A Note on Sinning for Friends (Part Two)

If you are beginning to suspect that you have a tendency to sin for friends, I’d like to say a little more on what I’ve found on the subject. Here is a list of three signs that you may have the same problem I have. The list is a little haphazard, but it’s what I have so far.

1. Fear. In our more honest moments, we are aware of the sad truth that we do not make good saviors. But we try very hard. I have one friend who in high school periodically fell into the same snare. In her times of compromise, I felt as if I’d been lax in my self-appointed role as protector. If only I had paid better attention, I could have caught the sin in its gestation and kept her from it. This mentality caused me to redouble my efforts, thinking that if I only watched her more closely, I could rescue her from every temptation. I studied her with paranoia. I began to think of her as both friend and patient, and I interpreted the slightest cough as a sign of underlying cancer. Even in seasons of grace, I would sometimes hound her for information, discreetly interrogating until I was certain she was indeed doing as well as she seemed. All the while, I yielded ground in my own life to a debilitating fear. People were prone to sin, and in all my watchfulness I could not stop them, and I could not stop myself.

2. Jealousy. When we consider ourselves saviors, we develop a natural wariness of rival saviors. I cannot overstate the destructiveness of this mentality. I take a friend’s burdens upon myself, and suddenly I am the hero. Look what a great friend I am! But my folly is revealed when I hear about another person who has spoken an encouraging word—to my friend. Put under the lens of truth, this kind of jealousy is revealed as hideous. It’s that gross sinking feeling when I hear that he has been inspired by someone else. It’s the fear I feel when she seems to be recovering, and her need for me steadily decreases. I find myself acting like the would-be mother in the story of Solomon, so desperate to be a caretaker that I ask the baby to be cut in half. When charity becomes entangled with my search for significance, my so-called compassion quickly turns grotesque.

3. Lack of trust in God. Towers of Babel come in many forms, but they’re all the same in the way their builders try to reach Heaven by their own mettle. In the times I’ve fixated on saving someone by my own strength, I reveal an age-old pride. The first two items in this list both stem from this lack of trust in God’s sovereignty. First, fear naturally arises when I think that God will not be enough for the people in my life. If He is not caring for them, then I must fill the role. Second, jealousy stirs when I see that God can be to my friends what I can never be: the perfect intercessor. Just like Cain, I see one whose sacrifice is better than mine, and my flesh despises Him for it. The only way out is repentance: repenting for making myself more than I am and making God less than He is.

So that’s all fairly honest, maybe more honest than I should be in a blog. But I don’t see a way of approaching truth without bringing things to light, so there it is. Let me know if this at all strikes home.

Check back next Sunday for the conclusion, in which the thoughts are less disheartening!

A Note on Sinning for Friends (Part One)

I’m beginning to realize that I have a problem. I sin for friends.

It’s an old sin, one which wormed its way into me at a young age. I am only now beginning to finger it out from the nearly untraceable burrows its made.

Throughout high school, most of my closest friends endured a season of intense difficulty, during which they sometimes despaired of their walks with God (an experience I seemingly evaded—until college). From my perspective, their individual teeterings between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were out of control, and I worried that the demons they faced would overcome them.

So I stepped in.

I prayed, I encouraged, I conversed. I sometimes begged. When a friend fell into sin, I leapt upon them as if to smother fire, I gave myself as if throwing my body into a pit. They needed a savior, someone who would join them in their pain and walk with them—even carry them—to safety.

Which, in some ways, sounds very heroic. Until you realize it’s a little bit creepy.

We’ve all known a junior high boy (or, God help us, been one) whose zeal for a young lady made him cross the line from starry-eyed loverboy to thirteen-year-old stalker. He doesn’t yet know what he can and can’t be for a girl, and he becomes grossly possessive. Somehow, his successful first kiss convinces him he’ll make a good husband.

Well, my friendships have often looked something like this. I notice that a piece of advice somehow lands, and I suddenly believe I have wisdom to give. I notice a family member is having a rough day, and I’m convinced I can provide the answer if I try hard enough. I mull. I worry. Worry is the weapon I have learned to wield, and it has pierced its object just enough times to make me cling to it all the harder.

In short, I don’t yet know what I can and can’t be for someone. I become heavy with burdens that don’t belong to me. I become a kleptomaniac, snatching up others’ difficulties and loading them in deep pockets.

This verse from Galatians 6 says it better than I can: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

Throughout my life, when a friend has been caught in a transgression, I have often attempted to restore him. But I have not been very good at keeping watch over myself, and I have often been tempted. The temptation I face is one I now recognize as being common to many: the temptation to become savior.

Each of us is designed by God for a specific purpose, and our enemy always forms his blueprints from whatever stolen schematics he manages to obtain. In this way, our great callings become entangled with our great temptations, and we are left to sort out which is which by God’s help.

Tune in Friday for Part Two, in which I reveal some ugly parts of myself.

Beginning

Good Lord, I’m starting a blog. Now what have I gone and done?

I don’t even know where to begin. I guess embarrassing confessions are as good a place as any. Here goes…

Have you ever seen the movie Julie and Julia? I’ve watched it five times, and the most recent time I borrowed it from the library and considered it an honor to pay the hefty late fee when I lost it in the back seat of my car for over a week. Which is to say, I really like that movie. [Confession #1. More to come.]

Anyway, if you’ve seen the movie, you know that Julie Powell turns her obsession with Julia Child into a blog, in which she chronicles the mishaps and victories that occur while cooking her way through The Art of French Cooking in 365 days. I love this idea. As I was watching Julie and Julia for the fifth time recently, I had already begun working on this blog, and I wondered if I could do anything similarly productive with my obsession with Flannery O’Connor. (If you aren’t familiar with Flannery O’Connor, don’t worry. I hope to remedy that.)

If Julie cooked recipes and by doing so made something useful of her fondness for Julia, could I not do something similar with Flannery?

But upon further reflection, I realized that if I hoped to “cook” my way through Flannery O’Conner’s short stories, I was in for a perilous journey. Yes, Julie had to overcome her fear of eggs, but I would have to steal someone’s wooden leg. Yes, Julie had to endure a season of aspics, but I would have to run away with a special needs girl. And, although Julie admittedly had to overcome many obstacles to stay true to her goal, I would have to suffer a variety of gruesome deaths (shot by a gang of Misfits, gored by a bull, death by baptism, to name a few).

So scratch that.

Really, as I begin this blog all I’m interested in is keeping a record. There are happenings I don’t want to forget, ideas that require processing.

Does the world need another blog, I ask myself? The answer is almost certainly “no.” And yet here I am, sitting at the computer and typing this sentence, placing a comma and then a period at the end—here.

Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed to have entered that ever-widening circle of those who call themselves “bloggers.” There is a certain level of self-absorption that it seems you can’t escape, the same lingering stench that hovers about Facebook and Twitter, smelling of platitudes and faux leather. Does the world really need to know my thoughts about God, or the fact that I sometimes wonder what it would be like to go on a date with Flannery O’Connor? [Awkward confession #2. Many more to come.]

But ultimately I am not the one to decide whether you give your time to this blog. I’m not forcing anyone to read. I wanted to write, so I am. And maybe that’s commendable. If you want to read, please do and please comment.

For readers, here are a few promises I make to you:

1. I will try to be honest.

2. I will quote Flannery. A lot.

3. I will try not to make myself too seriously. I hope you don’t take me too seriously either. Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t want to waste your time with trite blather. That means I edit and revise and try not to say things I don’t mean. But ultimately whatever I write will have a mixture of wisdom and folly in it.

Anyway, I haven’t yet quoted Flannery. How’s this:

“Of course I offer all my critical opinions on long sticks that can be jerked back at once because I really seldom know what I’m talking about.”

Good thinking, Flan Flan.