2015 – Page 2 – sheaoakley.com

October 14, 2015shea No Comments

So Who’s Perfect?

Perfection without love is not perfection at all. Human perfectionism is most often a cold, hard thing. It is only concerned with reaching the highest possible level of performance, the highest level that self-effort can achieve. It has everything to do with pride and nothing to do with love.

It is well to remember an aspect of the revealed nature of the One by whom everything is measured. The God of the Bible is described as love. In fact His love for us is declared to be perfect love. He is also known as the giver of grace to His fallen creation. Part of our Lord’s perfection includes the bestowal of unmerited favor, even to those who do not know, or care to know, Him. God’s grace can also be assumed to be perfect as it is an outworking of His nature.

The truth of this, if received, is the greatest source of comfort a human being can ever know. Perfect love implies a love so pure and so strong that it can overcome the deepest darkness we might encounter during our earthly pilgrimage. Perfect grace extends that to include the darkness that dwells in our own souls as well. Whether it is within or without, the evil that once indwelt us as unbelievers cannot the withstand divine perfection now working within our surrendered lives Upon receiving Jesus Christ this perfection is imparted to the new believer. At that moment we become flawless, unblemished in His sight. That reality is then worked out within us over time through the process of sanctification.

Notice that we receive this faultlessness, we do not achieve it. True perfection is only gained by accepting God’s perfection, and that as a gift. Any human attempt to reach this condition autonomously is, by definition, doomed to failure. It is inherently flawed because it is in no way related to the source and embodiment of all that is perfect. If God is not both present in, and master of, the life of a human being that human being remains profoundly flawed and that which is flawed in any way ultimately can never dwell with Him, in this life or the next. The imparted perfection of God, in and though Christ, is ultimately the only way to find what so many profoundly frustrated perfectionists are looking for.

October 6, 2015shea No Comments

The Pain of Light

“The more light we have, the more we shall see our own imperfection.” -J.C. Ryle

Any sincere Christian who has sought over time to draw closer to the Lord has experienced the truth of Ryle’s observation. The closer we come to the light of God, the more that light penetrates into our hearts. What His light often illuminates is a depth of negative attitudes and tendencies that we did not think we could possibly contain. The holiness of God, apprehended by us, uncomfortably reveals our own lack of holiness.

The rooting out of sinful habits of thought and action is a progressive process that continues throughout our lives. In His superintending of this process it appears that God knows just how much self-revelation we can take at one time without falling into complete despair. For instance, if we were suddenly forced to confront the entirety of our remaining leanings towards wickedness in a moment it might be more than we could bear. It might induce such horror that we would be destroyed by it. So God, in His mercy, reveals what we need to be cleansed from only as we become ready to face it. This is part of the nature of sanctification.

So what can believers do when they come to have a new awareness of previously unsuspected strongholds of sin in their lives? Perhaps the first thing we could do is thank God for that awareness. While this process is unpleasant it proves that we are still on the road to Heaven. We would not experience this progressive unveiling of our personal proclivity for certain sins if we were not truly seeking after God and the Holy Spirit was not actively working in our lives to change our hearts into the likeness of Christ. We can also thank Him because now that we see within ourselves what needs to be repented of we are ready to cooperate with the Spirit to be cleansed from this particular unrighteousness, if it is something we are unknowingly practicing.

Progressively convicted Christians can also respond to such a revelation by humbling themselves and coming to understand yet one more reason why they are not in a position to judge others. Sometimes it seems that God reveals our hidden sin just in time, for instance just as we are preparing to harshly judge another human being. If we are willing to receive the truth He is communicating to us we can be saved from judging that person and thus opening ourselves up to being judged. Thus humility is also the potential fruit of being confronted by sinful tendencies in our lives that we did not know we had.

Finally there is the realization of our dependence on God that this process makes possible. We are again reminded that we are truly lost without Him because if He did not reveal the temptations in our lives that we must turn from we could ultimately be ruined by giving in to those tendencies. For this reason we need not inordinately fear the unveiling of our souls by the penetrating light of our Lord. He shows us our remaining imperfections out of love for us. It is like a good surgeon who probes deeper than we might like to make sure he has gotten all of the cancer in our bodies. The surgeon has our best interests in mind and he knows that the pain that is associated with the discovery and removal of more cancer is the necessary byproduct of his effort to rid us of it.

How much more should we expect this from the Great Physician who is also our loving Father?

October 2, 2015shea 4 Comments

God and Emotional Honesty

There is much to be said for a raw emotional honesty before God, however it may manifest itself. Whether we cry out with a broken heart, express deep anger or shout for joy in His presence, the God of the Universe does not begrudge us our emotional outbursts. I believe He would prefer that we engage in an open and genuine discourse with Him rather than display a forced and false outward piety. He knows what is really going on inside of us anyway; we might do well to acknowledge that fact and voluntarily share our deepest feelings with Him. God is not insecure. He can handle seeing what comes out of us at our worst moments as well as our best, even when the pain and anger we express is directed toward Him.

Despite this, many sons and daughters of God are terribly afraid of being “real” in the presence of their Lord. I knew of one man who was so fearful of expressing his anger toward God about great misfortunes in his life that he would physically injure himself instead of confronting the Lord (or anyone else.) The result was not just an injury but a continued emotional paralysis that, at least partially, prevented him from doing anything constructive about the afflictions that made his life so miserable. I believe the primary reason he would not allow himself be openly angry with God was his great dread about how God would respond.

If we look in Scripture, we find many emotional outbursts of various kinds in front of the Lord, often coming from people dear in His sight. Many names come to mind, with David, Job, Jeremiah and Peter among them. Sometimes they may have said the wrong things to Him in wrong ways. They are not severely punished by their Creator and Redeemer. Although they may have suffered intensely emotional experiences, they all continue to be men of great faith to the end of their lives. They also continued to be loved by a God who never stopped blessing them throughout their lives.

It is true that our Lord, a perfect and perfectly loving being, is incapable of acting in a way that legitimately warrants our wrath. So, the Lord never deserves our negative emotions directed toward Him. But, there is a huge difference between willful anger toward God as a continued state of being and an instance of emotional honesty. The latter can open the door to a cathartic release, repentance, and renewed relationship with God. More than once in my own life I found that after I “had it out” with God, I came to a new place of love for and appreciation for who He is and how He continues to lavish abundant and unmerited grace and love on me.

The Bible tells us that the One in whom we have placed our faith desires “truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6). It may be that such truth cannot continue to exist if something deep within us remains un-confessed by a refusal to bare our emotional selves to Him. Could it be that stuffing our feelings may damage our innermost being? I think so. At the very least, a lack of emotional intimacy with God thwarts our spiritual growth and sanctification. It seems much better, on all counts, that we outwardly express to God what is going on within our hearts.

September 11, 2015shea No Comments

God’s Love and Our Best

Love, by definition, desires the best for its object. In the Scriptures we are told that God is love. Only the ultimate, perfect love issuing forth from the heart of God is powerful enough to fully actualize that best; both for and in us.

Every human being is fallen. We are all in need of complete transformation from the inside out to change us from the profoundly darkened creatures we have become to the perfected children of the most high we will be. Human love, no matter how intense and long-lasting, does not have the transformative power necessary to achieve this in us. While it is true that God can use our love for one another to further our metamorphosis into beings who more fully reflect His likeness this “horizontal love” cannot be a substitute for the “Vertical Love” that comes directly from the Father through the Son.

The problem with affection between persons is that it is never completely without self-interest and is always prone to variation. Our Lord is not susceptible to either of these imperfections. He is an inexhaustible source of selfless and constant love because he completely embodies love itself, and He is perfect as well as all-powerful in all His attributes.

Our Creator wants the best for us above all others because He loves us above all others. With his will wedded to His power it becomes possible for us to receive that best. We who belong to Him are literally being loved into the greatest possible thing we could ever hope to become, a being completely remade in the full image of God.

If we could just grasp the reality of this truth we could cease our striving to be “lovable enough” to God, other people and ourselves. To be the focus of divine love, and to know it, is to be set free from looking for love “in all the wrong places”. We can allow ourselves to be loved by the one Person whose care and affection for us is unconditional and sufficient for every circumstance we face, no matter how difficult it might appear. God’s love trumps every obstacle we face in life if we understand and receive it as it is given: in the perfect power of the divine.

Because God is love, and because we are the apple of His eye, those of us who bear the name “Christian” can fully trust that the best possible outcome for our individual existence is assured. This is the legacy the Lover of our souls will bequeath us on that day when our relationship is consummated in full and final union with His Christ. It is the best thing that we could ever hope for. In fact it is better even than that because His best for us is beyond what we could ever dream or imagine.

September 4, 2015shea 2 Comments

Fighting the Real Threat to Family Values

About 10 years ago a prominent Evangelical leader made a statement that was long overdue. He told his audience that the biggest threat to the family today is not homosexuality but divorce. In the midst of our resistance to the growing acceptance of the gay lifestyle we have ignored a much greater danger. As the Evangelical divorce rate in America has soared in recent years many churches have failed to recognize the more urgent priority of reinforcing marriages.

According to the latest polls the percentage of Christian marriages ending in divorce is around 50%. It is important to note that these polls also include second marriages ending, so they are not indicative of the failure rate of first marriages alone. The numbers would be considerably lower Vis a Vis the secular statistics if only first marriages were included. The rate for Evangelicals would then be closer to 25%. But even these lower numbers leave us with the sobering realization that far too many Christian families are being torn apart.

The most tragic result of divorce is its effect on children. Studies have shown that children who come from broken homes are more likely to suffer depression, anxiety and learning disorders. They also tend to be more prone to engaging in drinking, drug use and illicit sex. The alienation and despair that is increasingly common among adolescents shadows the increase in divorces. The bottom line is that we are badly damaging our kids insuring, among other things, that their own attempts to bond in life-long unions will likely be even more problematic than our own.

With just the stark evidence of what failed marriages produce in our children alone one might think that churches would be doing everything in their power to insure that Christian unions survive. No doubt some are and for that they should be commended and emulated, but unfortunately what seems to be happening instead in too much of the Evangelical subculture is a growing tolerance of divorce. The stigma of a failed marriage is no longer as powerful a deterrent as it was in years past. These days’ marriages ending among Christians, is more often labeled “tragic” than sinful. Such a value-neutral term seems a bit dissembling for a people whose God clearly states that He hates divorce.

It should never be an easy thing for a believing couple to jointly dissolve a union whose foundation rests on vows they have made to one another before God. To start with the Church needs to support the few recent secular legal initiatives designed to make it more difficult to divorce. Pre-marital counseling should be vigorous, in depth, and occur over a longer period of time then is sometimes the case today. Divorce outside the scriptural guidelines regarding unrepentant adultery or abandonment by an unbelieving spouse should be strongly and unapologetically spoken against from the pulpit and not just occasionally. Finally husbands and wives who plan to ignore pastoral counsel and end their marriages for un-biblical reasons should know beforehand that their church will biblically discipline them if they choose to sin in this way.

If this sounds overly stern to some ears it should be remembered that for most of the history of Christianity divorce has been very strongly discouraged. Its one thing to single-out already divorced people for special censure and another to do every thing possible to discourage them from becoming divorcees in the first place. For centuries there was a healthy fear of both the spiritual and temporal consequences of ending a marriage. The fact is that the advent of a higher tolerance for divorce during recent years is not a sign of a progressive church but a regressive one. We might do well to remember that 2000 years ago Jesus Christ Himself roundly condemned a religion that had made divorce easy to justify and obtain. That fact alone should give pause to many a married believer considering his or her options.

September 3, 2015shea 2 Comments

The Pain of Avoidance

Experiencing pain is hard, but the result of avoiding pain is much harder. The pain I speak of is necessary pain. This is the discomfort involved in confronting that within us which is both the result of what we have done to others and the result of what has been done to us. It is the pain that precedes repentance and it is the pain that precedes healing Allowing ourselves to experience both kinds are unavoidable if we hope to live an authentic Christian life.

But avoid them we do.

I’ve never known a true masochist, an individual who consciously derives pleasure from pain. Most of us are all about avoiding it. God does not begrudge us that desire in and of itself. The myriad aches we today experience as human beings were not part of the original plan. Adam and Eve knew no pain in Eden until the moment they choose to disobey the only demand their Creator gave them, to not eat of the Tree of Good and Evil. Pain was, and is, the necessary consequence of our rebellion against a just God. We need not have experienced it as a race had we had remained obedient to the One who deserved no disobedience from us. That we do know pain in this life is the greatest evidence that the biblical account of the Fall is true.

God takes no pleasure in misery for its own sake. If He did He would be a cosmic sadist and the God of the cross could not possibly be that. He looks at the afflictions of humankind as the necessary result of transgression against him, but he does not enjoy it. If He did Jesus would never have been sent to us.

So all of the sons and daughters of Adam must know pain in this world. It is part of a just curse upon a fallen race. However, for the blood-bought son or daughter of God, pain has a particular role to play. This role is two-fold, to show us our need for healing and to show us our need for Godly sorrow over what we have done to cause others to need healing. Without this kind of pain we would forever remain wounded and wounding. Without it we would not know something is terribly wrong in our souls.

Physically it is better to feel the agony of a second-degree burn than the numbness of a third-degree burn. Why? Because the pain of the former indicates that the affected nerves and tissues are still capable of healing, the lack of feeling in the latter means that both nerve and tissue have been completely destroyed. Pain is nature’s (and by extension God’s) way of sounding the alarm that something is not as it should or could be. It tells us we need to do something about a problem.

Whether that problem stems from what we have done, or what has been done to us, pain is often what brings it to our attention. But we have an option when such a feeling begins to make itself known. We can choose the path of avoidance.

Every mood-altering substance, action or possession known to human beings is potentially an enabler for such avoidance. Alcohol, sex and money are respective examples of each. Drunkenness, promiscuity and compulsive shopping are all pain-avoiders. All seem to promise an easy alternative to experiencing the hurt that is endemic to our existence. This is a cruel illusion. Most of those who do not know God will, to one degree or another, take this route. It is, for them, a dead-end. The pain they avoid is exchanged for greater pain latter on, compounded by the sinful activity’s destructive effects on their bodies and souls.

Those who know God can choose this route as well; and I daresay that every Christian has chosen to detour down it at some point. We are not immune to the siren-call of avoidant behavior either. But in the power of the Spirit living within us we can choose to go another way. We can embrace our pain and ask God to use our experience of that pain to change us for the better. When we do this in sincerity He will honor our willingness to trust Him and the pain we then enter into and endure will be profoundly redemptive. It will result in the purification and growth of our hearts and prepare us for the Godly joys God wants all his children to know, the greatest of which is a deeper intimacy with Him.

When pain seems unavoidable it probably is. Our best reaction is to accept it after asking our Lord to use it to bring about His loving plan for our lives. Learning to react to pain in this way is one of the most important lessons of the Christian life. It is not easily accepted, and we should not expect it to be so, but once we have learned this lesson we will ultimately be taken beyond the hurt we experience to a place of blessing that will make that hurt pale by comparison.

Then the pain will have been worth it beyond what we ever could have imagined.

August 20, 2015 No Comments

The Answer to Anger with God…

It is vitally important for struggling Christians to know that if they feel anger towards God in the midst of great pain God will not destroy them for it. But it is equally important for them to finally go beyond that anger and come to the point of realizing that He has the right to allow, or even cause, their pain for His own good purposes. Eventual repentance from anger against our Creator is necessary and part of that repentance must be grounded in this simple but profound fact: He is God, we are not.

This was the lot of Job. From a purely human perspective no one in the Bible had more right to be angry at God than he. By God’s own reckoning Job was a righteous man, yet God allowed Satan to destroy everything he held dear and then go on to deeply afflict him physically. Job had no idea why this was happening to him and after his initial “though He slays me yet will I trust Him” period at the beginning of the book he begins to become angry, and this is not lost on his “comforters.” In verse 15:13, for example, Eliphaz says to Job, “Why do your eyes flash, so that you vent your rage against God and pour out such words from your mouth?” In verse 18:4 Bildad calls Job “You who tear yourself to pieces in your anger.” By this point in the narrative, both by their words and his own, we can have no doubt that Job is angry and his anger has a Target. In fact Job is not only angry towards God. He goes so far as to accuse Him of wrongdoing.

In all this the Lord never sends down a lightening bolt to smite him from the Earth. Why? Perhaps it is because God still loves Job despite what He has allowed Satan to do to him as well as how Job has reacted to it. Since God is unchanging we can be confident that we latter-day Job’s do not forfeit His love when we are upset with Him either.

But it is important to remember that Job does not stay angry with God indefinitely. Yahweh’s response to Job’s anger and accusation is to finally reveal Himself in all His holiness and sovereign power. This encounter completely overwhelms Job and absolutely convinces him that God is God and he is not. He repents in dust and ashes and God, Who has both proven His point to Job as well as won the Devil’s cosmic wager, restores Job completely.

Job is not the only biblical hero who has times of antagonism with his Lord, David and Jeremiah both come to mind. Despite what some timid or legalistic believers may tell you anger with God is not the unforgivable sin. In fact it seems reasonable to assume that God would rather deal with honest anger from His children than hypocritical piety towards Him when anger is what truly dwells in that child’s heart.

Still, anger long held against God is destructive to our relationship with Him and cannot be countenanced forever. Unchecked it leads to bitterness and alienation from the Lover of our souls. It is vital that we learn the same lesson that Job did, and one more thing. We must come to both know and accept that we have no final justification in accusing God of treating us wrongly because He is intrinsically incapable of treating anyone wrongly. By His very nature God is God and therefore rightly sovereign over our lives and circumstances, but beyond that God is also good and he takes no pleasure in our afflictions. In fact such afflictions always have a redemptive purpose in the lives of his people. It is only through learning these definitive truths that we can come to our spiritual senses and turn from anger that has no legitimate grounds, no matter how much we feel it does.

When we do we will know the abundant blessings that are the fruit of reconciliation to the One Who took the ultimate initiative to be reconciled to us…by bleeding and dying on a cross 2000 years ago.

August 14, 2015 No Comments

Adversity, Comfort and Manipulation

I have recently recognized a disturbing tendency I have to sometimes use a type of wrong personal reaction to circumstantial adversity to elicit excessive sympathy from those from whom I want it. This most often tends to manifest itself in the way I react to physical pain or emotional tension. There was a time in my life, not so very long ago, when I would bear both of these things with more of the “stiff upper lip” for which the English have famously, and probably stereotypically, been noted (disclaimer: I am not English.) My tendency at that time was to not take advantage of my pain or tension to subtly, or not so subtly, manipulate people into treating me as I wanted to be treated. For some reason this has, at times, no longer been the case in my life in recent years.

I believe that every human being desires to be comforted during times of trial and tribulation and I do not think that the God of the cross considers this to be a sinful desire. Actually it is often this very desire which, when it becomes acute enough, plays a major role in drawing people towards that cross and salvation. Once we do become children of God we learn that He is the source of real comfort, that He is in fact “the God of all comfort.” That God loves to comfort his own in their distress is a thoroughly biblical presumption.

It is also no doubt true that His comfort often comes through people, and should we expect it to be otherwise when we are called to be the hands and the feet of Christ on earth? God does sometimes comfort us with a direct touch from Heaven, but it seems that far more often this touch comes from our fellow believers (and sometimes even from non-believers who are people of good will through the common grace that the creator gives to all of us, whether we know Him or not.) There is nothing wrong with the idea of finding comfort in those who care for us.

The problem comes when our desire for comfort in distress becomes excessive and manipulative. If, for instance, I use a physical ache or a bad mood to try to force my wife to feel sorry for me, drop everything she is engaged in, and treat me more like a doting mother than my life-partner and friend then I might be going over the line. It is not that we do not legitimately need this at times from a spouse or friend, but if it is frequent and becomes some kind of a substitute for learning to bear with daily adversity then we are shirking one of the responsibilities of our sanctification as believers.

The bottom line is that God, as any good father would, expects us to sometimes carry our share of worldly distress on our own. He wants us to count on the character he has progressively given us to carry on without manipulative complaint until we come though whatever the distress is to the other side. This is, in a sense, simply a part of what the world calls “growing up.” It is one thing for a five year old to run to his mother when he has cut himself or been bullied by someone. It is quite another for a forty year old man to run to his wife for the same reason and in the same spirit.

So I apparently have more growing up to do than I thought necessary at this point in my life. I do not mind admitting that it is a bit disturbing to come to this realization, but as with all circumstances in our pilgrimage through this world the truth can set us (and me) free.

August 7, 2015 No Comments

A Lie of the Soul…

A sense of superiority over others is a lie of the soul. It is part of fallen human nature to think ourselves better than many if not most of our fellows. We see the failings of the people we share our lives with and almost automatically judge them as wanting while either consciously or unconsciously forgetting our own faults. We walk in pride in this life almost as easily as we breathe.

Salvation opens our eyes to this dark part of our character but salvation does not banish it. What we are often left with initially is a terrible realization of just how bad we really are in regards to thinking ourselves better than those around us. Having one’s spiritual eyes opened can be a frightening thing for just this reason. What once seemed acceptable, or not even thought about, suddenly is recognized as sin and there appears to be no “silver bullet” that will kill that sin off within us. This is because there isn’t one. Only the work of the Holy Spirit can alter this basic aspect of who we are in the flesh; and His work is the work of a lifetime. Sanctification is an ongoing process in which we crucify our personal sin with His help. Our tendency to judge others is often one of the first things we are convicted of in this sanctification because pride is at the base of all other transgressions.

Some will object at this point and raise the issue of individuals with “poor self-esteem.” Whatever poor self-esteem may be one thing it is not is a guarantee that a person so afflicted will be truly humble. Most of us have known (or been) someone who has struggled with personal worth while simultaneously thinking themselves better than others. Some of the most insecure personalities throughout human history have also been the most prejudiced. Since the fall of Adam no one has lived a life utterly free from a superiority complex with the exception of Jesus Christ, ironically the one man who had a legitimate right to such a sense of superiority. No, this complex is present in all men and women. It is simply a matter of degree.

The Bible tells us to think of others as better than ourselves. To do so consistently is the ultimate goal for this aspect of a believer’s maturation. How do we accomplish it on a practical level? Perhaps the first step is to acknowledge our inability to accomplish anything in the power of our flesh. First we must specifically petition the Spirit to enable our transformation in this area. Asking His help is, in fact, basic to our victory over any kind of sin but it seems especially true in regards to the sin of pride. Next we have to remain consciously aware of our bent in this direction once our eyes have been initially opened to its presence. Anytime we experience a sense of moral superiority over someone else we must be ready to resist it. In addition to internally renouncing our conceit we have to remind ourselves why we are doing the renouncing, because in the eyes of a holy God we are as flawed in our own way as they are in there’s. Even Christians are never far from gross sin except by the grace of God. Further Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that our thought life can be sinful even when our external actions are not. Realizing these two truths can go a long way towards humbling us in regards to the faults of others.

Another action that can help is to look at the best qualities of each human being we encounter instead of the worst. This might not be easy at the beginning, especially if we have a tendency to see the glass as half empty rather than half full. A habitually negative frame of mind can be difficult to overcome, whether it is negative towards ourselves or others. Again, the answer is to rely on the empowerment of the Spirit over time. When we learn to seek out the best in others we will begin to see them as precious persons, created in the image of God, who have great potential for good. We might also start to see where they have admirable traits that we do not, as yet, possess. It is good for our growth in humility to gain this perspective. It gives us something else to shoot for in our own Christian life.

By facing the truth about ourselves, and practicing these methods with the potent help of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome our arrogance and come to love and esteem those persons who we once disdained. In doing so we will please our Father; and continue to be transformed into the image of His beloved Son. The power of this lie of the soul will be broken in our lives and we will be free to leave the judging of people to God alone.

July 30, 2015 1 Comment

Anxiety and the Myth of Personal Autonomy

One of the causes of anxiety in life is the erroneous belief that we must do everything that is required of us on our own, without outside help. We find ourselves feeling overwhelmed when this conscious or unconscious mindset possesses us. Whenever a mountain must be climbed, but the face of it appears too shear to do so, anxiety is ready to make its presence known. This is a universal human experience and few believers are automatically delivered from it as an immediate result of conversion.

The tendency to feel like we must face our challenges alone is particularly common in the present-day West. This is because our culture’s emphasis on personal autonomy and power has created a zeitgeist that not only says we can overcome all obstacles in our own strength, but expects us to. The myth of the rugged individualist is very much operative today, especially in America, and those our society holds up as heroes are usually those who have bought into this myth. The result is a lack of understanding about human limitations and a tendency to look down on those who acknowledge these limitations. We are expected to succeed in this life as if we can do this without help. This expectation has undoubtedly added to what has literally been called “The Age of Anxiety.”

But human beings are dependent creatures. This is explicit not only in the pages of the Bible, but also in the realm of natural reason. Just as we know that our physical existence is sustainable only by the intake of food and water that comes from outside of us so, also, it stands to reason that our emotional and spiritual health is dependent on that which comes from outside. Angry hermits may well be able to physically endure their self-chosen isolation, but they pay a terrible price for it. Their spirits die. Ted Kaczynski, the notorious “Unabomber” of recent American history was an effective hermit for decades. What he was not was sane. In cutting himself off from people he began the long descent into madness and, ultimately, to behavior not only destructive to himself but to others.

No man is an island, or at least no man can be an island and avoid dire consequences for his soul. Christians are called to acknowledge this reality, a reality that reveals to us just how desperately we need help to climb the mountains of life and, at the same time, directs us where to look for that help.

The categorical imperative of the Christian life is that we must seek help from two places: directly from God Himself and through His people; very much in that order. To live as a Christian is to daily depend on both sources to give true life and to enable the meeting of the myriad challenges of existence in a terribly fallen world. Our spirits only thrive when we embrace our absolute need for relationship with our Lord and with our brothers and sisters in Him.

As we progressively accept this need, surrendering both our false sense of independence and our confidence in any ability to overcome purely on our own, we can begin to lose our anxieties and replace them with real peace in the face of adversity. The level of anxiety we continue to feel informs us to what degree we have grown in our recognition and acceptance of our requirement for the support of God and our brethren. It is a bellwether for our progress in both spiritual wholeness and health because, in the end, we are called to live not only for others, but from others.