The more I read in Authentic Beauty the more insight I gain and the more I start to think in a spiritual way. Today something particular stood out to me that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since I read it. In a chapter dealing with how to overcome the temptation to Sin and stop yourself from even thinking in a way that isn't Christlike, I came across my new favorite Symbolism. Under the heading "Creating Solid Boundary Lines" this example was given:
"Actress Portia Nelson captured her life story using just a few brief sentences in her famous poem "Autobiography in Five Short Chapters". In the first chapter, she is walking down the street and falls into a deep hole in the sidewalk. "It takes forever to find a way out," she says. In the next chapter, she walks down the same street, pretending she doesn't see the hole. She falls in again, and again struggles to get out. Eventually, she walks down the same street, managing to go around the hole. But the complete fifth chapter tells her ultimate solution: "I walk down another street."
I make it my personal goal to "walk down the other street" from now on. Before I let Sin and Temptation crawl out of that hole and pull me by the ankles as I walk by, I much prefer to take another street entirely. I realize the other street might not always be more convenient or easier, but I know one thing for sure, I would much rather take the winding, lengthy street with no hole and not risk hurting my Savior and falling.
That was a passage I liked very much, too! I gave the example in my Bible group and someone said, that this can't be the solution always.
ReplyDeleteHe said we can't go totally out of this world just to avoid temptaion. As we can't control what our sourroundings come up with, it is important that we are changed INSIDE so that something that comes up wouldn't be a trigger.
As I thought that was a good point I had to nibble on that for a while and I came to the conclusion, that I (personally) need both. As soon as I detect a trigger and I find me not able to "put the alarm off" immediately, I rather take "the other road". At the same time I start asking God to change me inside. This is a hard and tearful work because I don't always have to "go the road" actually just to know what would happen. Sometimes it's enough to only imagine to "walk the dangerous road" and I know exactly what would happen... does this sound weird?
I remember our favorite character David, who had that "women trigger" - you know what I mean? But read 1 King 1:1-4 (King James Version) and know that "he knew her not" is an expression for "he did not sleep with her". See the point? In 2 Samuel 11 David only sees a woman and it had a bad end but after that and Psalm 51 he wasn't the same any longer. At the end of his life they gave him the most beautiful young lady to lay in his bed and he didn't even touch her! He could not have taken the other road because he was too old to run away. But he was changed from the inside and so it wasn't a trigger any longer.