A Dilemma

Some things are not just hard to talk about, some things it seems can’t be talked about. I’m sure many will disagree with this, after all, we’ve been taught that talking is cathartic and therapeutic – sometimes that is true, but sometimes it is like a dog chasing its tail – it can’t be caught, or if it is caught what does one do with it? I’ve never seen a dog achieve contentment by catching its tail.

We can’t know our own hearts and therefore talking about things with the promise that we will understand ourselves is a false promise; I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for talking and I’m not saying that we can’t better understand some things, but I doubt that there is any one thing in our hearts that we can fully understand, not fully.

A dilemma in talking about things we’ve done or said that have resulted in pain for others, in confusion, in misunderstanding, is that if we blame others we excuse ourselves and justify ourselves; and if we talk about outside things or people that may have influenced us in our words and deeds we justify ourselves to some degree – and sin is sin and there can be no self-justification. We cannot discern the dynamics of life to the degree that we think we can – we can see actions and (hopefully) know they are good or evil, right or wrong – but the “why” of words and deeds is often (and I think usually) beyond us – we simply don’t know – and we don’t know regarding ourselves – “why did I really do this or that?”

We can see linkage, how one action leads to another which leads to another. We can see how a certain way of thinking leads to an action. We can see that not recognizing and repenting of sin leads to more sin. We can see how consciences can be seared and lose sensitivity to sin. We can see how our own hearts can be hardened. We can also see that we can come to a place where we are at the end of our understanding, where we cannot   untangle the ball of string, where we cannot extricate ourselves from the abyss. Then we can only cry the certain cry, and plea the certain plea, the cry and the plea to God that will be answered, and then we can say with the psalmist, “…He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm,” (Psalm 40:1 – 2).

We cannot climb out of the pit; not by endless talking, not by therapy, not by endlessly analyzing ourselves and our motives and the influences of people and events – only God can bring us out of the pit; we must trust Him to do it and we must trust His forgiveness. We must also trust Him to speak to us, when He chooses and how He chooses, concerning anything He would like us to know about our words and deeds – we cannot do this ourselves, it will kill us, it will bring us to despair.

To reduce sin to psychological and sociological babble in an effort to heal ourselves ensures that we will never be healed; for sin must be confessed and Christ must be followed in repentance – sin is so serious that Jesus Christ died so that we might be forgiven and that we might be delivered from its power. I can never understand myself, but I can always trust in Jesus Christ. If I must talk, then let me talk about Jesus.