Starting Over
I really like starting a new year. It is kind of like starting a new grade in elementary school. Remember what that felt like? New notebooks, new pencils (no bite marks), new clothes (the jeans were stiff), new desk, new books, new kids, new teacher – new, new, new. It was one more attempt to improve your permanent record. The reality was and still is though – the old patterns were the same. By the second week of school the teacher discovered who you really were, the pencils were missing the erasers, everyone had seen your new shirts, and things were pretty much the same as they had been before. It is very difficult to change yourself. Self-help gurus make millions promising to teach you how to change – but we know that it very seldom happens. It is difficult. I once read an article about the low change rate in heart bypass patients. Over 90% did not stop the behaviors – smoking and bad diet – that had caused the heart attack. That is shocking to those of us who have not gone through that, but it is accurate about just how deep-seated our patterns of life (sins) are.
The world is divided on the issue as to whether people can change or not. Some say “No – no one ever changes.” The best to hope for is to “move on and not judge.” You are who you are and we can’t help it, so no one should be accountable for their actions because they can’t help it. Now I am obviously not in that camp, which you can discern by the way I presented that opinion. The reason why I am not in that camp is because I have experienced change myself and have witnessed real change in others. Why people change is debatable or perhaps a real mystery. Some say that we are totally incapable of changing by ourselves, that only God can change us. They usually will use the phrase “total depravity” which means that we have no good in us and that we are completely at the mercy of God for any improvement. There are others who focus more on the human side of the change equation and stress discipline, education, community, and other things to aid one’s endeavor at improvement.
I do not feel the need to defend a doctrine on this matter or to get my dog in this fight. What I know for certain is that I am not fully who God made me to be and I am not yet who I want to be. I know that God has drastically and miraculously changed parts of me, but there is still left a resistant piece of my core that defies my attempts at compliance. Being correct in my doctrine does not fix my defects. My pencil will still be missing an eraser by Feb. 1st. I will copy something out of the World Book Encyclopedia for that assignment. What I am certain of is that God sees me being better than I am today and God’s plans for me are much higher than I can imagine. For some strange reason, God has chosen me and promised His faithful love. He calls us higher. He calls me to be like Him. How I am going to get there is pure mystery to me. It may be transformational and instantaneous, or it may involve discipline, education, and community. Or – it could be God’s combination of all of that. In the end, I will not be writing a book about how I did it, but content to stand next to the One who did. If that makes me totally depraved – well – I have been called worse.
