Your Pharisaical Ass Is Mine

Okay, so maybe I thought taking counseling classes would make me wise. It would enlighten me to cope with my relationships, not the easy ones. I thought it would help me find clever and quippy ways to navigate the little family pond here, the sometimes swampy larger family, and the rough and raging sea of relationships beyond that. It would help me cope better, manage stress, give me new and tougher skin.

Well, I was wrong. I am only a few weeks in, and I am treading deep water.

I have written three papers. Read 2 case studies. Now guess who is my case study. Yep, it's me. 25% of my grade for the class will be my Self-Counseling Project. Right, I have to cross-examine myself based on a bad pattern I have. You can choose road rage, gossip, sarcasm, grumbling, anxiety, fantasizing, among others. This is when I am glad my first course is online. I don't have to stand in front of people and recount my lame behaviors. And having them go ahead and discuss, oh, that would do me in.

This first class is the Dynamics of Biblical Change. It sounds like physics or something-- the laws of thermodynamics or something about torque. My cousin Marky advised me, in physics, the answer is always either pressure or friction. Well DBC is not about physics. But at this point I'm pretty sure the answer is always our brokenness or said better, our junk. In our class, we study what it means to change. How the Bible might help advise us to become different. You could say help us to heal, or help us to break a pattern, or help someone see things in a new way.

The class' first tack is this examination of ourselves. If we examine our actions closely, we will conclude that we are not an end to ourselves. That alone, we will not change ourselves. I am learning that not only do sinners need to repent of their sin but that the Pharisee must repent of her rightness. (A Pharisee was a member of an ancient Hebraic sect, distinguished by strict observance of the traditional and written law, and commonly held to have pretensions to superior sanctity. From dictionary.) I can see how the scaffolding of my heart is so dug in--these things make me a good person. These things make me superior. Thank God I'm not as bad as that. Constantly shifting my gaze and shifting my blame, I build my perceptions around these assumptions so I can go and live a tidy existence, where I never am never questioned.

Of course, then the essential and inconvenient linchpin of all theology --BUT GOD-- breaks in and does major upheaval. God breaks through and invites me to take down the scaffolding, look at my brokenness-- the ways my sin is woven into my fabric, the ways my pride is dug down deep, the ways I like to keep others at bay. Psalm 119 and St. Paul's letter to the Phillipians this week have confronted me with God's invitation to lay my junk down. And just observe how unwilling I am to look down into my motives, my wiring, my leanings.

If I want to help anyone, how can I illuminate anything if I am not in the practice of facing my own junk? So if you were wondering what I've been up to, it's been doing really fun stuff like that.