The D-Word

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Romans 7:15 (TNIV)

Once we read this sentence through a few times, allowing a bit of the confusion from the first run through to blow away, perhaps we start understanding just a hint of what Paul is trying to say.

We do the things we shouldn’t. We don’t do the things we should.

That’s what it means. Right?

So often we hear these words taken to emphasize the negative. We say that God is a Being who at the root of it all wants us to stop failing and falling short. We make it about the last part of this verse, and yet we forget, or at least play down the bit preceding.

We make this verse about the ‘sins’ that we keep on committing. The things we continue doing that, we are assured, put us squarely on the naughty list.

But the more I discover God, the more I am become assured that the Santa Claus method might not be his method after all. Perhaps He is not as much as I had once thought about the “don’t do that’s”. A lens, I believe, we have used to view this one version of God for too long.

Instead, the God I long to know more, is One who instead of giving me a list of “dont’s”, instead hands me a list of “why not try’s”.

There are none of us who would say we don’t want to pursue things in our lives. There are none who would say we don’t want to be better employees, friends, fathers, mothers, husbands, girlfriends, or bosses. There are none who would say we wouldn’t want to be better to our bodies. Run more. Smoke less. Eat more of the good stuff. There are none who would say we would turn down an opportunity to do more of what we love, what we feel in our deepest selves we were made for. Pick up a pen and finally write the short story we have always promised ourselves we would, the song that has been lingering on the tip of our tongues for a while, or create something of beauty (or at least of meaning) with our hands. None of us who play a sport who don’t want to get better at it. Don’t want to reach the next level. Compete higher. Get faster, bigger, stronger.

There are none of us who don’t want to move forward in our lives.

And yet, almost all of us at one point or another find ourselves stalled. Find ourselves sitting on our sofas as our lives crystallise around us. Suddenly finding the water of our lives that once rushed past us with such speed and youthful exuberance stagnant and staid.

And that brings us back to the part of the verse we love to hate. The realisation that we are people who do things that aren’t good for us, actions, Paul says, that we hate. The problem with these actions though, is that even though we say we hate them, in the moment of truth we find we really do want to do them and are quite content to give in. They are often the easy way out, the shortcut, the way that brings us the most amount of fun and contentment in the short term.

And that’s the problem. These are all about the short term. The now. And it’s only later that we discover the consequences of our decisions on the longer term goals and tasks we planned and set for ourselves.

We allow these things to come between us and whatever relationship we have allowed or are welcoming to blossom between us and our Keeper and Sustainer.

Maybe when thinking about the things that we know God desires for us, the difference comes in seeing that maybe these aren’t a list of “because I said so” things, but “because they are keeping you from being who you are”. Rather than sucking the life FROM us, this is a list of things to restore life TO us.

But living this life require something of us. The D-word.

Discipline.

The word we avoid as much as we can. Discipline to pull ourselves out of the mould we have left in the sofa, to tear ourselves away from the things we know are not helping us live the lives we want, and choosing to start walking in that direction.

It’s not easy. Living life in the real world is much harder than watching it unfold on a television screen. But the question is, 6 months from now, would I rather be more in the know and up to date on the lives of the characters in the latest sitcom to come out of the US (Finally! An explanation for the "Modern Family" photo at the header!), or be 6 months closer on the journey of discovering who I am, why I was made this way and further on the journey of being a better version of the me I am today. Which one will make me feel more alive? More whole?

And that’s what I think this verse is really about.

Not about the rules. But about recapturing the rhythm of life that we once held in our grasp.

Recognising the costs in the short term, in anticipation and expectation of the gains and rewards in the long term.