Another Day In the Trenches

I finished my second pair of socks I was working on when I last wrote. They turned out to be the perfect size. Now I am working on my self-striping yarn (Felici Paradise from KnitPicks) for my third pair. I have one sock knitted to after the "heel turn" and it's now on holders while I work on the other sock of the pair. I will knit on this one until I'm ready to close with the Kitchener stitch and then I will go back and pick up the first one where I left off and knit it to to the closing of the toe also and then I will close both toes and I'll have my third pair done. Funny that they are all different sizes when I'm doing everything I can to make them all one size. I even knit a swatch with the Felici yarn and I'm using the needles the gauge called for and they appear smaller than the last pair that I used a smaller needle on. Go figure!!! It's frustrating! Now all I have to do is worry that this pair is too small. Seems like I've got to worry about something or I'm just not happy. Whine, whine, whine. Sorry.

We are working our way through the book Life's Healing Choices by John Baker. The material is good but there's one thing I don't like about the book and the step study that goes with the book and sermon is that it ends up labeling everybody a "recovering" something-or-other. Recovering codependent, recovering alcoholic, recovering sex addict, recovering over eater and on and on. I don't believe that we are all "recovering." I believe that most of us are "recovered" (past tense) something-or-others. When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior everything in our past becomes out-dated. It's all past tense. It's history! God is good and faithful to forgive us our sins and put them as far away from us as east is to west. I'm not a recovering sex addict, or gossiper, or over eater. I am recovered from those sins. If we still live in its reality then we have not yet understood God's all-encompassing grace and it is a spiritual matter not a psychological one. And that's precisely what this study does. It deals with all our faults on a psychological level. Under God's grace there are only two states of being: unforgiven and forgiven. If we are forgiven then we have been set free and rest in God's love. If we are unforgiven then the one and only thing we need is God's forgiveness. Baker's book asks its readers to take a "moral inventory" and write it all down for as far back as can be remembered. What??? I ask again, What in the world is he thinking? He's asking all "recovering" Christians (and remember all Christians are recovering something-or-others to his thinking) to go back to the beginning and dredge up all the pain, all the sin, and all the errors in our pasts and deal with them. But, excuse me if I'm wrong, I thought God had already dealt with all my past sins and pains. If I am still living in the reality of all that error and guilt and sadness then it will do no good whatsoever to dredge them up all over again. It is a spiritual misunderstanding. I have not yet fully understood God's eternal, everlasting, all-encompassing, totally unmerited grace. The answer is a spiritual one. Dive into God's word and don't come up for air until you have fully and completely learned that God's forgiveness is free (that's the unmerited part) and absolutely complete (that's the everlasting and eternal part). God has already forgiven my past. I don't need to rake all this muck into my life today and "deal with it." God already dealt with it in His Son, Jesus Christ. It's like having a splinter in my foot. I take my foot and splinter to God and He removes the splinter. Problem solved. I don't need to find that splinter again and shove it back into my flesh so I can ask God to extract it again. Once God deals with the splinter I will never again need to feel the pain of that splinter. And if I do? Then I have a spiritual illness that can only be cured with and by Jesus Christ. There's no illness so great that getting alone with Jesus Christ will not cure.

And then there's the part of the program that has you verbally share your "moral inventory" with a fellow believer. That's like saying, "I'll take this sliver and shove it into somebody else's flesh." I strongly disagree with this step. This step takes you into a self pity party where you moan and groan and make someone else feel miserable. The only Person who needs to know these things is God. And if you're truly a Christian you've already told Him these things in your confession. And He's already forgiven you. You don't need to ask for His forgiveness again and again and again. Especially not through another human person. If we are God's children then we are already forgiven for every sin we ever committed or will ever commit. And that's the reality we need to live in. God's grace. His forgiveness. And if we don't live in that reality then we need to go to the source, the Bible, and learn what God's grace really means for us. We don't need to label ourselves with "recovering-anything." Christ has already labeled us. We are God's children. Totally forgiven. Totally free. No matter how corrupt your life was before you sought forgiveness from God, no matter how much pain was there, no matter what kind of wreck your life was in, it is no longer part of your reality. If you go back and try to psychologically "deal with" your sins you've missed the boat entirely. You haven't learned that God's grace and forgiveness are all-encompassing and eternal. Go to the Bible. Go to God in prayer. Ask Him to teach you what His forgiveness means. Don't go back and wallow in the muck and the mire of your past. Live in the reality of being a child of God. Totally forgiven. Totally loved. And totally free.

There is some worthwhile information in Baker's book (mostly in the quotations from Scripture). But don't use it as a book with all the answers. Go to the book. The Bible. There you will find the answer to any question you might have about your relationship with God. That's where you'll learn all about forgiveness and grace. We are able to live free of our pasts through the Truths found in our Bibles. The Bible is all we'll ever need. I guess I sound a little bit negative about Baker's book, don't I? I don't mean to, really. It's just that I get nervous when someone tells me to find my answers in a "moral inventory" and to find forgiveness for my past sins by confessing my sins to anyone but Jesus Christ. Now, I'm not saying you can't ever reveal your sins to someone else. I'm just saying that we don't need to pour over the years of our lives and write down every sin and hurt and habit and hangup and then share that list with someone else other than God. There is a time to confess sins. When they're current!! All this stuff in the past is just that: Past. I don't see anything wrong with talking over a current situation with a trusted friend as long as you're not seeking forgiveness from that person. God and God alone can forgive. But a trusted friend can help you see the error of your ways, so to speak. They can help you attain a balanced view of what's going on in your life and help you understand what you need to do. And most times there's a very simple solution to the problem. You need to get alone with God. But if you're struggling with a current issue, by all means, confide in a trusted and trustworthy friend. Talk openly and honestly with that person and seek their guidance. And chances are they will guide you right to the Bible where you'll find all the answers you need. We don't need all this psycho-babble because that's what it truly is, babble. This step in Baker's program is just exactly what a secular counselor might have you do. We have something so much better. We have the Counselor, the Holy Spirit and He will guide us into all healing. If we are spiritually ill we need a spiritual healer.

Baker's book will do a lot of good for a lot of people. But I think it's slightly off track with this step in the program. This is Baker's "8-Step Program." Not unlike the 12-Step program that has helped so many alcoholics and addicts to get clean and sober. But all the human race needs is Jesus Christ. Why go out of our way to end up being told that you're a "recovering" person. You aren't recovering in Christ. You are recovered! Past tense, present tense, and future tense. Recovered. That's what we need to understand. Our past is just that ... past. God is good and gracious and will forgive us all our sins. Why do we need to go back and deal with things God has already dealt with? Is God's forgiveness lacking? Of course not. It's our understanding of that forgiveness that's lacking. And for that we need to realize that God has already dealt with our sins. He put them in Christ and then put Him to death so that we might live free of them forever- more. Our past sins are gone. We are loved and forgiven and whole. God has already put our sins away. We don't need to go and drag them all out again. We just need a full understanding of what God's forgiveness means. And that will be found in no other place but the Bible.

John Baker's book is doing a lot of good but I sincerely believe that this step in the program is off base. If for no other reason than the hurt and misunderstanding such a list of past sins and hurts and habits and hangups could cause if it got into the wrong hands. In fact, the book talks about a couple who went through just such pain. He was a "recovering" and she was a "recovering" and he made out his Moral Inventory and it somehow ended up in her hands and neither of them were ready to deal with the issues he wrote about in his list. That alone almost ruined their marriage that they were trying to save. That's why we confess our sins to God. Because only God can adequately deal with them. Our sins are only safe in God's hands because only God puts them away as far as east is from west. This woman suffered a lot of pain as a result of this step in the program. Pain that was totally unnecessary. That alone should have given the author pause.

Well, on to safer grounds here. Our weather is cloudy and cold. We had over a half an inch of rain during the night last night. I'm not sure when the next rain is due in but it will more than likely be tomorrow or so. We had over 8 inches of rain in January. So far most of February is just drizzle but even drizzle adds up. Can't believe spring is getting so close. Only a couple more months and we'll be able to open up the house for fresh air again. I intend on doing a lot of Spring cleaning this year. Guess I better get all my socks knitted before then. I have one more pair of Felici to knit and then I ordered enough Stroll yarn (from KnitPicks) for two more pair. All in all I will end up with 6 pairs of socks if I don't keep ordering more yarn and knitting more socks. But they are fun to knit and some of these are not going to be my favorites to wear because they're all different sizes. Hopefully I'll get a few pair to wear anyway. Guess I best get busy around here and do some knitting. Until next time...