Tag: healing

O Wretched Man!

How do we respond to those struggling with immoral attractions and desires? Or who believe deep down they’re in the wrong body? Or who fantasize about unspeakable wickedness?

It does seem as if we’re not all deliberately choosing the feelings and tendencies with which we struggle; they’re evidently inherent in our nature, as if we’re born with them: and Christians are not immune from the fight. (Ro 7:7-8) How then can we condemn such behavior? Why resist it at all? (1Pe 5:9)

God gives us over to a reprobate mind, to harm ourselves and others, when we don’t keep Him central in our world view. (Ro 1:28) Yet many struggle with evil within while pursuing God (Ro 7:18-19); we may indeed be resisting quietly, doing our best to walk uprightly in spite of how wretched we feel, unable to figure out how we got here. (Ro 7:24) What hope do we have in such a struggle?

Perhaps our instincts, apart from our conscious will, spring from our sub-conscious, from beliefs and thinking patterns programmed into us from infancy through a variety of traumatic, social and cultural factors. How have these millions of signals, most of which we didn’t choose, impacted us?

It may also be that we inherit moral tendencies through ancestry (De 23:2), from our culture (3-4), and even from mankind in general (Ro 5:19), infected just being part of the vast, living human organism. (Ep 4:25)

We may not fully understand how we’re influenced by our own thoughts and actions, or those of others, either in the present or in the past, but one thing is clear: as we succumb to these immoral desires and begin to practice them they become much stronger, creating a bondage that deepens and strengthens over time. The more we engage and pursue them the more firmly their stranglehold on our hearts and minds becomes.

We also know that pursuing these immoral tendencies doesn’t tend to satisfy us, to enable us to live balanced, healthy, resilient, joyful, peaceful lives. Giving in to them makes us prisoners of war (2Ti 2:25-26), and most of us aren’t even aware we’re in a battle.

The only other obvious option is to continually resist these impulses, to struggle against them and deny ourselves the pleasures they promise. (Ep 4:22) While this is clearly better than giving ourselves over, the “Just say no” strategy tends to fail over time. Is there a better way?

God tells us knowing the truth makes us free (Jn 8:31-32), that acknowledging the truth delivers us from spiritual slavery and bondage. (1Ti 2:25-26) Truth is the weapon of our warfare here (2Co 10:4); there’s no bondage or instinct too strong for God to heal (Ep 3:20), if we’re willing to pursue and receive the truth. (1Pe 1:4)

Everyone experiences sinful tendencies and attractions which seem beyond our control; we can deny and resist them, but we can’t simply turn them off altogether and choose to feel differently. Rather than presuming “God made me this way” whenever we have an instinctive reaction that’s contrary to moral law, perhaps we should offer up these instincts to God and ask Him to help us re-program both our conscious and sub-conscious minds.

Consistently and prayerfully exposing our minds and hearts to truth, asking God to work it down into the deepest recesses of our being, this is the way to cleansing and freedom. (Ps 119:9) It may not be the quick fix, any more than our initial programming happened overnight; the web of lies may be extremely deep and complex. Our hope is that God knows us better than we know ourselves (Ps 139:1-4), and has given His very best to set us free. (Tit 2:14)

We may not understand exactly how we fell into bondage, but we can still be set free: ask and seek. (Mt 7:7-8) If we want to be healed and pursue God for it, He’s on our side and will be with us every step of the way. (He 13:5-6)

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Confess Your Faults

A common misconception is that God wants us to be transparent before others, open about our sins and brokenness, perhaps confusing this with humility. The reality is we should be wise, careful who we trust with our inner selves. (Mt7:6) Few are worthy of our trust (Jn 2:24), so we must guide our affairs with discretion. (Ps 112:5) Our motive in speaking truth should seldom be about ourselves; we should be moved in love to edify others. (Ep 4:29)

Even so, when we get ourselves in a spiritual rut, such that we’re consistently off path and unable to recover ourselves, God tells us to confess our faults to those in close spiritual community, praying for each other that we might be healed. (Ja 5:16) God has designed spiritual community around this purpose; God heals some sinful patterns only as dear brothers and sisters pray for us. This endears us to one another in love, and shows us we need Christ in each other to overcome, to live as we should for Him. (He 10:24-25)

Yet, even in such close relationships, God doesn’t encourage us to confess all of our individual sins to each other: He says we’re to confess our faults, which are not entirely the same as sins. The Greek for sins is ἁμαρτίας, hamartias, the idea of missing the mark, relating to discrete acts of Torah violation. (1Jn 3:4) However, the word translated faults is παραπτώματα, paraptomata, to fall beside or near something, connoting a repeating, persistent pattern of iniquity rather than a single act.

Most all of our modern English translations have the Greek hamartias in this text, and thus translate it as sins, trespasses, offenses, etc. This is because three of the four oldest Greek New Testament (GNT) manuscripts (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus, from the 4th and 5th centuries C.E., the Egyptian Text) contain this reading, compared to all other surviving (Majority Text) manuscript witnesses of James. Textual critics typically presume older manuscripts are more accurate, ignoring the fact that the greatest corruptions to the GNT were introduced well before the 4th century. Further, they ignore the fact that no plausible explanation for the existence of the Majority Text has yet been proposed, if it isn’t grounded in the autographs themselves.

The Egyptian hamartias, aside from having an inferior historical claim to legitimacy, is problematic from a practical perspective. The command to confess our sins, applies to every single instance of each and every kind of sin, obligating us all to confess all of our sins to each other, which is not possible: even if this is all we ever do, we’re continuing to commit individual sins faster than we can possibly confess them, so the more earnestly we attempt to obey such a command, the farther behind we will fall in our obedience to it. And there is nothing in such a practice that would be edifying. (Ro 14:19)

A second problem relates to what it means to be healed of a sin which hasn’t been imputed to us. (Ro 4:8) What’s in view here cannot be forgiveness, for this has already been done in full, once for each believer, by Christ Himself. (Col 2:13) Rather, this is the healing of a spiritual wound or malady (Pr 18:14) in an ongoing sinful context. If we need others to pray for our healing from each specific historical act of Torah violation in order to be healed, then we shall never be healed of the vast majority of our sins, so we must remain forever crippled in them. This cannot be our Lord’s intent; it’s the kind of perversion we expect from those corrupting the word.

In comparison, confessing our faults — patterns of sin we observe in ourselves, which remain stubbornly persistent even though we’re struggling to obey – is perfectly reasonable. In resisting sin we become aware of such patterns of iniquity, rooted deeply within, where we’re unable to obey God even as we’re doing our best. It’s perfectly natural then to involve godly brothers and sisters, asking them to pray for us in specific ways so we might overcome and walk in obedience. We’re healed as the lies at the root of our sinful patterns are exposed and replaced with truth. (2Ti 2:25-26)

Confession of specific sins should only be as public as the offence (Mt 18:15a), and pursued, not for personal healing, but as a means of promoting reconciliation and restoration of trust. (b) Confession of faults should only be with trusted allies in the faith for sanctification and growth in personal holiness.

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