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