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Sunday, October 18, 2009

IT’S HARD TO BE GOOD

By Rev. Jerry Herships

Romans 7:15-20

¹⁵I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

I think all of us try to put our best face forward.  It is only natural that we want people to see us in the best possible light.  We want people to think well of us.  For some people it is easy.  Celebrities have it easy in this regard.  People want to like them.  My brother had his own talk show in Toronto for years and then produced and wrote for the #1 morning show in Detroit.  My own family and friends would often say they weren’t impressed with Gene and what he did and said that “kind of stuff” didn’t impress them. I would then watch how much more interested they were in what my brother Gene was up to than what was going on in my sister Joann’s life.  

Being with the homeless downtown is the reverse.  NO ONE seems to care what is going on in their lives.  I once heard someone say that to treat people right, treat famous people like they were regular folks and regular folks like they were famous.  I think that is good advice.

Sometimes, though, it is hard to treat anyone nice.  Usually it’s the guy in the car in front of me.  I try very hard to make the Jerry you see here be the same Jerry who writes his sermons at the kitchen table at home.  Laura will tell you how often I fail at that.  I struggle with materialism and ego just like the next person.  I have thoughts and actions that aren’t very holy.  I think I am better than I was, but far from as good as I can be

I can’t really claim ignorance. I know what to do. I know the “right” answer. I make my living studying the “right” answer, and yet, catch myself messing up time and time again. Why is that?

I did a little bit of research around this. Even when we try and “will ourselves” to do the right thing…i.e., eat less, curse less, send more thank you cards, call our parents, do better in school etc., it is hard.  Part of the reason is that new research is showing that will power is a muscle and actually gets weaker the more you use it.

 The August 4, 2009 issue of TIME magazine did a story on exercise.  It revealed that,
in 2000 in the journal, Psychological Bulletin, psychologists Mark Muraven and Roy Baumeister observed that self-control is like a muscle: it weakens each day after you use it.  If you force yourself to jog for an hour, your self-regulatory capacity is proportionately enfeebled.  Rather than lunching on a salad, you'll be more likely to opt for pizza.

I think this can happen with our faith, too.  I think sometimes the harder we try to be good, the worse we do.  Thank God for grace….literally!  I’m not saying we don’t try to be good but we do look at it from a different place than “obligation.”

One of the ways discussed in the article was through the study of a clinical psychologist. He talked about the two primary modes of memory.  The first is called declarative.  It is the kind we most think of when we think of memory.  It is the kind we use to recall our phone number or describe the house you grew up in.  The second kind is procedural memory.  It is how we “remember” to ride a bike.  We feel it.  Letting someone “feel” what it is to ride a bike is much more successful than just “telling them” how to do it.

It turns out that most of our day-to-day life is spent with procedural memory.  It is the “how-to” of life.  We don’t just have a “how-to” in riding a bike in our memory, but also a how to for our relationships and how we treat others and how we have been treated.  Because most of the people we meet in our lives are people that are struggling along, just like we are, many of these memories are less than stellar.  We file these away and replay them.  We learn selfish, self-protective ways many times.

The answer in some way then, is to reprogram our procedural memory. I think we are in some ways doing that at AfterHours. For one, I love that it takes awhile to get you guys back in your seats after I tell you to greet each other. We are replacing the old, “Peace of Christ, peace of Christ,” with “how was your week or what’s your name, I don’t think we’ve met.”

We also do it by going out into the world. By reprogramming our lives and replacing poor ways of reacting and treating each other with positive ways to love and interact with the world, we get in the habit of loving. Every time you come and make lunches to feed a hungry world, you are replacing old the models of every man and woman for themselves, with a model that goes out and loves on the world.

One of the things that I like best about the Bible is how often God uses screwed up people to build a better world. We are not alone in this frustration of “wanting” to do good but “doing” bad. Our friend, the Apostle Paul, speaks directly to this issue. He says it this way, “¹⁵I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.  

Granted, this is a little wordy, but the good news is; we aren’t in this alone. One of the biggest fans of Christ, one of the most famous preachers and evangelists of all time is telling us that essentially, “I screw up.”  Last week, Paul told us that he could be content in all things and all situations; in rich or poor, good or bad, he would be okay. And, by the way, he wrote that from prison!

This week he is telling us that even though he can be content with what is happening around him, he is not content within himself.  Paul wrote Romans around 56 AD.  Paul’s conversion experience occurred around 33 A.D.   He had been at this Christ thing for more than twenty years and he was still messing up!  The good news is that just a few verses later, he points out again, just like last week, that it is Christ that is his hope and strength.  He says it this way in verses 24-25, “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Once again, I am seeing a theme. We are in a partnership with God. We are to go out and be God’s hands and feet in the world, knowing that when we do we are changing our own script for how the way the world looks and acts, and in the process, gradually changing our understanding of those around us, through loving them.  And, for those times when we fail, we can rest in the certainty of a loving grace-filled, compassionate God who forgives us our short comings and it the process, gives us the courage to get up and try again, knowing that it is the Christ that dwells within us that makes us want to love the world in the first place.

That is just plan cool.