It seemed funny at the time. I laughed. Then I saw the tears.

I don't remember what she said; I don't remember what I said. I didn't write all that down. But I do remember the laughter; I do remember the tears. And what I did write down was a vow I hope to remember until the Lord comes: I don't ever want to laugh in such a way that it makes another person cry.

Another vow from my little book of quotes triggers a similarly painful memory: I don't want to say anything in a person's absence that I wouldn't say in their presence. That one burned its way into my soul in New Zealand several years ago while I was doing a circuit of workers meetings with the conference ministerial director. One day as we talked about the work of the church, I was explaining to my colleague in ministry why I felt the principle of no backbiting was so important. And then I remembered what I had said about a certain church leader just moments before. The juxtaposition was so jarring, and I was so chagrined, that I had no choice but to repent and apologize on the spot.

Typically, I don't think I'm inclined to be deliberately malicious. Yet my natural impulsiveness has left more than a little wreckage along the way. And as I tell my students, it makes no difference whether I run over you by mistake or on purpose, you're just as dead.

To be sure, any human court judges us more rigorously for destructive acts which are deliberate and premeditated. But the results are still deadly if an engineer makes an innocent mistake in computing the stress on a bridge or if a surgeon forgets to complete an important procedure.

In the moral realm, however, I am beginningto think that God may be more concerned about those momentary lapses when I forget my vows and ideals than he is about my more obvious and public flaws. Do those moments of forgetfulness open to view the troublesome impulses which I have desperately tried to hide? Do they reveal my attempts to practice my piety before others in order to be seen by them (Matt 6:1)?

We're in good company, though, even among Bible writers. The apostle Paul was perhaps the most candid in this respect, admitting that he all too easily failed to do the good he intended while living out the evil he wanted to avoid (Rom 7:19).

If we press just a bit deeper into the closet, we will discover that our outsized egos are quite capable of more subtle variants of the same disease. As Augustine (d. 430) put it: The same good qualities which please me when I possess them please me even more when they also please someone else (Confessions, X.xxxvii, 61). Augustine was appalled by the discovery. So was C. S. Lewis when he found himself gazing inward shortly after his conversion. On Jan. 30, 1930, he wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves: I have found out ludicrous and terrible things about my own character. Sitting by, watching the rising thoughts to break their necks as they pop up, one learns to know the sort of thoughts that do come. And, will you believe it, one out ofevery three is a thought of self-admiration: when everything else fails, having had its neck broken, up comes the thought ,What an admirable fellow I am to have broken their necks! When you force yourself to stop it, you admire yourself for doing that. It's like fighting the hydra. There seems to be no end to it. Depth under depth of self-love and self-admiration (from Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography, 105-106).

So how do believers survive in the light of such unhappy discoveries, such embarrassing failures in godly living?

What often helps to keep up my spirits is the privilege of slipping in the back door, so to speak, with others who have the same malady. It's the spiritual equivalent, I suppose, of misery loves company. If Paul admitted the disease and cringed in so doing, other biblical characters show that they have it too but sometimes don't even seem to know that they are sick.

Two prayers in the Old Testament are especially revealing in that respect. In Jeremiah 18:19-23, for example, the prophet pleads with the Lord to banish his enemies. His prayer is especially vivid in the Contemporary English Version: Please, Lord, answer my prayer. Make my enemies stop accusing me of evil. I tried to help them, but they are paying me back by digging a pit to trap me. I even begged you not to punish them. But now I am asking you to let their children starve or be killed in war. Let women lose their husbands and sons to disease and violence. These people have dug pits and set traps for me, Lord. Make them scream in fear when you send enemy troops to attack their homes. You know they plan to kill me. So get angry and punish them! Don't ever forgive their terrible crimes.

What intrigues me about this prayer is the way Jeremiah claims to have started out on the high road. He tried to help these evil men and even begged the Lord not to punish them. But then something snapped and hell broke loose in his soul.

A similar prayer is found in Psalm 35. It's not as violent, but still revealing. The psalmist opens with a call, not just for deliverance, but also for vengeance. He pleads with God to wield the spear and javelin, to shame and dishonor his enemies. Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the Lord pursuing them (Ps 35:3, 4, 6, NRSV).But a moment of reflection breaks into the middle of the psalm. After noting that the enemies have repaid him evil for good, the psalmist describes the high road which he had been able to travel for a while: But as for me, when they were sick, I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting. I prayed with head bowed on my bosom, as though I grieved for a friend or a brother; I went about as one who laments for a mother, bowed down and in mourning (verses 12-14).

What good did all that sympathy do? Not a lot: At my stumbling they gathered in glee, they gathered together against me; ruffians whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing (verse 16).

So back to vengeance. Let the enemies be put to shame and confusion, exclaims the psalmist. Clothe them with shame and dishonor (verse 26).

Those who follow Jesus will remember his commands to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, and love your enemies (Matt 5:39, 41, 44; Luke 6:27, 29). They will remember his prayer for his enemies as he hung on the cross, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do� (Luke 23:34). And they will sense the great gulf that is fixed between him and them. And between him and us.

But by God's grace we will be able to glimpse God's purpose in publishing prayers that aren't quite so nice. For we, too, like Jeremiah, like the Psalmist, may be able to sustain our good intentions and our laudable actions for a while.

But what happens when we crack?

We can know that we aren't alone. We can know that God will help us rescue our ideals fromthe shattered remnants of our good intentions. And while we are growing in grace, those of us who follow Jesus can revel in that powerful truth penned by the apostle Paul after he had laid out his anguish in Romans 7: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1, NRSV).

In short, sometimes I can be Christlike only for a while. But when I fall, I am still his child. That knowledge keeps alive the flicker of hope that the day will come when I will never again laugh in such a way that it makes another person cry.

 

(Vol. 13, Issue 1, pp.11,15)