I have to admit the first few times I read Paul’s words stating that whatever he wants to do he doesn’t do and the very thing he doesn’t want to do he does…I thought he was ridiculous. It seemed very simple to me. Do what you want to do and don’t do what you don’t want to do. It is nice in theory, isn’t it?
Also,… when did we decide that what we want to do was the right thing to do? Or have we (we meaning I) stopped caring about the right thing in general? I don’t think that is where I am at…but it feels that way at times. My friend Joelle posted a clever description of this tension on her facebook…”Satan is like stillettos”. She describes the beauty of the stilletto shoe and how we love the way they look. Girls can hardly resist that perfect heel. We are so excited to wear them and we show them off to our friends. They make our legs look good and they can be the perfect compliment to an outfit.
Question for girls: What happens to one’s feet after they have been in stillettos all day…or even a few hours?
They hurt. They leave wounds and scars and they sometimes make you bleed. They make the arches of your feel like they are on fire and the balls of your feet feel like tiny knives are stabbing you repeatedlly in the same spot. Doesn’t that sound great? Is that beautiful?
The funny part is…we KNOW that what I described is the inevitable outcome of wearing the shoes. We KNOW that when we put those heels on we will spend hours soaking them in a tub that night. We KNOW that throughout the course of the day our love for our “perfect little shoes” will turn to loathing. We curse the day we bought them…no..we curse the day they were made. Yet we wear them. We wear them often. We spend hours recouperating and sometimes there are permanent scars…but you know the irony of it all? About 3 or 4 days later we wake up in the morning and think to ourselves “you know what shoes would be perfect for that outfit?”…and no joke, we start the process again thinking that this time it probably won’t be that bad.
This picture is a perfect description of sin. It illistrates what Paul was saying in Romans about doing the very opposite thing that you really want to do. You know that these things leave scars that sometimes don’t heal…but for whatever reason it seems worth it at the time. Sin masks itself in shiny packaging (or strappy heels)…but let’s all be honest here…we still know that it is sin. Nothing could be so shiny as to make the intellectual mind believe that something that is wrong is right. It could maybe distract…but not convince.
I was just thinking through these things today. I have no wisdom to impart about what to do about all of this…just wanted to share it. It changed me a little bit. Thanks Joelle for your insight: )
