Friday, January 20, 2006
Detoxification
January is the season for “detoxing”. Self-respecting citizens everywhere have gone on diets and are drinking pomegranate cordial and wheatgrass juice. Gyms receive a record number of new subscriptions, and bookstores overcome the January lull by selling self-help and get-fit manuals. It seems that the beginning of the year, paired with the guilty conscience about holiday excesses, make for a fertile season of renewal. Of course, we all know that most of these New Year resolutions will not last further than the end of this January; hence the raft of cynical editorials in papers and on web pages.
But while resolutions abound to treat one’s body better abound, similar decisions about one’s soul are conspicuously absent. When was the last time you heard that somebody had decided to be more gracious in 2006? Or do you know of a new book which helps you fight anger, greed or lust? We seem to attribute enormous importance to our bodies, thus spawning whole fitness industries and keeping quacks in business, while at the same time neglecting the inner man. Is that because the former is easier, and experts abound? Are we even more helpless about changing our character than the shape of our figure? Or do we sincerely believe that looks are everything, and what is behind the well-tanned, freshly pummelled façade is of no importance for our well-being?
The apostle Paul exhorts us to be “made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”. He seems to imply that the most crucial programme of renewal is one which touches us deep on the inside; that it is not the body that needs transformation, but the inner man. Paul is addressing himself to the believers in Ephesus when he urges them to “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires”: real detoxification is his subject, one which gets rid of those tendencies, inclinations and desires which make us truly unhappy.
Many of us crave such a new start, but have never dared to believe it possible. Would such a New Year’s resolution not be bound to fail? Would the end of January not see us equally disheartened and fed up about spiritual renewal as it invariable does about our diets? We cannot change ourselves; we are who we are, for better or for worse: our mums used to tell us that, and psychology furnishes scientific proof of it. Greater love, joy, peace or patience seem as elusive as Elizabeth Hurley’s figure or Patrick Vieira’s fitness. Yet that is not the experience of millions of Christians over the centuries. Ordinary men and women from all walks of life have found that change, transformation or--to use an old fashioned-term, “sanctification”--might be impossible with human beings, but not with God. The Christmas story celebrates the fact that God united his divine nature to our human one. Or, put differently, in Jesus Christ, God is so close to human beings as to live in them, if they would like him to. It is true that no one can change himself. So says the Gospel. But God can change us from the inside out, by living in us. All it takes is an invitation to him to come. Would that not be a worthwhile New Year’s resolution?
But while resolutions abound to treat one’s body better abound, similar decisions about one’s soul are conspicuously absent. When was the last time you heard that somebody had decided to be more gracious in 2006? Or do you know of a new book which helps you fight anger, greed or lust? We seem to attribute enormous importance to our bodies, thus spawning whole fitness industries and keeping quacks in business, while at the same time neglecting the inner man. Is that because the former is easier, and experts abound? Are we even more helpless about changing our character than the shape of our figure? Or do we sincerely believe that looks are everything, and what is behind the well-tanned, freshly pummelled façade is of no importance for our well-being?
The apostle Paul exhorts us to be “made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”. He seems to imply that the most crucial programme of renewal is one which touches us deep on the inside; that it is not the body that needs transformation, but the inner man. Paul is addressing himself to the believers in Ephesus when he urges them to “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires”: real detoxification is his subject, one which gets rid of those tendencies, inclinations and desires which make us truly unhappy.
Many of us crave such a new start, but have never dared to believe it possible. Would such a New Year’s resolution not be bound to fail? Would the end of January not see us equally disheartened and fed up about spiritual renewal as it invariable does about our diets? We cannot change ourselves; we are who we are, for better or for worse: our mums used to tell us that, and psychology furnishes scientific proof of it. Greater love, joy, peace or patience seem as elusive as Elizabeth Hurley’s figure or Patrick Vieira’s fitness. Yet that is not the experience of millions of Christians over the centuries. Ordinary men and women from all walks of life have found that change, transformation or--to use an old fashioned-term, “sanctification”--might be impossible with human beings, but not with God. The Christmas story celebrates the fact that God united his divine nature to our human one. Or, put differently, in Jesus Christ, God is so close to human beings as to live in them, if they would like him to. It is true that no one can change himself. So says the Gospel. But God can change us from the inside out, by living in us. All it takes is an invitation to him to come. Would that not be a worthwhile New Year’s resolution?
# posted by tino @ Friday, January 20, 2006 
