Paralyzed!

To be paralyzed is to be rendered completely powerless, ineffective or inert. As I said in the previous post, some allow their sense of guilt to paralyze them. They are so burdened by the sense of guilt that they do not take advantage of the full power that God gives us to move forward in our lives.

Paul expresses the lead-up to possible paralysis in Romans 7. “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.”¹

Paul is writing about the struggle to do good, even while sinful nature fights against us. That sinful nature can seem so powerful, that sometimes we are moved to despair. We stop believing that there is any hope. It almost seems as if that’s where Paul is heading here, especially when we get to this phrase, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”²

In our spiritual lives we might be tempted to stop here. “I just can’t beat it! I give up! There’s just no power over this!” Paralysis sets in. Guilt can lead us here. If we have allowed thought patterns to develop that say, “you are weak, you are incapable, you are the loser you have always believed yourself to be,” we lose all power to fight on. All our efforts seem completely ineffective, and our spiritual lives are inert. There is no growth, there is no joy, there is no peace, there is no excitement. There’s just no power to move further up and further into the glorious kingdom, into the joy of the Father that has been prepared for us.

Guilt leads us to paralysis because we fail to see ourselves as truly forgiven, truly set free, truly beloved, truly clothed with the righteousness of Jesus. Guilt can keep us from exercising the power that is available, because we are so focused on what used to be, instead of what God is doing now. We’re still seeing the old, dead self, instead of the new creation in Christ. We fall into despair, and cry out, “Who will rescue me?!”

Who indeed? Paul did not forget who. He did not stop with a cry of despair. He always remembered who rescued him. “Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!”³ The rescue is done. Don’t let the memory of sin keep you from moving forward. You may not be sprinting, but you can take one step deeper into the joy of the Master.

This is true of our spiritual life. I believe this is true of other aspects of our lives as well. In many, many ways the ways we deal with discomfort and stress parallel the struggles with sin and righteousness that we experience. As I said earlier, if God is the God of all comfort, then comfort and discomfort in all aspects of our lives has some spiritual component. That’s probably something to explore a little later on.

When we get to the point in the spiral where our comfort seeking behavior leads us into guilt, we can allow ourselves to become paralyzed. We feel guilty about smoking another cigarette, overeating again, getting drunk again, getting into the wrong bed again. We begin believing that there just isn’t any hope for change. Here’s even another layer. On top of the guilt lies hopelessness. That’s where the paralysis really sets in. If we are without hope, we just stop trying.

Maybe now we start the jokes. You’ve heard them, maybe you’re making them. “Sure, I can quit smoking! I’ve already done it a hundred times!” “Just don’t tempt me, I can resist anything but temptation.” “I’m not overweight, I’m undertall.” We use laughter to mask our hopelessness and our paralysis. We’re using it to divert attention away from our own culpability and responsibility. We have to divert away from our responsibility, because it is just that sense of responsibility that has moved us into the sense of guilt.

But just as there is hope for us in our struggle with sin, there is hope for us in our struggle against stress and discomfort. We may be at the guilt/hopelessness point of the spiral, but hopelessness is always a lie. There is always hope, and interestingly enough, I have found that the hope begins at the same place that Paul found it. Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!

All hope is found in Jesus. If we are feeling hopeless and powerless over our eating, smoking, drinking, or whatever spiral we are on, there is hope, and it begins with Jesus. Go back again, and learn again what God has done for you. Remember the story of his birth, his death and especially his resurrection. Allow yourself to be told again that all this love poured out was for you. Listen to the truth, and make it personal to you. There is power in that hope. We do not need to be paralyzed. We can move further up and further in, and we can get off the comfort spiral.

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¹ Romans 7:18-19
² Romans 7:24
³ Romans 8:25a

The Power of Guilt

Stress or discomfort leads to comfort seeking behavior. Comfort seeking behavior can lead to frustration and increased stress and discomfort. Increased comfort seeking behavior can lead to destructive levels. This destructive behavior induces guilt which increases the discomfort to even greater intensity. Now you see how the spiral is built.

Have no doubt, guilt is very powerful. Guilt is also a gift from God. We are meant to feel guilty for doing something we shouldn’t, in order to draw attention to the fact that we should stop doing something! When guilt is operating correctly in our lives, the discomfort from our guilt will drive us to stop doing the behavior that induces the guilt. That would be an example of appropriate comfort seeking behavior. I am uncomfortable because of the guilt I feel, so I stop doing the things that make me feel guilty. Now I am more comfortable and I am no longer doing that which I should not.

Guilt is powerful. It can operate in our lives positively or negatively. First the negative power of guilt.

Guilt is a problem when we are no longer responsible (and possibly never were responsible) for the actions that have induced the guilt. What do I mean? Now I am going to be a little more directly theological than I have been to date.

As Christians, we live under the grace of God’s forgiveness for our sins. We have done wicked things in the past, we have turned from God’s ways and pursued our own. That is the clear and consistent testimony of Scripture. It begins with the story of the fall in Genesis. Adam and Eve turn from God’s instructions, and choose their own way. They eat the forbidden fruit.

Isaiah universalizes the fall to everyone: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”¹ Any honest person can look at himself and see how much he has chosen to go his own way, rather than God’s ways. Isaiah compares us to sheep, an animal that easily goes astray.

The Apostle Paul really boils it down: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”² These statements both individualize and universalize the reality of sin. I have sinned. I have gone astray and gone my own way. That’s the individual aspect. Since this is true of everyone, it is a universal problem.

Christians are those who acknowledge their guilt, and accept their dependence on the gift of God’s forgiveness, given to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The hope of the Christian faith is that God offers us a new life through his forgiveness. That new life is expressed as a new creation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”³ Understanding this is so important. Too many are paralyzed by negative guilt. They do not actively accept that God has set their guilt aside, and that they are now sharing in the righteousness of Jesus. They still beat themselves up for their past deeds and willfulness and allow that sense of guilt to paralyze themselves from enjoying the fullness of a rich relationship of passionate love with God. They keep themselves from moving further up and further into God’s kingdom.

It is not God that is the originator of this guilt. It comes from somewhere else. The Bible says that God is not condemning us.

“What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”⁴

Who has the ultimate right to criticize us, find fault with us, accuse us and condemn us? Jesus is our creator, Jesus is the one who has lived life on this earth completely without ever failing God. He has authority as our creator. He has moral authority as the sinless one. As the preceding passage points out, he is doing the exact opposite of condemning us. He pleads our cause before God. He’s on our side.

So if the guilt some still feel isn’t from God, then where? There are other possibilities. The chapter in Romans goes on to describe those who may be out there accusing us. Verse 38 speaks of angels and demons, past and future, powers, heights and depths. The enemies of God are also our enemies. They seek to keep us separated from experiencing God and his love and grace. Leading us to discount the complete forgiveness God has for us will accomplish that goal. So one source for inappropriate or negative guilt is the full array of the enemies of God.

There can be other sources as well. Our own patterns of thought can be deep ruts that keep us from breaking free into newer more healthful ways of thinking. Some have had the misfortune of having a parent berate them continually through their lives. From early on they accepted that they were useless, that they would always be failures, that they were irredeemably bad. These early beliefs and negative self-images make it easy to feel guilty over past, forgiven deeds and attitudes, in spite of the clear proclamation of forgiveness.

Next, the usual result of the negative side of guilt.

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¹ Isaiah 53:6
² Romans 3:23
³ 2 Corinthians 5:17
⁴ Romans 8:31-34

Trouble upon Trouble

So, we’ve got problems and struggles in life. That’s a fact of life here in a fallen world. We manage our struggles in a variety of ways, some appropriate, some not. We can know that our management techniques have moved into inappropriate methods when they become destructive. They may be destructive to ourselves, others, or frequently both.

Getting back to the spiral we started with a little bit of stress, and a little bit of stress relief. But if the stress relief didn’t really address the causes of the stress, it’s a temporary patch at best. Sometimes that’s all we need, a temporary patch. Then a good night’s sleep, and we’re ready to face the next day’s stresses. But what if that patch isn’t enough?

If using comfort mechanisms that do not directly address the real problem are relied upon, then it is likely that those mechanisms will become problems in and of themselves. If the original problem is not resolved in some other manner, then you have taken one level of problem, and added another layer atop it, to compound the troubles of your life. Finally, at some point (getting back to the spiral illustration) you have moved along your spiral from non-destructive behavior into destructive behavior.

Here it is important to see that the actual behavior hasn’t changed in substance, but in intensity or volume. My comfort behavior is eating. For a while, those midnight trips to the hamburger place during the college years didn’t really do any damage. They couldn’t. I couldn’t afford enough Twin Burgers at Bunks to cause weight gain. Then too, at that point I was operating at a more youthful metabolism where the calories were more easily burned. What those trips did do was establish a pattern of how I would end up dealing with stress and discomfort.

As time went on, the relatively harmless behavior of “relaxing” through food intensified. I hadn’t really developed appropriate methods of dealing with my stresses. The stresses piled up, and the eating increased. It was the same behavior, just more of it.

Something new is added on when the behavior moves from non-destructive levels to destructive levels. Before we had stress type discomfort. Then we added frustration onto the stress discomfort. Now we add on yet another layer of discomfort: guilt.

At some point, we realize that the behavior is destructive. It may be a very mild realization, but it is there. The trousers are a little tight. We have to loosen the belt a notch. We wake up with a hang-over. We realize the wife is right after nagging that the kids never see their dad, he’s always at work. Whatever our comfort behavior is, by using it too much, we have moved into a destructive phase, and we become aware, at some level of that destruction. That awareness is transformed into an appropriate experience of guilt. If we are doing something we shouldn’t, we should feel guilty about it.

So, for now I will leave it with this new layer. We have the original stress or discomfort. We have frustration that we haven’t gotten rid of that discomfort. And now we have guilt that our reaction to that discomfort has led us into destructive behavior.

Also note, we may not be aware that our guilt over our destructive behavior is in any way tied to the original discomfort. We feel guilty over the behavior. But it is quite possible to still be completely unaware that our comfort behaviors are just that–comfort behaviors. We may not be making the connection of original discomfort to our comfort behavior.

Getting Destructive

So far, I've tried to stay in the area of non-destructive behavior. That is, so what if I have a couple of Oreos? In the illustration, non-destructive behavior is represented by the gray circle. Eventually, if we persist in using a genuinly unhelpful pleasure mechanism to deal with our daily discomforts, that pleasure mechanism will turn into a destructive behavior.

The quick illustration is: 2 Oreos = 150 calories, no problem. 1 package of Oreos = 30 Oreos (more or less) = 2250 calories. Now there is a problem. When our comfort behavior starts doing damage to our body through weight gain, for example, we are compounding our problems with interest.

I have been using food as my example. That's because that's my pleasure mechanism. Therefore it is also my struggle. But food and eating is certainly not the only way people deal with their discomforts. The list can be very long, and the most obvious examples might include:

Alcohol
Sex
Drugs
Work
Exercise
Thrill-seeking
Hobbies
Entertainment

None of these things are necessarily bad in themselves. How they are used is the issue. All of them are devoid of spiritual content by themselves. They might be used spiritually, but that must be in relationship with God.

If the discomforts we deal with are spiritual in nature, relying on any of these is doomed from the start, and even more likely to lead to destructive behavior. If the discomforts are emotional in nature, the most common pleasure mechanisms are unlikly to be of any long-term help.

I tend to believe that since God is the god of all comfort (Remember that verse back in 2 Corinthians?) that discomfort always has a spiritual component. So leaving God out of our comfort behaviors is risky business.

Some of our comfort mechanisms are more obviously destructive than others. Obesity is destructive to the body. It can be destructive to others, as our failing health can adversely affect those in our families.

Alcoholism is an obvious destruction. Adultery destroys a marriage, pre-marital sex is emotionally and spiritually destructive. Constantly overworking can be very destructive to the health of a marriage, or to one's own spiritual and emotional balance, for we were not made to work 24-7. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy" is a reflection of our spiritual and physical nature. We were created to rest one day out of seven.

Next time, back to the spiral . . .

Spiraling Out of Control

Some things just won't satisfy. But they make a pretty good imitation, for a while. And that can lead us into trouble.

When we are faced with a discomfort of one kind or another, we usually seek to alleviate the discomfort. We might do this consciously, or without being particularly aware of what we are doing. We may be using perfectly acceptable activities to lighten our load, without being aware that's what's going on in our lives.

This can easily lead to what I call the Comfort Spiral. It begins with some kind of struggle, hardship, disapointment, discomfort. It might simply be the tiredness of a long, hard day at work. Those come by most of us fairly often. Nothing really bad happened, it was just long and hard. There is the discomfort.

We go home, maybe after an hour of commuting on the highways and biways. Again, this is nothing terribly unusual. But there is just a little more discomfort. When we arrive home, there is the package of Oreo Cookies on the counter. That looks good. We grab a couple cookies, and go on to change out of the career clothes and into something a little less formal to do the work around the house.

Okay, so far, no problem. But the cookies don't really address the problem of a long hard day at work, and a long commute. We grab the cookies because, well, because we like Oreos. And that's it. That's the comfort mechanism. We engage in something we like (eating a couple Oreos) to counteract the discomfort that comes from the workday and commute.

If we never proceed beyond a couple of Oreos, maybe that's not a big deal. But far too many of us go well beyond the two cookies. That's because our comfort mechanism doesn't really deal with the source of our discomfort. The only discomfort that food truly cures is physical hunger. But many of us use food to try to cure all the discomforts of our lives.

So we start with a discomfort, and we respond with a non-destructive and seemingly helpful behavior. So far, so good. What happens though, if we develop a pattern of this behavior? Things can spiral out of control.

We had the long hard day at work, and enjoyed a couple of cookies. Action - Reaction. But the reaction did not deal with the root causes of the discomfort. After the pleasure of the cookies has worn off, it may still be a long hard day. Maybe things at home aren't all that great, either. So some might grab a couple more cookies. After all, there is real pleasure in eating those little devils. And during the consumption of them, the pleasure is outweighing the discomfort.

Eventually, however, something new might creep into the equation. Because the cookies don't actually fix the problem, because the problem continues, an unidentified frustration can creep into the whole situation. That frustration is that, doggone it, eating this stuff isn't actually helping anything! So now a new discomfort has crept into the equation. We originally had the long hard day at work and the long commute. Now we have added in a frustration. Frustration is uncomfortable. And we know how to deal with discomfort--grab a couple Oreos!

Eventually, a completely appropriate behavior, eating an Oreo, becomes a problem. We are trying to use something we enjoy to overwhelm our feelings of discomfort. Over time, we can let that get completely out of control.



The illustration shows how the process grows. We start in the center with some kind of discomfort. We respond to the discomfort with something we like, something that makes us feel good, a pleasure mechanism. Maybe that works for a while, but the discomfort is still there, so we repeat the pleasure mechanism. If we begin to feel the frustration or discouragement because the pleasure mechanism didn't actually fix the problem, we have added to our discomfort level.

Unfortunately, we are most likely to continue to use the pleasure mechanisms we are accustomed to using. That means that increased discomfort is likely to result in more Oreos.

More soon . . .