Ideal verses reality: In the world of “best case scenario” you can have a discussion about how to handle any given situation. The scenario never really accounts for all the variables that life throws into those scenarios and it’s those variables that are the challenge in most cases.
We talk about character and making the right choices and setting up a framework to persist in the joy of continued right choices… and everyone lived happily ever after… but as the book points out, we are trained up in a world familiar with wrong and evil and sometimes embedded beliefs put our choices on autopilot.
Embedded beliefs: values held so deep down inside of us that we are unable to express them until we come across someone else whose embedded beliefs are quite different than our own. One of my embedded beliefs that has run into conflict with people is personal responsibility. I was never raised with any idea that some external source was going to ever come bail me out or guilt me into something that another wanted me to do. In my ministry life I have seen so many who live in the very opposite of that and even feel the Pastor’s job is to manipulate, hound, coerce, chase after, etc, etc, etc… I’m a firm believer that the Holy Spirit is the one people need to follow and I really have no interest in following people around and being the Holy Spirit for them. An individual’s growth raises and falls mostly on the effort any of us put into it. While we have some reasonable ways we can help each other, in the end, each of us will stand before the Lord alone and give an answer for ourselves.
All of that to speak about how many of our choices can be on autopilot based on values we hold so deep inside of us they are almost inexpressible, thus the verse “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. There is something about the natural person inside of us that is inclined to the wrong thing, so we see contrast that Paul speaks of as the “mind set on flesh which is death and the mind set on the Spirit which is life and peace.” Romans 8:5-7.
What’s really needed here is an acknowledgement of this dilemma that is part of this journey for us. It’s the awareness that we need to be retrained in certain situations to honor God’s way when we are tempted to run it the way in which we are all too familiar. To receive God’s grace when the old way rushes in and do see His bright smile when we begin to take those steps to walk it out His way.
What makes this an individual journey is that all of us have a very different set of embedded beliefs. What makes it common for us as a group is that we all have this struggle to get past our past, temptations, inclinations and press into having the “mind of Christ.” Prayerfully we’ll have as much grace and encouragement for each other as Christ has for us.
Truth, Grace, and Time 