Theology for Women

Is there a person in your life who immediately causes your body to tense up whenever you hear their name? Maybe they hurt you, or you are jealous of them, or you just think they’re really annoying, but whatever the reason you don’t like hearing about them. Especially when it’s good.

I have this particular reaction to a few people in my life who have hurt me in the past. As soon as their names are mentioned, my heart rate speeds up and I can feel my spirit grow angry. My mind starts racing with all the things they’ve done to wrong me and all the reasons I don’t like them. I consider all the searing accusations I could level at them.

And as much as I would like to say that my reaction to these people is always Christ-like, I cannot. Because these people have wronged me, I feel justified in slandering them. The words tumble out of my mouth, almost uncontrollably, in what can only be described as verbal diarrhea. At times, I can even hear myself doing this, which leads me to subconsciously scream, “Stop talking!”

But I don’t.

Instead, I rationalize my actions. I’m merely relaying the facts of what they did, and reflecting my feelings on the matter. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the victim.

But the moment I open my mouth and tarnish another person’s reputation is the moment I make that person a victim as well. Someone may victimize me, but I am still accountable for how I respond, and on this point Scripture is clear–we are to do as Christ has done.

We are to forgive seventy times seven, we are to love unfailingly, and we are to treat others with kindness. This doesn’t mean being their best friend, but it certainly means responding to them with the respect that their divine image warrants.

Not because they deserve it, but because Christ has done much more for you and me.

And here’s another perspective to consider when you find yourself slandering another–you are doing a great deal of damage to yourself as well. By this, I mean that you are enslaving yourself to feelings of jealousy, bitterness, and hard-heartedness. When I talk about someone in a negative way, it only sews deeper seeds of bitterness that slowly poison my own heart. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like feeling that way. And I always regret it later.

But when we choose not to slander another person, we choose to set ourselves free from those feelings. We also set ourselves free from wondering what other people think about us. Whenever I gossip, I later suspect that I’ve said more about myself than the person I described. In the eyes of my listener, I’m just a bitter girl who doesn’t have the courage or integrity to approach the person myself.

Our words can truly be our bondage, which is why Scripture comes down so hard about it…

- Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Prov. 18:21)

- The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a snare of death. (Prov. 21:6)

- A lying tongue hates its victims (26:28)

- If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. (James 1:26)

- So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. (James 3:5-6)

These verses come to mind whenever I find myself talking endlessly about people who have hurt me. I could have ended the wrongs by never responding in kind, but instead I prolong the cycle, allowing my tongue to “set the forest ablaze” by spreading gossip and slander among people who are not even involved. Not only is my heart poison, but now I’m poisoning others.

That is the danger of the tongue. It is a powerful force for wrong if we let it, so keep this in mind the next time you find yourself bad-mouthing another, and justifying your words as a victim. Christ has called us to far better things.

And if you ever happen to be in my company when I start talking this way, let me first apologize for being such a jerk, but let me also give you free reign to scream something along the lines of “somebody put a cork in her!” It won’t hurt my feelings, and I was probably already thinking it myself.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought of self-control as a matter of do or don’t. We shouldn’t do this or that because it is wrong, so we need to exercise self-control in the face of temptation. So if you do this and don’t do that, all the way Jesus asks you to, then you’ve got self-control. End of story.

Well I stumbled onto a verse the other day that has challenged me to think of self-control in a whole new light. It comes from Proverbs 25:28 and it reads as follows:

A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. (ESV)

At first I thought this was a surprising comparison. A city without walls? According to this analogy, self-control is about more than acting rightly. It is actually a mode of self-protection. Like a city without walls that is left vulnerable to any kind of attack, a lack of self-control leaves us vulnerable to the temptations and pitfalls of this world. Without it, we are sitting ducks waiting to be clobbered.

But what I found even more telling was the following portion of the verse: “a city broken into and left without walls.” This verse points to an exact moment at which the walls came down. There was an initial invasion, an original penetration of the walls, and because of that invasion the entire city was left open to attack.

As soon as I read this, I knew exactly what it was referring to: gateway sin. I am stealing this term from the frequently used “gateway drug,” a term refering to minor drugs which lead users into more serious habits of addiction. A person starts out using pot, thinking it’s no big deal, but eventually moves on to harder substances as the desire for a bigger high gets stronger.

It is the same with sin. We start out with a small sin, thinking it’s no big deal, but it leads us to into more serious habits of sin. This kind of struggle can range anywhere from lust, to gambling, to pride–as soon as you indulge your temptation, it’s much easier to do it again.

And that is why this verse is such a perfect description of self-control. As long as you haven’t indulged a sin and you haven’t tasted its sweetness, it’s much easier to stave off attacks. You have built up momentum that you need only maintain, so the walls more readily stand firm. But once you give into it, the walls come crumbling down.

Why? The first reason is that you feel less guilty recommitting the sin since you’ve already done it before. For instance, you may have been saving yourself for marriage, so you held off having sex for years. But then one day you mess up and sleep with someone. Now you’re not a virgin anymore, so all that waiting and holding off feels like it doesn’t matter. The gift is gone, so abstinence no longer seems urgent, or even important.

But the second reason that your proverbial walls fall down following that initial sin is that you now yearn to experience that pleasure again. As bitter as its consequences may be, sin is usually very sweet at the time–hence the reason that people keep doing it. So in the same way that I will not crave a dessert I’ve never tasted, it’s easy to resist a sin we’ve never experienced. But once I have a bite of that molten chocolate lava cake, it’s very difficult to resist having another. Very difficult indeed.

In this way, the initial breach of your “wall” is the most crucial point to guard against. Once you allow the behavior into your life, it’s exponentially more difficult to keep it out. After all, it’s much easier to maintain a wall than to completely rebuild one.

So don’t believe the lie that a small sin is no big deal. It may actually be a gateway sin that tears down your walls and leaves you vulnerable to even greater temptations. If, however, you’ve already allowed that initial breach in security to take place, there is still hope. With God’s help you can rebuild that wall, but it requires discipline. You must see sin for what it really is–no matter the size, it is all spiritually fatal. That is why a recovering alcoholic cannot even risk taking a sip. Even the smallest amount is enough to consume us.

When was the last time you heard a sermon on self-control? I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard one. Most of the other fruits of the Spirit get a lot of play–love, joy, peace, patience, godliness–but self-control seems to slide under the radar. For some reason it’s not a common barometer for spiritual growth….which is probably why I stink at it. I seriously can’t go to the mall without buying something, and don’t get me started on the kind of junk food I put in my mouth. If it comes down to me eating one of those chocolate lava cakes at Chili’s, or exercising self-control and holding off, the cake wins every time.

But clearly self-control is important–it is, after all, a symptom of the Holy Spirit at work! What, then, was Paul up to when he listed it in Galatians 5? Why did he feel it was such a strong indicator of one’s spiritual growth?

Well to find out the answer to this question, I looked up the Greek word for self-control. The word is egkrateia, and it is defined as follows: “The virtue of one who masters his desires and passions, especially his sensual appetites.”

According to this definition, self-control is all about which master you serve. Are you a servant of God, or your own desires? Are you a master of your needs, or do your needs master you? At its core, self-control is an issue of idolatry. When examining each area of your life, it asks the piercing question, “Who is your god?”

In this way, self-control isn’t merely about how much you eat or how you spend your money. It’s about the disposition of your heart. And with that in mind, a lack of self-control in one area will usually indicate a lack of self-control in other areas.

For example, if your boyfriend cannot exercise self-control in your physical relationship, then there is no reason to expect that he will exercise self-control in other areas. Even if you do get married and the physical stuff is no longer an issue, the disposition of his heart is still the same, so his lack of self-control may play out in other areas, such as your finances.

If you are a person who serves your desires first, and God second, then no area of your life is safe from such idolatry. For some it can play out it drinking or having sex, for others it can be gluttony or over-dieting, and for others it can be the amount of money you spend on clothes, or the kind of movies you watch. For most of us, it is any number of those things.

We cannot, however, gain self-control by putting out fires. Because self-control is a fruit of the Spirit, then your first step is not to manage your money better, eat healthier, or stop making out with your boyfriend. The first step is to surrender your will to the Holy Spirit. Only then will your self-control be a manifestation of a changed heart, rather than an unsustainable change in lifestyle.

So when it comes to this fruit of the Spirit, take a look at yourself. You may be kind, patient, and faithful, but how are you in the self-control department? I, for one, have a lot of growing to do.

The imagination is a powerful thing. Depending on how you use it, it can result in great good or great harm. This fact has been on my mind a lot lately as I have noticed the ways in which I grossly misuse, or under-use, my imagination. Let me explain what I mean by this….

Imagination is a gift that God has given us, and, when used toward its proper end, can be an amazing asset to the Kingdom of God. Far too often we are limited by our insecurities and doubts, so we do not use our imaginations to their full extent. We do not dream God-sized dreams, and we do not imagine grand visions for His Kingdom. In fact, imagination rarely plays any part in our pursuit of God. Instead, we get stuck in our daily routines of going to Bible study, going to Church, hanging out with our Christian friends, etc.

Imagination is not a practice that we have written into our Christian lives, and you rarely hear people talk about it being a discipline we should hone. But if God gave us an imagination, then we should be using it to glorify Him, rather than wasting it. And just like any gift that God gives, we should use it with skill and with excellence. Our minds should be in overdrive as we go through our days, constantly thinking and praying for vision in the way we live out our faith. When we see that homeless person standing on the side of the street, we should be thinking of creative ways to help the poor in our communities. When your fellow student, co-worker, or neighbor is having a hard time, you should be thinking of original ways to reach out to them in love. Or, we can be formulating new ways to strike up conversations with people about the Gospel. I think the billboard and Gospel tract methods have been slightly exhausted, so new strategies on this front are greatly needed.. The possibilities are endless, but we rarely even scratch the surface.

Now all of this is not to say that we don’t use our imaginations. Ironically, we use them all the time–just not in the way God designed them to be used. For example, girls are notorious for day-dreaming about what their lives would be like if they started dating a certain guy. I myself am guilty of this–just yesterday I was talking to my roommate about the pros and cons of marrying a certain guy, but I’ve never even gone out with him! Even in the middle of the conversation I was struck by the absurdity of it, as well as the potential danger of it. If I desire to guard my heart, then it is a slippery slope when you begin speculating on possibilities that may never come to fruition, especially if that certain guy ends up dating someone else. Then you are left devastated because your dreams have been snatched away.

But dating is not the only way in which our imaginations are misused. You can get carried away thinking about what your life would be like if you could just have kids, a spouse who understood you more, a better job where you made more money, and so on. All of these exercises in the imagination are spiritually deadly because they draw you into feeling discontent with the life that you currently have. What’s more, this kind of imagining allows you to construct a world in which you are the center, and in such a world, God has no part.

It is here that I want to highlight an extremely deceptive way in which imagination can play out. Thus far I have explained that our imaginations should be used for the glory of God and the furthering of His Kingdom, not the furthering of ourselves, but this line is not always black and white. Sometimes we can delude ourselves into thinking that we are dreaming big dreams for God, when those dreams are only masking our own pride. For instance, there is a part of me that would love to write books that lots of people read, books that help transform people into better disciples of Christ. That is a godly desire. But I would be lying if I said it wasn’t also mixed with pride. There is a part of me that wants to have a creative imagination and do great things for God so that people will remember me as having done something great for God. In the end, it’s not so much about God as it is about me. With that in mind, we must be cautious, because even in using our imaginations rightly, sin can still creep in to pervert it.

So if this is an area in which you struggle, I have two tips for you. First, if you notice that your imagination is carrying you away in unedifying ways, come up with a thought you can replace that imagining with. For instance, if you find yourself dreaming about a certain guy, a better job, or an overall different life, divert your thoughts onto praying for your lost friends, or for your family. In this way, you not only stop the unhealthy day-dreaming, but you also take the focus off of yourself. And if you feel that you are not using your imagination in the daily routine of your walk with God, then start praying for God to open your eyes to the ways in which you can break the routine and be creative in your worship of Him. But most of all, go beyond imagining–we must be more than dreamers; we must also be doers. So dream those dreams, but pray for the boldness to live them out as well. Even if you are using your imagination in a healthy way, you are still misusing it if you never live it out. That is ultimately what imagination is for.