Empathy requires that we step outside ourselves. Empathy requires a level of selflessness that may be a hard reach for some. Once again, Jesus would be our example, who gave up His right to be God in order to be a human being. Jesus was in our shoes the whole time because He shed His God-shoes when He was born in Bethlehem (Philippians 2:5-8).
Now back to John on the couch with the Chihuahuas. Those of you who missed the events of last week, Marti and I have had the inside of our house painted. After a week of chaos, I moved Marti to a motel 45 minutes away while I stayed in the house, sleeping on the couch with the dogs and the mess.
“In 1971, at the age of 19, I discovered I was pregnant. Total panic set in. This problem had to be taken care of, I told myself. It had to go away. My first and only thought was of my parents and their reaction. They must never find out. I knew that they would disown me.”
So Marti has got me sleeping on the couch. But it’s not what you think. This is not a marital problem, it’s a marital necessity.
On Saturday, the American colonies declared themselves free and independent states, but were they free and independent? No. Not until five years later at the last battle of the revolution in Yorktown, Pennsylvania, did they achieve that independence, which was made official two years later in the Treaty of Paris.
But the fruit of the Spirit is …
love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness and
self-control.
Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)
It was the beginning of the end for Jesus. He was at the peak of His popularity. Crowds were building wherever He went. Many had been touched and healed by Jesus. The crippled were walking, the blind could see, the deaf could hear, and lepers had been pronounced clean by temple priests. You couldn’t beat that kind of publicity. Everything was building toward the Passover celebration.
When you follow the desires if your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results … [and among a grocery list of evil things is this:] the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group. (Galatians 5:19-20)
This one jumped out at me. I could not avoid it or get it out of my mind. “The feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group.” This is obviously not a direct translation, but it is found in two popular paraphrases of the New Testament that gives it credibility as to the meaning of the original. Other translations use words like “factions” and “party-spirit.” Either way, it is an evil that is rampant today where the power of party lines is so great. The tendency to demonize all who disagree with you and your camp is a powerful rendering of self-righteousness, although we would not call it that. We would quite simply be right and everyone else, wrong. It’s an easy way to manage a chaotic world, except it is not true. Not one of us is free of sin.
These are trying times. They are stressful times. They are times of uncertainty. There is nothing new about that. We’ve all been through times like this, but there is something different this time — something sinister.
So we’ve been through all twelve steps; what do we do now? Go through them again.
Did you ever wonder why the steps are all in the past tense? (We admitted … Came to believe … Made a decision … Were entirely ready … etc.) I did. I wondered about it a lot until just now, because just now I finally got it. The steps are in the past tense because that’s the way most everyone will experience them most of the time. You’ll be doing them again much more than you will be doing them. Doing them is one thing. But doing them again, and again, and again, is what it’s all about. So we remind ourselves of what we did, and in reminding ourselves, we do them again. It makes perfect sense.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The world is populated with friends. This is because we are all sinners, and most people, deep down in their spiritual sensibilities, know this. So if we think of the Twelve Steps as applying to sinners instead of just alcoholics, then the whole world is a potential AA meeting, or in this case, it would be an SA meeting: Sinners Anonymous.
