our maturity by wallowing in or clinging pridefully to past unrighteousness or the overcoming of it.

Instead, we proceed down the avenue of 2 Corinthians 5:17:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come.”

In this, I—along with any sense of being special in the struggle or the overcoming—am healthily humbled.

copyright Barb Harwood

“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” Acts 20:24

“Not that I have already attained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things...” Philippians 3:12-15a