Tuesday: Partially On, Leaky and Noisy
WEEK 13
TUESDAY
PARTIALLY ON, LEAKY AND NOISY
James 4:7-8
We are studying the mastery of inner division and conflict. The disciples followed Jesus before the coming of the Holy Spirit but with certain areas reserved—unsurrendered. They were like the people described in Joshua: “‘You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the LORD, to serve him.’ And they said, ‘We are witnesses.’” He said to them, “‘Then put away the foreign gods. . . .’ The people said to Joshua, ‘The LORD our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey” (Josh 24:22-24 RSV). They said they would serve and obey the Lord, not that they would put away foreign gods. They tried to live with divided loyalty.
In a hotel in San Jose, California, a sign over the radiator in each room reads: “Please turn the radiators all the way on and off. If turned partially on, they will leak and be noisy.” That is absolutely true of the spiritual life; a halfway-on spiritual life is leaky, and it is noisy. It sets up inner friction. A great many people have just enough religion to set up a conflict within them. If it possessed them wholly, it would be a concord, but halfway it is a conflict.
Bonnie Brown Heady lived on the lower floor of her house as a respectable, cultured woman. On the upper floor she lived in a brothel. In 1953, she ended in an electric chair in Missouri for abducting and killing a child. That is dramatic, but many electrocute their very souls by divided loyalties and double-dealing—and do it silently without drama. It is just as tragic.
Now how did the disciples get rid of this divided loyalty within? Did Jesus set one side of their natures fighting the other? That is what people everywhere try. Seneca did that: “I am still toiling with all my might at my old task of eradicating my faults.”* Another, a modern, says: “I intend to wring the last drop of self out of me.” But the self, concentrated on the self, is hardly the way to get free from self. That ends in self-preoccupation and, it may be added, in frustration. It just doesn’t work. There is a better way and more effective. The disciples found it—effortlessly.
O Lord, we would be free, free from the tyranny of a divided inner self. Free me there, and I shall be free indeed. Bound there, I am bound everywhere. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall not fight with myself but surrender myself and let God control me.
* No published source was found for this quotation.