Mr Grumpy.

With the start of a new year I generally dust of my old 'New Years'
resolutions and simply carry them forward into the next twelve months;
2007 is no exception! I'm usually full of good intentions but often lack
the application. James Baird once said, 'we judge other people by
their actions and ourselves by our intentions'.

So one thing I would love to have some resolution on is a little Christ
like humility. If I evaluate myself by my intentions then I'm an
amazingly creative, friendly, thoughtful omni-competent man, but in
actuality I know that I'm not. And no sooner do I think I've acheived
a state of humility that I realise that that very thought indicates the total
opposite. Humility is a slippery customer that is difficult to pin down,
like trying to grasp droplet of mercury. Perhaps humility is less of a
destination and more of a path. The instant that you think that you
are humble - you're not! Eventually you have simply to learn to laugh
at yourself. Was it CS Lewis that said 'humility is not thinking less of
yourself, but thinking of yourself less'? Whoever it was I think that
that has to be right. In lieu of humility maybe the next best thing is
simply to lay my soul bare and cut out all the fudging - isn't that what
Psalm 32 v2 is really about? Blogging - with all its self attentive
fussiness - isn't a medium conducive to humility is it? (So watch out for
my forthcoming lit obit this year!)

I had some discussion a while back in someone else's blog about the
nature of love. 'What is the opposite of love?' they had asked ('hate'
being the usual suspect) that particular blogger had suggested 'fear'
as the answer: an acquaintance of mine suggested that 'indifference'
might be a good candidate. While these answers have their merits I
believe the Biblical answer to that question of love's antithesis is
self-love. Love is not so much about feeling/not feeling something;
in reality it is all about focus. Who is the object of my primary affection?
Is it myself? Or is it another? And again we come back to that same
answer of self-forgetfulness as we have for 'humility'! In fact true
freedom surely means release from self-centredness and self-seeking.

John Piper in his brilliant book "Future Grace"* talks about self-pity
as a form of pride because it arises out of a sense of 'unrecognised
worthiness'. I found that definition very helpful because that certainly
gets under the skin of my pride! Frustration and irritability are functions
of disappointed expectations; and I've had to examine myself as to why
I get irritable and grumpy.

My conclusion is that [at times] I'm a functional unbeliever!
(Or is that a dysfunctional believer?! Or, more likely, is that the
normal Christian experience?) Sure I can tick all the boxes to do
with my Christian doctrine but I don't always live as if I believe;
my natural default setting is to be rather worldly and self reliant......
hence the pride and self-pity. I'm full of good intentions but often fail
to live out the doctrine I profess. Isn't that what Paul meant by
"what a wretched man I am!" in Romans 7 v24? Fortunately in the
next verse is the solution and that's found in Christ. Thank God.





*"Future Grace" by John Piper is published by Multnomah/IVP,
US ISBN 1-57673-337-8 / UK ISBN 0-85111-162-9.