Last night I made Mexican Chili. I made up the recipe. It was sooooo good that I ate two bowls--one bowl too many. I feel like I'm going to pop. I really didn't need two bowls of soup. In fact, with all the physical problems I've been having with my stomach, I never should have eaten more than the first bowl. If I get sick, I have no one to blame but myself.
As Christians, we sometimes live our lives with the same self-indulgence as I did with my chili. We crave things we don't really need. Because they make us feel good, we do them; we buy them; we read them; we watch them; we revel in them. We feed on someone's complaint or flaw. Then we engorge ourselves with all the gossip and criticism that surrounds the situation. We dig into the midst of the gruel with gigantic spoonfuls of our own opinions, our own critiques, our own self-righteous accusations. After we've feasted on the weakness of another, we wonder why we feel so stuffed and miserable afterwards. We discover we are wrong to have indulged in the carcus-stripping and bone-gnawing. There's is nothing satisfying in that.
Why do folks do this? What is so appetizing about picking another person or group of people apart? Is it to reconcile someone to another? Is it to bring healing? Is it to enlighten, to edify, to warn? Is it to motivate and guide? Does the indulgence fill us with Christ's Spirit of love, kindness, mercy, gentleness and goodness?
"The only way to live a life filled with Christ is to crucify selfish ambition and conceit by worrying more about what's best for others and far less about what we think is best for ourselves. When serving others is our goal, there is rarely a conflict of interest. When serving others is our goal, dying to self is our practice. And, when dying to self is our practice, life is filled with Christ We participate, we voice our opinions, and we stand for what is right, but we don't have to be right, first, or even heard. The goal of our lives is not our way, but His way. It doesn't mean that we don't matter. It means we choose not to assert the fact that we matter, just as Christ did not assert the fact that He mattered. Instead, we lay down our rights for the good of others, just as He laid down His life for the salvation of man and the glory of God." Cyle Clayton, "AN UNNATURAL LIFE".
Too often our desire to right wrongs, to fight for the rights of others, to protest an injustice, leads us into a second bowl of soup that just wasn't needed. Nor does it serve anyone else a measure of goodness for us to have given into our desire. It seems like all it does is make me full of myself. selahV
[copyrighted, 2009, SelahVToday, hariette petersen]
