Friday, March 19, 2010

Alone

It wasn't good for Adam, and it's not good for me, though not necessarily for the same reason. I'm not hurting for companionship or pining for a husband-- at the moment, anyway (like Nebraska weather, if you want it to change, wait five minutes). No I'm thinking about the self-deception that comes from being alone.

I have a number of teen friends here who talk about how they feel like their biggest challenge to being Christians is having to live in homes with unbelieving parents. I've realized that one of the biggest challenges to my spiritual health as a Christian is actually not living with anyone else.

Living at home with family, with parents and siblings, is the kind of environment that is frustrating. There is conflict, everyone has manifold opportunities to hurt others and be hurt by them. This kind of frustration with family life, I think, causes many people to think that their families cause them to be bad Christians. I used to think that too. But now I've changed my mind. I'm just as bad of a Christian when I live alone as I was when I lived with my family.

The real difference is that when I live with my family, I can't hide from the fact that I'm a sinner in need of forgiveness. I routinely hurt others, get angry with them, and generally create all kinds of badness with my mind, tongue, and hands. All of that badness is still in me when I'm alone, but it's hidden. When I am sheltered from my own wickedness by so much alone time, something much worse than sinful human interaction happens. It's called pride.

Because I can look back at my track record and see that I haven't hurt or angered anyone for a matter of hours/days/weeks or haven't myself been angry with anyone for that time period, I start to think that I'm becoming a better person. I begin to fall back into the sin of thinking that I'm getting the hang of being a good Christian, that "I can just take over from here Jesus, thank you very much for your help to this point."

Some might say that it's preferable to be sequestered away from other people where we don't have the opportunity to sin against them or to have them sin against us in these ways, I respectfully disagree. Of course I'm not a proponent of doing damage to my loved ones. Instead of promoting family conflict, I'm saying that to not sin against people simply because one hasn't the occasion to sin against them does NOT make one more holy than the one who has the occasion to sin against others and succumbs to the temptation.

A bigger and better life, one more meaningful and more useful for growing up as a Christian, than living alone and being "good" is to live with people who are frustrating and difficult, to live in repentance and forgiveness with one another. Love decidedly does NOT mean never having to say you're sorry...

So I pray that the Lord will give me a roommate or roommates when I'm back in the US with whom I can practice Christian restraint and charity, humility and forgiveness, and that He will bless me in the long term with a husband and family who will challenge my pride and never let me forget that I'm a sinner who needs Him. May He do the same for you, too.