Well, I was going to have some literary commentary here to go along with this post, but nothing on the internet seems to be working right now (other than this). Anyway, this post is kinda inspired from two different sources: my Sunday School lesson today and the book I'm in the process of reading right now -- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.
Let me start off with the Sunday School lesson. Chris, our teacher, came in and wrote 4 words on the chalkboard: goals, dreams, desires, priorities. Then he asked us to define these 4 terms. So here's what we, as a class, came up with...
- Goals = something realistic you plan to do
- Dreams = lofty, something you'd like to do... you don't put any (or much) effort into obtaining this, and thus expect little success from these actions.
- Desires = wants, feelings
- Priorities = hierarchy of dreams and goals
And Chris posed to us that Goals are dreams with deadlines. Also, all 4 of these are inter-related. We decided that the Flowchart would go something like this...
(Except sometimes the priorities have an overall effect on the desires and dreams and goals)
This lesson is something that hits home with someone like me... I'm generally a very organized, goal-oriented person and having a Sunday School lesson on these very things was something I could get into. The scripture that went along with this lesson came from several different places in the Bible... one of which was "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." (Psalm 37:4) Another was "Ask and it will be given unto you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened unto you." (Matthew 7:7)
This doesn't just mean that if you say that you delight in the Lord, then you can get that brand new car you've been wanting. Rather, if you TRULY are walking with the Lord and are striving to be like Christ, your 'priorities' will shift to be more like what Christ wants and less of those 'worldly', selfish ones. God isn't going to push himself on you to make a change; you have to make the decision for yourself. He's not going to give you the power to stop a bad habit even if you ask in prayer if you don't truly want to get rid of that habit. You have to want to accept God's will for your life. You have to want to make the change. And to grow in your walk, God's will must be the first priority in your life. You can't keep on doing the same ol' thing and expect to get closer to God.
I think for me in my life, where I've always had this big plan in my life, that's the hardest thing for me. I work so hard on accomplishing my goals and preparing myself for those things I have planned out in my future that I often make that the first priority in my life, shrugging my relationship with God off to the side. And its hard for me to keep him in first place in my life because sometimes its hard to make that connection between my aerospace engineering and my religious convictions. Its easy to get in the routine of relying on yourself to accomplish your goals... and if you work hard enough at it (at least in my experience) you can reach those goals too... at least I have been able to, so far. That's when you slip out of things.
A few weeks ago, in my religion class we were watching some video on the religious responses people had to the 9-11 attacks... they kept showing scenes of beaches with sunsets, and for some reason seeing the waves come in and out on that TV screen made me think of something. You know, when you were little and were at the beach. When the under toe comes, you can feel its impact. At first, its effect subtle, you can maintain your stance and keep your feet on the ground. But gradually the force of the current increases and eventually knocks you off your feet, pulling you under. This is like in your walk with God. At first impact, you can keep on going in your life the way things had always been and keep the guise that everything’s just fine, just the way it always had been... even fooling yourself. But eventually, it builds up and overcomes you... You loose control of your life because you've gone away from God's will for your life.
By not putting him as the first priority in your life, you're putting yourself at high risk for going astray... errr, actually you are going astray. If you're not careful, you'll lose it... like when the force of the under toe gets too strong.
Anyway, I just started reading The Screwtape Letters yesterday afternoon, and I've been surprised to find several passages within it so far that are somewhat related (or at least intriguing and applicable to life as I see it as a college student) to this same topic. Just as a little background, for those of you who are not familiar, Screwtape is a devil. The book is comprised of letters written by Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood - a devil in training (to give it a form of quatification). Screwtape advises Wormwood in the ways of converting wavering humans away from Christianity (or 'the Enemy' = God). Any quotes I make are things that Screwtape is saying as he advises Wormwood as to how best get the person on the side of 'Our Father Below' (the Devil).
"Finally, if all else fails, you can persuade him, in defiance of conscience, to continue the new acquaintance on the ground that he is, in some unspecified way, doing these people 'good' by the mere fact of drinking their cocktails and laughing at their jokes, and that to cease to do so would be 'priggish', 'intolerant', and (of course) 'Puritanical'." - Letter 10
"The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their 'sense of humour' so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humor is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame... A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke." - Letter 11
"The Christians describe the Enemy as one 'without whom Nothing is strong'. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off... It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing... Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one -- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." - Letter 12
"active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel." - Letter 13