I have wanted to write. I have thought about writing and in my mind dealt with subjects that I thought would produce the type of comments I desired. Pride is a fire that requires constant fuel and when that blaze is stoked enough by that oxygen of the pride of life, it needs more than just the kindling that ones own ego is able to produce and so it seeks out the praise of others—bigger sticks to feed the blaze. Such a fire can never be quenched, but the desire grows ever stronger until we are consumed.
So I see I read my Bible to find more places to highlight and then feel a sense of “righteous” pride when I sit near someone that I perceive as spiritually inferior so that I can silently gloat about the depth of my personal devotional life. I seek to unravel greater points of doctrine in my journal (secretly hoping someday someone will want to publish it) rather than seek the truth—that two-edged sword that slices right to the root of sin. I have fed my “suckfish[1]” and he grows fatter each day, like an algae-eating fish in a tank that is never cleaned. I feel the weight of this decaying body of sin.
No, I have not willfully turned my back on God and I have not tried to sin against Him or grieve His Spirit, but I see under the searing, scintillating search light of Truth, through the divination of God’s perfect Spirit, the Interpreter of Bunyan’s dream, that I have sought the dizzying, temporary and soul-damning praise of man (I feel it in tiny things like that illusion to Bunyan). I have been reading the spiritual journeys of many men far greater than I and I see parallels in my life to the things that all of these men had grown to loathe in themselves and ultimately shunned. Augustine’s love of eloquence and the praise of man, Brother Lawrence’s distractions from prayer and God’s presence, the lack of the love that Drummond sought as the very highest good. And in Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” I see myself as the fool of devils that have so convinced me of my own righteousness that I somehow thought I had something to do with my regeneration.
Even in this confession, as raw and self-revelatory as it seems, I fear this pride. I fear that I have found pride in my humility, a sense of satisfaction in my debasement[2]. I seek out noise and clutter, the perfect “greenhouse” for self-righteousness and self-love. It is in those screaming, quiet moments of the soul that I feel naked and exposed before a God whose gaze pierces flesh and matter and into the very darkness of the soul. In these moments I see my depravity and my complete lack of any goodness sans His grace and mercy. I fear the quiet, but I long to desire it because I know when I can desire it, truly in the depths of my heart, than I have no fear of His gaze and it is that that I seek.
I pray I take no pride in this confession. I want to do it in humility and though to all who read this it may seem to be an embarrassing, self-revelatory journal entry, but please, I beg you, don’t judge to harshly. God knows my heart and this is what the Light of His Word[3] has been showing me in those dusty corners of my heart that I had been carefully avoiding. Please do me a favor. Do not comment on this entry. If you are revolted or think me out of line, fill free to let me know via facebook, or e-mail. If you have been helped by some good pleasure of a God who inconceivable loves us, then thank Him for it and leave me in the dark.
This one truth I know; when I look at myself and look at God, I am not deserving of His mercy and grace and the more I see in my heart that I have thought I somehow deserve it. I have bought into the diabolical lie that I am entitled to something. But really, what is man that God should be mindful of him[4]? I am nothing. I have said enough. When confession goes too long, one becomes impressed by his own thoughts of humility and then the very sin that was confessed has turned into a “Kick Me” sticker stuck to his back. God’s Word tells us to confess our faults to one another and maybe it is cowardice that has me saying this impersonally via blog rather than to the face of a brother, but here is my confession, none-the-less before God and man. Goodnight.
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