The “long answers” for all of these questions are obviously tied to the book itself. The reason I included the questions at all is that some of the content can be “slippery.” The words sound familiar, and that familiarity can make it easy to rush past the question with tired answers, and to miss what might be new to those of us who adopted tired answers too easily before, and could stand to think about things in fresh ways – to find love in new ways.
1. Do you believe you are powerless over your sin?
Mine looks and feels a lot like the “garbage city” in Cairo, which I drove through a few years ago, and which you can see photos and video of at a different blog post at Pulp Theology – piled high, overwhelming, filthy, beyond comprehension, vast enough to define the place of my living and the person who lives there.
What I am beginning to see is that, while the garbage keeps coming (lately what’s been burying me is not the fact of my addiction, but the depth of my tendency toward control and co-dependence, and the experience has got to be similar to what a kid in the “garbage city” feels when he cleans his room, only to open the door to the rest of the house, and then steps out into his city) – while the garbage keeps coming, it seems God’s favorite game has to do with recycling and redemption, with the clean up, and with the joy that happens even while a person is still buried in filth…maybe unaware of just how filthy they are, and just how far they have to go. I am experiencing something like laughter and love in garbage city.
2. Over what things do you have power?
I think success is best measured not by what we achieve, but by what we come to admit. What I have power over is my willingness (not necessarily my ability) to engage reality and to admit how I interact with reality. If I engage reality, I will always see my contingent status and my powerlessness. I will always see that I am not God, and that I am lost if God does not exist. I have the power to admit the existence of reality, and once that admission happens, and once God and I sort our who’s who, I am given choice about living accordingly.
3. What is the difference between power and choice?
I do not need to have power over a thing to have choice about how I will interact with it. I do not have power over the weather – the heat or the cold – but I do have a choice about how I will dress. A person who refuses to admit powerlessness over winter, who dresses in shorts and a t-shirt and heads into the snow, will die from their powerlessness. And until they acknowledge their powerlessness – the facts they may not wish for and cannot control – they will be unable to make choices about how they will live in interaction with the cold. Sin works the same way.
4. What benefit comes to the person who believes God judges conduct on the basis of motives? What pitfalls do you see to this approach? For whom is this basis of judgment bad news?
When I see that God is watching the motives of my heart, I am able to admit my reality to a far greater extent. I am able to work “from the inside out” rather than focusing on keeping myself knuckled down. I find it easier to admit my powerlessness, to see my failures, and to invite God into my awareness. I find that a prayer just to “want the good,” as opposed to always praying to “do the good,” produces far better results in my world – both in terms of what actually happens, and in terms of how I experience my life and my God.
There are pitfalls in the short term. When I remove shame as a motivator, I get a little squirrelly sometimes – after all, I’ve used shame (just one example) as a governing tool and a kick in the pants to get me moving. I’ve used shame, or the potential of experiencing shame, to keep myself in line. There is a sort of “deconstruction” period that precedes the “reconstruction” and relational redemption that happen as I live with God. This tension, though, is the difference between redeemed saints and whitewashed tombs.
This chaotic phase is bad news for “clipboard Christians” – the rule-keepers and the people who get confused between being “witnesses” who are ready to give a reason for a hope they have, and “salespeople” who tend to sell an impossibly unlivable, joyless, superstition and decorum-based religion that gets between God and the people he loves.
5. What “should” statement would you most like to experience as good news by adding “when I’m the one who has reshaped your heart…” to the front of it?
For me, today, the riding issue is my codependence. I love the line from the recovery programs about “pray for them, then step over the bodies,” but I have a hard time not being a rescuer. I have a hard time living as though I believe other people are smart enough, or pursued by God enough, to have their bumpy roads lead where God will have them lead. Today my prayer is that I will experience “When I’m the one who has reshaped your heart, you will adore me directly, will celebrate my blessings, will share with others, and trust them to me.”
6. Where would you like to see intimacy with God reshape your behaviors?
I’m in a men’s group where I have enough insight into other people that sometimes I “steal their epiphany,” telling them what I see rather than asking questions and leaving enough space for them to find it on their own. This sort of interaction makes me feel good, because it provides good news for my friends, and it makes me feel smart or important, but recently I’m being shown how what I’m really doing is encouraging a dependence on me, rather than on God, and I don’t like where that path leads.
See the previous chapter’s discussion questions here.
See the next chapter’s discussion questions here.
