Blindspot #3 – I am the exception to the rule!
This is a guest post written by my son Caleb who is on a spiritual journey – a difficult journey that has included rehab. He is not out of the woods yet, but he is on the right path. I have chosen to share from one of the entries his blog which he calls “Jesus and Jerry Garcia.” I found it helpful to me because in reality we are all still in the woods fighting our own addictions to this world and I felt that his words would help others who were looking for the right path.
Blindspot # 3 – I am the exception to the rule!
New Speedway Boogie – 07/03/1970
For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4:11-12 ESV)
“I don’t know but I been told if the horse don’t pull you gotta carry that load, I don’t know whose back’s that strong maybe find out before too long” (The Grateful Dead, New Speedway Boogie)
Just one more, that’s the cry, one more drink, one more hit, one more line – oh I’m strong, I can handle it, ain’t nothing gonna bring me down… besides, who are you to judge, you don’t even know me, don’t know my capacity, my appetite, my past; you don’t know what is going on inside of me or where I’ve been or where I think I’m going and just because this doesn’t seem like a good idea to you, well really, who do you think you are to presume to tell me what I can handle? And if I can’t afford it, who cares, really, I’ll sort that out in the morning, but the morning comes and nothing ever gets sorted out. Just more chaos, more disaster deadened by more bad decisions.
When I finally do diagnose the problem I always come to the wrong conclusions anyway – I should have saved some for the morning, why didn’t I keep a little to get me through my shift, what was I thinking covering everyone else’s tab. I never make it back to the root of the problem, i just shift the blame. And I convince myself that my actions affect no one but myself, that I am an island.
Blindspot # 3 – I am the exception to the rule!
No one else is me and so no one else has ever felt this way and no one else can handle what I am capable of handling and if everyone else who took this path ran headlong off of a cliff it’s just because they didn’t have their eyes shut tightly enough – they didn’t have my will and my drive and my inherent strength to push through it all. I’ll make it, oh I’ll make it, and why, because there are no other options, because I am going to finish what I started.
But what happens when that horse you’ve been beating is finally dead? Where do you go when you’ve got more baggage than a Ryder truck and the engine is stalled and the sun is setting and the cold night is coming? What are you gonna do when it’s time to carry that load?
Death is the only choice, either death to life or death to sin but that’s another load we can’t carry. We are crushed physically under the weight of our choices but we are crushed spiritually under the weight of our sin, and although some of us are better at making good choices on our own none of us can haul the load of our guilt and just condemnation on our shoulders. No one is good enough to save themselves.
Only one has the strength to bind us up under our physical burdens while erasing our spiritual shortcomings at the same time and he offers us forgiveness and freedom (yeah, that word again) at great cost to himself.
But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinning Christ died for us.
