Recidivism 400

Am I destined to do the same things over again? Do I have tragic flaws that I can't escape?

Yes.

I am blind to most of them, but when they are made apparent to me I am crushed. Do I avoid confrontation again and again? Yes. Am I able to have a real conversation with my mother, ever? No. Do I avoid throw my wife under the bus for something that suit me? Yes. In a second, without even thinking.

It is hard to even admit those three things let alone the many more that I am slower to admit and then the many many more that I can't even see. If I actually saw all the things that I did again and again, if I realized the full extent of my propensity to repeat failures, to repeat selfishness, I don't think I could stand. In shame, I would run. I would move away. I would get new friends. I would bury myself in my work or my fitness. 

Some of those things I do do. It is a way to forget. It is a way to forget that I can't escape myself.  But it never seems to really work. Myself and my propensity to repeat is always there. The psalmist describes God that way saying:

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
   Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
   if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
   if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
   your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
   and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
   the night will shine like the day,
   for darkness is as light to you.

(Psalm 137)

That may describe God, the spirit that we can never escape, but it also describes my sinful self. Even if I go the depths of the sea, it is there; no matter whether it is dark or light, my sinful self is there waiting for me. It never leaves me. It is just like what God says to Cain before he kills Abel, “Sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you...” Lord have mercy on me. Where do I go to escape myself, because it is destroying everything in its path: my marriage, my career and even my fitness level? The recidivist self follows me everywhere.

I also connect with the "Woman at the Well" in her recidivistic ways. Where can she go to escape herself? If she goes to the well at noon and no one is there will she forget the her painful past? The memory of broken bridges that she has left behind- three, four, five husband, however many there are, who knows? Please just let me self-destruct in peace. Please don't interrupt my self-destruction. Don't bring it up. Don't try to help. Don't give me advice. Whatever you do, don't give me advice!! It is not as if I don't know what to do! It is not as if I don't know that I shouldn't avoid conflict. It is not as if I don't know that I should seek to improve relationships with my family members. It is not as if I don't know how my wife ought to be treated! Of course I know.

Praise the Lord for the Gospel-my only hope. Praise the Lord that He knows me, five husbands and all, all my repeat offences, again and again; all the ways that I choose myself at the expense of everyone else. And praise the Lord who has forgiven my sins once and for all. No longer does sin rule me. No longer does the law that condemns me have a voice. The voice of the law has been silenced! The law that points out my failures again and again has been satisfied. The law that says, "There you go again. How are you ever going to get better? How are you ever going to stop doing these things?" That law, that law no longer owns me. 

"Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes."
(Rom 10:4)