When a politician “flip-flops” and we find out that they
were for
abortion before they were against it, a common response is to say that they are “lying” or
“manipulative” in their current stance. We don’t trust that their views on
abortion, or anything else for that matter, could actually have changed.
When a person makes a mistake, and apologizes, people may say
that they are only apologizing because they are “embarrassed” or, distrusting
sincerity, accuse that person, again, of “lying.”
When someone does something in their 20’s that they later
acknowledge and disown as a previous behavior done in a less
mature and enlightened mindset, other people often react by continuing
to hold them to that previous behavior to this very day.
It’s the “Yeah, but...” syndrome: “Oh sure, Pete is a great
guy now, yeah! But you should have seen
him in college. I mean, it’s tough to forget that, and that he won’t revert
back at some point.”
Does this describe us? Do we hold someone else to a standard
that we don’t hold to ourselves? Do we allow ourselves to change but not
others?
I, for one, back in my college, pre-Christian days, was for abortion. That was 34 years ago. You
don’t honestly believe that my thinking on this could have changed in 34
years? (It has).
I have made mistakes at work, with society, at home and with
my family. Can a person honestly believe that, if I wasn’t sorry for those
mistakes then because I didn’t see any problem with them then, that I am
sorry now, have said so and made sincere attempts to not repeat those
mistakes?
I have done and thought things in my twenties, thirties and
forties that I can’t fathom doing or thinking today, in my fifties.
Do we honestly believe that every person on this planet must
be held accountable to a few years in their past for the rest of their life, regardless of what kind of person they have
since become?
Maybe people change so infrequently that, as a society, we
have come to not trust it when it does happen.
Or, although we do concede that people can and do change,
perhaps our resistance to it is because we don’t like it when it happens. Our
self-interest is often served by change denial. In that way we can continue on
in victimhood, cold-shouldering, being a control freak and not having to be
vulnerable with family and friends.
A perfect example is found in the situation of a spouse who
wants “out” of a marriage. Let’s say it is the wife. She signs up for
counseling having already settled the matter in her mind that her husband is
beyond the ability to change.
I have seen this first hand in my work in marriage ministry.
What inevitably transpires, however, over the weeks of my
husband and me meeting with the couple is that the wife’s husband does
begin to change. He implements the communication strategies, checks off the
wife’s required boxes of things to do at home, apologizes for past
incriminations, etc.
This is the point at which the ball bounces into the
doubting wife’s court: will she now accept, and work within, this irrefutable
change?
The answer is often “No” because this wife doesn’t actually
want her spouse to change because it means that now she, too, has to change.
The wife discovers, much to her surprise and chagrin, that
she is, in fact, part of the problem in the marriage. This can be too much for
her pride to handle, and so, unable or unwilling to acknowledge that her spouse
can become a better person, and to avoid any accountability on her part, she leaves
the marriage anyway.
It’s a very stubborn defensiveness. And it is what we lob at
family members, co-workers and politicians every day.
What about the reaction to those who have died to an old
life due to being born again in Christ? For us, especially in our early years
of learning to live as Christ—and all the “hypocritical” offenses we rack up—we
quickly become, if not peculiar, then a laughing stock or offensive stench to
those who are outside of the life of Christ who cannot comprehend or willingly
accept a redeemed life.
There is nothing we can do about them, but there is
everything we can do about us, and that is simply to continue to grow in the
knowledge and love of the Lord, and continue to become Christlike.
Now, I support and acknowledge that trust in change must be
earned.
So, for example, someone who has used drugs and alcohol, and
declares them self “clean,” must prove it.
I agree that spouses must each be intentional about long-term
transformation in their own persons and in the marriage.
I agree that we do not become pushovers and enablers in
accepting someone’s newly turned over leaf.
But to continue to find fault with someone ten, twenty and
thirty or more years after they have committed some act or held some attitude
and have since acknowledged, repented of, and turned away from it
transfers the fault onto the blamer’s heads. They are now the guilty
party of un-forgiveness and self-righteousness.
How would we feel—how do we feel, when people will not
consider and accept who we are today versus who we were back when?
The outcome of this refusal sabotages relationships and, in
a social sense, the ability to work and cooperate together.
I live in a community in which I have lived for 20 years.
I came here as a non-believer, with a drinking problem, and lugging
strong opinions that were a mile wide and an inch deep.
I continuously run into people from that (thankfully) receding
past who haven’t had the privilege of observing my transformation over the last
15 years. To them, I’m sure I am still the jerk I used to be.
And then there are those who I’ve met recently who have no
idea of what I have ever been nor I, them. I find these folks refreshing and
encouraging because my relationship with them is current: it is based on who I,
and they, are today.
I include in this latter group my husband, who, although he
knows everything about me, the shadows of the past don’t haunt due to our both
being regenerated in Christ, meeting God’s new mercies every morning. Our
relationship today is based on who we both are in Christ today.
I take no credit for the regeneration and clearing-of-the-slate
of my person and worldview. That is all Christ.
It is His redemption—the washing away of the worldly, secular
and human over the last seventeen years. The melting, day by day, of pride.
Today, I don’t recognize or know the person I was twenty years
ago: she is a complete stranger and enigma to me. And I can’t thank Christ
enough for pulling me out of her and bringing me to this new personhood in
Christ.
Redemption is possible for everyone. It is real for some.
We do well to sober our strong convictions that people
(including ourselves) can’t change their opinions or behavior as time goes by, or at the hands of Christ.
We do well to stop pointing the finger at other people’s
explanations and stated motivations for the change we see in them and ask ourselves
why it is we are so reluctant to give them their due, to accept that the
evidence does, indeed, point to a metamorphosis?
And to ask ourselves, “Who are we to hold that positive
reality against them?” If we accept it in ourselves, then we accept it in
others.
“If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they
deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions.” Galatians 6:3-4a
“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be
clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.
Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I
will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I
will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will
be careful to observe My ordinances.” Ezekiel 36:25-27
“Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a
ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we
know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs
that You do unless God is with him.’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of
God.’” John 3:1-3
“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the
world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were
evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the
Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth
comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought
in God.” John 3:19-21
“Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of
God, and Sosthenes our brother, To the church of God which is at Corinth, to
those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who
in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ.
I thank my God always concerning you for the grace which was
given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all
speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed
in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the
revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end,
blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom
you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” 1
Corinthians 1:1-9
“For the word of the Cross is foolishness to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is
written,
‘I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE,
AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER I WILL SET ASIDE.’” 1
Corinthians 1:18-19
“And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you
were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by
the Spirit of our God.” 1 Corinthians 6:11
“But by his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us
wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,” 1
Corinthians 1:30
“Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he
does not fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12
“Therefore if anyone
is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old has passed away; behold, new things
have come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17
“For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,
and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and
authority; and in Him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without
hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;
having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with
Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you
were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made
you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having
canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which
was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the
cross. Colossians 2:9-14
“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.
And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is the one
who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” 1
John 5:4-5
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