Realizing Harmony

Why say I’m a tortured soul?  Isn’t that a bit over the top?

Maybe.   But then again, maybe not.

I was raised with conflict.  Conflicting values.  Conflicting standards.  Conflicting limits.  Conflicting consequences.  Conflicting beliefs.  And then, of course, there was just the (ab)normal conflicts of words and occasional physical altercations.  (But the physical was truly rare from my perspective… unless you count deserved-corporal-punishment as a physical altercation – which I don’t.)

My father was more liberal; my mother was more conservative.

My father had low standards; my mother had significantly higher standards – although I’ve learned more recently that she apparently didn’t follow those standards early in their marriage.

My father’s limits were nebulous – very easy to cross at some points without even realizing it until you were suddenly disciplined or punished, and impossible to find at other times – meaning there were no consequences for behaving ridiculously badly; mother had fairly well-defined limits – you generally knew when you were approaching a limit, and generally knew what the consequences would be.

Speaking of consequences… my father would vacillate from no consequences, to talking, to screaming, to paddling the butt hard or even slapping across the face with no rhyme nor reason to the severity of the punishment/discipline as compared to the wrong-doing; my mother varied the consequences based on the age, and severity of the infraction.  I don’t recall her striking me before about 6th grade, and then for severe infractions the corporal discipline got stiffer and stiffer until I cared more about other things than my physical discomfort.  (It never went beyond discomfort.  She never punished me, only disciplined.  And the discipline was never even close to injury… other than to my feelings.)

As for beliefs, my father didn’t really believe in anything except himself.  Oh, he’d claim to believe in this or that, but I’ve come to learn that he can’t be trusted there.  (He even went so far as to make up a story to tell to a church during a baptismal service – apparently to garner attention and make himself look spiritual.)  He was raised nominally Jewish.  Jewish enough to be persecuted, but not so Jewish that the family regularly attended the Synagogue.  After leaving home, he dabbled in other religions/philosophies – first Christianity, then some others including est (based on Zen Buddhism), the Esalen Institute (where he apparently went skinny-dipping with a few young ladies despite being married with 6 children of his own while immersing himself in various eastern-mystical philosophical teachings), Subud (for a less promotional website check out this link) which says of itself that it’s not a religion and that it doesn’t teach anything – you just learn, and the Unitarian Society (a Unitarian Universalist Congregation) which dragged him further and further away from involvement in our family.  (Truth be told – he would drop off my mother and us 6 kids at our church, and leave her to fend for herself and us, to find us all a ride home after church – when we just happened to be one of the families who lived furthest from the church.  He would then proceed to either continue on his merry way to work overtime (he was on salary, so there was no extra pay for the extra hours), or spend time with his friends at the Unitarian Society.)  Even when he claimed to believe in God and claimed to be following Christ, he was so presumptuous that when confronted with the hypothetical scenario of being asked to deny God or be killed, he’d deny God to save his life, and presume that God would forgive him.  At other times he’s expressed that he doesn’t believe in the deity of Christ.

My mother, on the other hand, was raised as a Congregationalist. and always held to fairly conservative Christian beliefs – even while attending Presbyterian, Non-denominational, and Community Churches.

I’ll probably talk more about the verbal altercations in a later blog.  But for now, suffice it to say, “home” was a verbal battlefield of strategic tactical psychological and emotional warfare on multiple “fronts.”  The battles often raged on for days.  (I made a mental note once, in high school, of the shortest battle to my knowledge: it was “only” about 2 hours long.)

As for me, my values and beliefs haven’t strayed too far from my mother’s.  But some of my behavior is closer to my father’s.  In other words, it isn’t in alignment with my beliefs.  This bothers me.  A lot.

I’m reminded of Paul’s words in his letter to the Christians in Rome:

I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.

But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

I still struggle with really letting go of my sinful behavior(s) and relying on God.  It’s a challenge for me to truly consider myself dead to sin and its temptations.