Why We Fail At Self Control or Self Control as Pomegranate

“By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.”

— Galatians 5:22-23

Self control is like a pomegranate of the fruits of the spirit. It is the fruit so many of us want to want to like but it is just too difficult to access.

By in large it seems that I fail at self control because I conflate self control with restraint. Restraint is a part of self control but self control is more complex than simple restraint. When I act as though self control is simply restraint then I am not only restrained from the behaviors such as lashing out and yelling, but also from the embracing and showing grand gestures of love. Restraint is great for a stoic, but Christians are not stoics. Christians are called to the fruit of self control.

But what is self control?

Perhaps it is helpful to think of what is the opposite of self control. The opposite is not unbounded emotion, but rather other control. When we are attempting to control others we are doing the opposite of self control.

Controlling others what we do when we are fearful. It is not lost on me that people on line who cause all sorts of heartache as “trolls”. Trolls take delight in controlling others by causing others to get into a rage as a result of the trolls actions. The troll operates from a place of fear that they are not being heard or they have no power, and so they control others out of that fear in order to get heard or feel powerful.

It is said in 1 John 4, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” When we try to control others we are in the presence of fear and if there is fear then there is no love. All of this to say, when we feel like we are loosing control or not practicing restraint it might be because we are lacking love in the moment.

And so, we might fail at self control not because we are not trying, but because we lack the love that drives out fear in that moment.

The next time you feel a lack of self control or even restraint, ask yourself what are you afraid of in that moment. Then, and this is the courageous move, ask yourself, “what do I love about this person?” It has been my experience that when I discover the love in the relationship, I no longer seek to control the other person. When I discover love, fear is cast out.

The pomegranate is not as difficult to eat. We just have been trying to access it in the wrong ways.

One Seeking Perfection Must...

John Cassian has a collection of writings he called The Institutes. Within these writings lay a number of precious gems for the reader. I wanted to highlight one of those gems - what might the disciple of Christ expect to go through on the path of being of the charter of Christ? Another way to think about this might be to consider Jesus when he says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” How are we to move toward being made perfect in love?

Cassian suggests a series of actions that you can take that reveal the next step to take. As you walk, being able to see only one step at a time, you will come to the Kingdom of Heaven. I have not found a more concise description of what Cassian describes than from Philip Turner’s book Christian Ethics and the Church: Ecclesial Foundations for Moral Thought and Practice. Consider what Turner writes:

The process begins with the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom. Fear drives one to conversion and the search for perfection. The search requires that one, through renunciation, develop contempt for worldly things including family and possessions. Renunciation leads in turn to the virtue of humility from which is generated the dying of desire, and when desire has died the vices are uprooted and wither away. With the expulsion of the vices, virtue begins to grow and bear fruit. When virtue is abundant, purity of heart is acquired and, with purity of heart, the kingdom of heaven.

We start with a fear of the Lord. When we compare ourselves to the Lord we are brought to our knees and we desire conversion. The desire for conversion admits that the current course we are on is not sufficient to the standard of God’s heart, so we renounce our current way of living. But renouncing our current way of living we become a novice to life again and we are humbled. And when we are humbled to this new way of living that we know little about, our past desires atrophy. If we are able to arrive to this point where we renounce our past lives and desires then the vices of our past also die. In this way we are born again, made new. The death of desires and vices is the very fertile ground God uses to plant virtue. When lives around the world are full for good fruit (Matthew 7:17) we discover we all live in a new garden called the Kingdom of God.

And so, take the first step and see what is revealed. Ask yourself, “Do I feel like I am God’s equal?”

Uniting Methodists - Wheat and Weeds

The United Methodist Church is facing the reality of becoming a monoculture denomination. (Monoculture in the church is something that I have touched on before below are a few links to previous posts for reference).

A monoculture denomination is a denomination that is really good at making one type of thing. This efficiency means a monoculutre denomination may be able to grow in numbers, but like all other monocultures, it is very susceptible to sickness and unhealth. Nonetheless, when there is a lower "yield" than previous years and the numbers do not look good, monocultures are very attractive.

Jesus had a little parable about the kingdom of God and buried within it we can see the resistance Jesus has for the monoculture church. 

Even weeds have beauty

Photo by Guillaume Flandre on Unsplash

He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ - Matt. 13: 24-30

Every side of the denomination feels like they are the wheat and others are the weeds. You know the arguments made by different field workers of today:

• Traditionalists argue that Progressives are sowing seeds of disobedience and seek to uproot the entire orthodox tradition.
• Progressives argue that Traditionalists are sowing seeds of contempt and seek to uproot justice for the sake of compliance.
• Non-Compatibleists on both sides argue that those in the are sowing seeds of fear and seek to uproot the whole church for the sake of a Pollyannan idea of unity that is lukewarm at best. 
• Compatibleists argue that the extremes are sowing seeds of anger and are determined to uproot the entire church out of their self-righteous peacocking. 

The reality is we all are convinced that we are the wheat and others are the weeds. We all are convinced that we are good enough at this thing called Christianity that we can remove the weeds without harming the wheat. 

Jesus says otherwise. 

Jesus reminds us all that we are not very good at all at discerning wheat from weeds and even if we could, we are so inept that we do much more harm than we realize.

I read this parable in part as a caution against the attraction to a monoculture denomination. In our efforts to be as faithful as possible (growing only wheat) we will always find things/people we believe are not faithful (weeds). The Uniting Methodists stand with those who heed the call of the master and, despite our frustration, let the wheat and the weeds grow together. The Uniting Methodist stand with the humble servants who were confronted with their own limitations. The Uniting Methodists stand with those who trust that the Master is okay with wheat and weeds in the field.

If we cannot live with the weeds in God's field, then perhaps our anger/frustration is less about the weeds and more about our own lack of faithful discipleship.

Are the Seasons Backwards?

Back in 2009, the question was raised, "Could the problem with Sunday worship be that it begins out week?" The assumption I generally operate from is that Sunday is the start of the week. But, the question wonders, is it more reflective of a deep wisdom that Sunday should be considered as the culmination (the end) of the week? 

Taking this idea of flipping my assumptions, it lead me to think about the seasons of the year. 

While the calendar year ends in December, for reasons I cannot place my finger on, I have always put the "start" of life in the season of spring. In fact if I were allowed to remake the calendar, I would have shifted the start of the new calendar year with the first day of spring. Spring has new buds and new leaves and new life and it all feels like spring is the start of a new life. Conversely, winter signaled to me the "end". Cold and dark, it just made sense to me that winter is the end of life and spring is the beginning. 

However, what if this ordering of the seasons misses a deep wisdom? What if we did not associate spring with the beginning of new life but we considered the season of fall? 

If we think of fall as the "beginning" then we gain a good number of deep truths. First of all, we no longer would be so afraid of death and dying. Death and dying would be the "start" of a new life. And in fact, in the world of plants, death is the start of life. If death is seen as the start of our lives, then how would our minds change toward our care for the elderly?  

After our new life begins in death (fall), the next step in life is germination (winter). This is the season of wondering what sort of new thing God is germinating in us. This season of germination would be the season of deep faith that God is doing something even if we cannot see it. It is the season of faith that there will be spring and summer after the dark season of winter. Additionally, Advent, the season around Christmas which focuses on God coming into the world, would take on a whole series of new meanings.

After the season of germination (winter) we begin to flower and see the beginning of this thing that God has been doing in our lives for the past six months. We no longer see flowers as the start of the process but as the half way point of what God is doing. We begin to see that these flowers are beautiful but temporal. Spring becomes the season that we rejoice that God is faithful to us because for six months we may not have seen much evidence of God's work in us when we began this process of new life.

Finally, we see the "fruit" of the past nine months of God working in and on us in the season of summer. The fruit is sweet and provides sustenance for us. We assess if we are producing good or not so good fruit. As we sit in the heat of summer, beaten down by the sun, we can only consider if the work that we have done with God the past year is fruit bearing. While we enjoy these fruits we understand that God is calling us into a new thing once more and we take that first step into new life by dying to our old life - the season of fall is upon us once more.