As January arrives—ready or not, here it is—we encounter yet
one more holiday tradition: the ever-popular list of New Year’s
Resolutions. It is out with the old year
and in with the new. Likewise, out with
the “old me” and in with the “new me.”
Before determining our resolutions, we must take time to
evaluate where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are going. We identify those things about us and our
lives that we want to change. Then we
are ready to set resolutions to accomplish these changes.
I believe that evaluation can be a good exercise that
promotes healthy growth. The issue is
how and why we go about it and what we do with it. The typical New Year’s resolution process
begins with shame and ends in expectations of self. Guilt is foremost in the process, both as the
result of evaluation and as the means of beating ourselves into meeting
expectations in the future. This is a
good time to ponder two New Testament verses:
Luke
22:31—Jesus saying to Peter: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded
permission to sift you like wheat.”
Rev.
12:10—“Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation, and the
power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come,
for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them
before our God day and night.
Guilt is a favorite weapon of Satan, to be sure. It is guilt that is Satan’s main tool of
accusation. In His words to Peter, Jesus
was referring to Peter’s upcoming denial, one that would certainly heap guilt
and regret upon Peter’s head. “Sifting
like wheat” tells us what guilt does: it separates us like a sifter separates
one type of particle from another. Guilt
keeps us focused on ourselves and convinces us that we are undeserving of love
and company. Guilt encourages us to
hide, from God and from one another.
Sherlock Holmes, in the new interpretation packaged as Elementary, had this to say to his
assistant about guilt:
I am an
expert on poisons, Watson. I know
virtually everything there is
to know about them. But I’ve come to learn over the last few
years that
there is nothing on this planet quite so toxic as guilt.
So, what do we do with our regrets that pop up as we
evaluate ourselves and our recent history?
Once again, Scripture leads us to a much more powerful and much more
effective antidote to our sin than our own efforts at fixing ourselves:
I
John 1:9--If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us
our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Romans
8:1—“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
When our end-of-the-year evaluations bring us to an
encounter with our sin, failures, and shortcomings, we have a choice: we can
wallow in guilt and concoct an elaborate plan to fix ourselves, or we can
confess our sins and trust in the work of Christ to fix us. It is easy to think that it is more spiritual
for us to fix ourselves, to take responsibility for our messes and clean them
up. While I am wholeheartedly in favor
of cleaning up one’s one messes (particularly in my kitchen), the fact of the
matter is that we cannot heal ourselves of our sin nature and our
sinfulness. And in pursuing guilt-driven
fix-myself strategies, we reflect our spiritual ancestor Eve in trying to do
what only God can do.
Reliance on Christ does not lead to a lack of responsibility
or spiritual laziness as we might expect.
Quite counter-intuitively, it leads to a humble dependence on the work
of Christ and the appropriate work of repentance. We take responsibility for our wrongdoing,
confess to our Lord and often those we’ve wronged, and make up for what we’ve
done as far as it is possible. Finally,
we demonstrate our heart’s sorrow at our sin by welcoming the Holy Spirit into
our souls to do the work of exposing and healing the darkness and
brokenness. Change, then, becomes deeply
and eternally real as it expresses God working in us and through us.
Dan Hamilton, one of my favorite authors of Christian
fiction, has written a short story in which Seeker must deal with the guilt and
shame of his past sins that will potentially be revealed by Shadowhawk
(Satan). Friend has taken Seeker into
His temple to deal with Seeker’s sins.
Friend has this to say to Seeker:
“You know what Shadowhawk will do with what
he has collected—see now
what I will do with all that you
surrender to me. Behold your
shadows….You
must either cover them with light or
they will drown you in darkness.”1
So then, as we review and evaluate our lives this past year,
I would encourage us to bring our failings to Christ and end the holiday season
as we began it—with thanksgiving to a great and good God for His work for us,
in us, and through us.
1From The
Inn At The End Of The World, a forthcoming collection of short stories by
the author of The Beggar King
Trilogy. Copyright 2013, Dan
Hamilton. Used by permission.
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