The Hubris of Sin

I originally started writing this entry right after Lance Armstrong admitted to doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey on January 14, 2013, but it took me a long time to fully formulate my thoughts and figure out the direction I wanted it to go, hence the time delay.

In light of Lance Armstrong's recent admission of doping with performance-enhancing drugs, I've had a number of thoughts about the whole situation.

I've mostly been thinking that it took a tremendous amount of arrogance for him to decide to try it in the first place, and then, as he won races without getting caught and he became even more confident, his vanity and arrogance grew ever bigger.

I found an article published October 12, 2012 in The Guardian, a British newspaper, that said that Armstrong's team ran the most sophisticated and successful doping scheme in the entire history of the sport of cycling. The article, which used as its source a 1,000 page report from the US Anti-Doping Agency, also painted Armstrong as a bully who intimidated and coerced his teammates into participating in his doping program. He was portrayed as a cheat who payed hundreds of thousands of dollars for these doping schemes, and did this over several years. According to what he confessed to Oprah Winfrey, not one of his seven Tour de France wins was gotten without benefit of performance-enhancing drugs.

Doping with performance-enhancing drugs seems to be the up-and-coming thing to do nowadays in the world of sports, if I'm to believe what I hear on the news anyway. It seems like everyone does it. Because truth is relative, or so they say, and there is no right or wrong except for what is right to each individual, a person can do whatever he wants--can't he?? And if he can do whatever he wants, then surely doing something so blatantly dishonest as doping is OK, because by doing that he can win all his races. So the ends justify the means, right? No. No! NO!!

I don't care what anyone in the world says, there IS an absolute truth, and it's to be found in the God of the universe and in His Word, the Bible. Leviticus 19:11 says, "Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another."~~NIV. Lance Armstrong did all three of those things. He lied and deceived the US Anti-Doping Agency everytime they interviewed him, as well as every media reporter to whom he said he wasn't doping, and he also deceived the whole sport of cycling, as well as everyone who watched him perform during the Tour de France all those times. In addition he stole the title from its rightful owner each time he won it dishonestly, which apparently was all seven times. 

I don't understand why people would want to reject absolute truth and trust in something as small and finite as themselves. It just makes no sense to me. God is more solid than any rock--afterall He made the rocks the earth is made of. He is wiser and smarter than any human being ever born. He's the author of all wisdom and intelligence, for goodness sake! The Bible says, "The fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment."~~Proverbs 9:10, NLT. My vision is extremely limited, but He sees the whole picture from beginning to end. It says in Isaiah 55:8-11, 

"8. 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 9. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11. so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.'"~~ESV

That passage says a couple of things to me. First, it says that God thinks differently than I do, that He thinks better than I do, and His ways are different and better than mine are. So when I don't understand something that He's doing in my life I shouldn't question His sovereignty. I need to remember this scripture and concept, and buckle under and let Him work--something that's a LOT easier said than done!!

The other thing I get from this passage of scripture is that God always, ALWAYS keeps His promises, and for me, this is the more important point. The fact that I need to not question His sovereignty and walk by faith is important, of course, but if I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God always keeps His promises to me, then it will be easier to walk by faith and not question, because I know I can trust Him.

I wonder if people like Lance Armstrong decide to take matters into their own hands in situations like this doping scandal because they think they know better what's best for them than God does. But how can it be best for you to win a race when the only way you can win it is by cheating through doping? How is that winning at all? You haven't won it by using the skills God gave you. You've only won because you lied and cheated and exposed your body to dangerous drugs--as well as bullying your teammates into doing the same thing. How is that winning? It's not. It's not winning at all. In fact, it's losing, and losing on a much grander scale than if you had just lost the race in the first place. 

If you just lose in the first place, you lose and that's the end of it. You train hard and come back the next year and do better. But if you win by cheating and then your deception is discovered, there's a huge scandal and you're horribly embarrassed. Then you're expelled from the sport, probably for good, and they take away all your medals and your titles for the sport. Then they get suspicious about any other sport you might have played, because if you cheated in one sport you probably cheated in the other sports as well, and they take away all your medals and titles from those sports too. So in the end you're left with nothing, because you'll probably also lose your self-respect, as well as the esteem and admiration of your fans, and maybe even your family's respect and their trust, because you've lied to absolutely everyone, so you can't be trusted. Lance Armstrong said that the hardest part for him was having to talk to his son about what he had done. 

Was it worth it? Was it really worth it? No, I can't imagine it could have been, but that's just me. I wish I could talk to Lance Armstrong right now. Even more, I pray that he's had the sense to start talking to God.

God Is My All In All, So Can He Fill My Empty Pit?

I've been struggling with painful feelings of abandonment for several days. Actually, I experience a small undercurrent of abandonment almost all the time, but I've learned to ignore it because if I acknowledged it I feel like I'd go stark raving mad. The current struggle, however, was brought on because I had to have my taxes done, and my tax accountant is someone I used to be close to. I've known them for many years. They used to have a house-church at their home and they would have a breakfast before church every Sunday. Before they started the house-church we were all members of a Vineyard church in south Orange County. 

Then at a certain point almost four years ago a close friend of theirs died. He had been ill with prostate cancer for many years, and had been growing steadily worse over the previous several months. After he died they decided to close down the house-church, and it felt like they basically closed down our friendship, and since then the only contact I have with them is when I have my taxes done, plus infrequent get-togethers with mutual friends or on FaceBook. 

The reason I feel such a strong sense of abandonment is because when I first met them in about 1999 I was a total basket case, just an absolute mess, and over the seven years that we were all members of the same church in south Orange County, I experienced drastic changes that were nothing short of God's miraculous work. Just as an example, when I started going to that church in 1999, I was multiple (Multiple Personality Disorder aka Dissociative Identity Disorder) and God integrated me in 2003 through a whole series of miracles as the people in that church prayed for me. During the whole time we were at that church this couple (my tax accountants) was wonderful to me. They helped me find an honest auto mechanic, they helped me with various financial things, they called me their miracle girl; in many ways they were like surrogate parents to me. They even came out at odd hours to rescue me when my car broke down, something I had never felt safe asking my own parents to do. They loved me in many practical ways and made me feel nurtured like I had never felt before. 

And then, all of a sudden, it was all over. They had good reasons for stopping the house-church, and they sent out a letter stating what they were. But it felt like I'd been dropped off a cliff. I've never done very well with rejection or abandonment, and I tried to talk to them about it, but it didn't do any good. They didn't even try to understand. They just said something like they hadn't rejected me, nor had they abandoned me, which made me feel like there was something wrong with me, like my feelings weren't valid, so I should just get over it and leave them alone. I realize it wasn't just me that they did this to. I also realize that it wasn't directed personally at me. But it's hard to not take it personally when they don't treat me like they used to. I don't mean to them what I used to mean to them. I'm no longer their miracle girl. I know they have to go on and live their lives and I have to live mine. I just wish they could have ended things a little less abruptly. Whenever I see them I can feel the coldness towards me, (or maybe it's the absence of warmth) mostly because it's the opposite of the wonderful warmth I used to feel from them.

Anyway, ever since I got home from having my taxes done on Thursday, I've been a mess. I went to Trader Joe's on the way home and bought a whole lot of food I didn't need, and that isn't good for me. Then after I got home I went online and bought a bunch of books I didn't need, nor did I have the money for. I managed to keep it down to three books--I was going to buy eight to the tune of $85, but I made myself trim it down to three, which cost me $37. The only reason I'm keeping those three is because my birthday is in ten days. I know why I bought them: all my life reading has been the best, and sometimes the only, way for me to escape the pain I feel. I can get lost in someone else's life and pain when I'm reading a good book. I certainly didn't need any new ones, however!! I have whole bookcases FULL of books I've never read. 

So I'm just hoping and praying, especially praying, that God will heal this hole in me so I don't have to go through this anymore. I'm tired of feeling all the time like I'm a bottomless pit, a cavernous hole of need that's so deep and wide that it's impossible to fill. I have this feeling that I'm so needy that I chase people away, which could at least partly explain why I have such a difficult time with relationships. 

I'm also considering finding a new tax accountant (who's a Christian, of course) in the Inland Empire someplace so I'll have someone closer to me once I get moved. I think I'll ask around at church. Surely SOMEONE knows of a good one!

A Higher Justice

It's always a puzzle to me when people commit horrible crimes, especially when they commit the crime and subsequently commit suicide. I've often wondered if they commit suicide after they perpetrate their crimes because they don't want to face the justice system and the families of the victims they've hurt or killed.

It seems to me that they lack an eternal perspective when they commit these crimes and follow them by suicide. They don't seem to understand that, even if they manage to avoid man's justice--in other words, the criminal justice system--by committing suicide, there's no way anyone can avoid God's justice. I don't know about anyone else, but if I were to commit a crime, I would much rather deal with the earthly justice system than avoid earthly justice and then have to face the judgment of God. God's judgment will be much more severe and sure than any reckoning one might have to face in an earthly courtroom, mostly because God knows everything, EVERYTHING, about a person, and God only deals in the truth.

Then again, if I try and look at it from God's perspective, when people commit a crime and then commit suicide, they probably aren't thinking rationally, at least as far as the suicide is concerned. When God created human beings, He put a very strong instinct for survival in us, so for someone to try, much less succeed, in a suicide attempt, something has to have gone radically wrong with that survival instinct, making it so the person has lost the will to live, for whatever reason. 

I think the Catholic Church teaches that suicide is a mortal sin--that someone who commits suicide goes to hell (I could be wrong about that; they may have changed their teaching since I last knew anything). I don't believe that because I think that someone who commits suicide is not in their right mind, and since they're not in their right mind, they've lost the power to make informed choices--choices that lead towards life. I'm guessing that the reason behind the Catholic Church's teaching is because the injunction against murder is one of the ten commandments, number six, to be exact. Exodus 20:13 says, "You shall not murder."~~NKJV. 

So if you carry the church's teaching to its logical conclusion, suicide would be considered to be self-murder. But is it a mortal sin if you kill someone else? If not, since suicide, or self-murder, is simply another kind of murder, then why would that be a mortal sin if other-murder is not. I don't think it is. It seems to me that when someone commits suicide, because they've lost their ability to make rational decisions about their life, they can't be held responsible, at least not entirely, for that act. Biblically speaking, the only reason someone can end up in hell is because they've rejected God's free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. I think we'll be very surprised by some of the people we meet when we get to heaven, people that shouldn't be there if we were to judge by man's standards. I thank God that we are NOT judged by man's standards!!

It seems to me that it all comes down to God's mercy or His judgment. Which one will be enacted when someone commits suicide? What about when someone kills someone else and then kills himself? I don't think it will be a matter of the crimes that were committed, but rather whether the person who committed them had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. Actually, I think it will be a combination of the two, God's mercy AND His judgment.

That's what I think, for what it's worth. I don't know how accurate or close to the truth I am, but until God enlightens me further, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

A Relationship Puzzle

Why am I trying to cut Denise* out of my life? I really don't understand my behavior in this situation. While it's true that she invaded my privacy and violated my boundaries when she called the police to check on me because she hadn't heard from me in ten days, it doesn't seem like that would be a serious enough intrusion to warrant  this level of reaction on my part. You'd think I would have liked it that she did this, but I didn't. I hated it. HATED it!! Now I'm avoiding her like the plague, and I don't understand why.

Is it because I'm trying to punish her? Am I trying to get revenge by shunning her? If so, why? What was so bad about what she did? Her only sin, if you can call it that, was to express caring towards me. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe it was the way she did it. But even if the way she did it was wrong, what about forgiveness on my part? As Christians we are called, commanded even, to forgive when we've been wronged. God forgave me for my sin (my sin nature), and all my sins (my sinful actions)--and I am a VERY sinful person, to be sure, so I can do no less for Denise and anyone else who does wrong towards me. The Bible even says that if I don't forgive her then God won't forgive me. I certainly don't want that hanging over me! The Bible also says that I'm not supposed to seek revenge for a wrong that was done to me. It says that's God's job. The thing is, I thought I had forgiven her, but I must not have, otherwise I wouldn't be acting the way I am.

But I AM acting like I haven't forgiven her and I need to know why. At least I think that's what my behavior means. To me, if I've forgiven her, that means I don't want revenge for what she did. And I'm totally unaware of any feelings like that. The only thought that goes through my mind is that I can no longer trust her, and because I can't trust her any longer, I can't let her be a part of my life. There's a reason for my lack of trust, beyond just the fact of the police arriving on my doorstep. When I talked to her afterward and told her how what she did made me feel, she said she was sorry I felt that way, but if the circumstances were the same in the future, she would do the same thing all over again. She also said that before she called the police, she talked to some mutual friends to see what they thought about what she was about to do, and they saw nothing wrong with her plan. They thought it was a good idea. That told me that she would have no problem with calling the police again if I didn't keep in contact with her ALL the time, something that feels very constricting to me, and something I'm just not willing to do.

I wonder, however, if I'm not overreacting. I wonder if her calling the police that day didn't trigger something from deep inside me, something that I don't consciously remember. I don't know the answer to that yet, but I pray that God will show me, and show me soon. Not so much because I don't want to lose the relationship with Denise, but because I want to be sure I'm following God. I have a very hard time believing that my behavior in this situation is pleasing to God, but I don't how to do it any other way. I feel like I'm being propelled forward on this path by an unstoppable force that's under someone else's control.

So that's the problem I'm struggling with. I'm going to keep on praying about it, and seeking God about it, and trying to understand it, and hopefully somewhere, somehow, I'll be able to sort it out with God's help.

*Not her real name.