Just for Today, what I learned in AA

Photo with my three daughters, c. 1999.

The early days in my journey to sobriety were not hard, but progress was still only one day at a time. What I mean by that is this: it didn’t bother me that my drinking days were over; I had more important things to do, like attempt to put my broken family back together again.

But I was also anxious to get some credit in the bank—to prove I could do this. (16 years later, I have nothing to prove to anyone apart from staying sober, which is to continue to add to the 5,851 days I have amassed thus far…)

My drinking ‘career’ lasted about 18 years—from 18 years to 36 years. Not all that time was my drinking problematic, but the last 10 involved most Friday and Saturday nights where I was affected by my intake. Occasionally it was Thursday nights and Sunday nights—more often later in the piece. Rarely did I drink on the other nights of the week.

I had a pattern to my drinking. I enjoyed 3-4 beers or a few glasses of wine before finishing on whisky. My drinking bouts of 12-15 standard drinks would last 4-6 hours typically and cigarettes and cigars were among the things I smoked. I hid it pretty well. One of the tasks of my job role when my life came crashing down was to breathalyse fuel tanker drivers as part of managing an alcohol and other drug program for a major oil distributor. Yes, talk about hypocrisy!

The day I learned that I’d been unsuccessful in gaining the national health, safety, security and environment manager’s role was the same day my then-wife ended our marriage of nearly 13 years. Battling influenza, seeking desperately to climb out of a tailspin, my very first night separated from my then-wife and daughters I went to my first AA meeting. It was September 23, 2003. Coolbellup was the location.

I didn’t drink or smoke marijuana to escape a life of pain. I did it purely for the pleasure of those experiences, and yet I can honestly say that there is no greater pleasure than being sober and straight of mind. I learned to enjoy sobriety. Such freedom to be of one’s right mind. But it just takes a journey to get there. It takes a commitment, once for all time, to depart from one life and to enter another kind of living. Having been sober just over two weeks, at the worst time of our lives, I promised my mother I would never drink again on October 9, 2003. It was the kind of promise that you don’t go back on.

In the early days of going to AA five and six nights a week, I learned a lot about taking life one day at a time; sometimes an hour at a time. The Twelve-Step program helped no end! It reshaped my focus completely. Several other members I knew split their days into mornings, afternoons and evenings—three periods whereby a ‘successful day’ was when their head hit the pillow and they had done one more day sober. Sometimes through gritted teeth, phone calls, determination, the sweats. I was blessed in that I never missed it, but I was also still so very early on in my journey, and to relapse was a Y.E.T. (You’re Eligible [for relapse] Too) for me. I learned early on that AA was full of pithy sayings and acronyms and strategies all designed to get you through the arduous moments of temptation.

Just for today, I learned in AA. Later I connected it with the biblical principle of Matthew 6:25-34; that anything may be overcome, and self-control optimised, and anxiety reduced, when we focus on the day, the present moment, at hand, and most importantly, put God first.

A lot of this is keeping the mind disciplined to what’s within one’s direct control and simply surrendering the rest. Yet, surrender must be learned. It is never natural to admit defeat when it comes to the uncontrollable.

I don’t know why you feel you need to live your life one day at a time. It could be to overcome an addiction, manage anxiety or depression, resolve conflict or grief, or it could be about capitalising on an opportunity.

Know this though. Each day comes but one at a time. It’s not only all we have, it’s also all we’re expected to manage. It’s all we can manage. Attempt to manage more than that and our lives can quickly become unmanageable. Yet, focus on living life one day at a time and suddenly the wisdom of humility, in all its elegant simplicity, becomes the way we do life.

Whenever we want to achieve anything—whenever we NEED to achieve something, sometimes what will keep us alive or give us hope—we are helped by living life one day at a time.

Why forgiveness is plain absurd and why that’s important

Why is it that forgiveness is so hard? Why is it that letting go of an offence done against us, let’s say deliberately and unapologetically, is so darn difficult?

The tried and tested world’s wisdom around forgiveness suggests that if we don’t forgive, we continue to ingest what poisons only our own heart. In other words, the world’s wisdom—that I suggest a good many Christians subscribe to—is you forgive for your own sake.

Not only does this style of forgiveness not work (even though it sounds great), it isn’t biblical, and because it’s not biblical is the reason it doesn’t work.

At a level this worldly wisdom of forgiveness can work, because it’s very pragmatic — i.e. “don’t allow other people’s behaviour to destroy your heart.” This is very much what scholars call an ontological ethic, which is about doing the right thing, but not necessarily driven by the right motives. In effect, forgiveness done like this tends to be a cycle of forgiving and re-forgiving, which essentially isn’t forgiveness.

Forgiveness, or the letting go of a harm done to us, is done once, for all time. True forgiveness, that is. Most of the time we mortal human beings find it impossible to do that, and this is why forgiveness in its rawest form is quite utterly absurd.

But this observation in and of itself is crucially important.

We may ask why noticing that forgiveness is incredibly hard—that truthfully, it’s an absurd concept—is so important. We should ask why.

It’s feels absurd, because it is absurd. “What, let someone off the hook when justice should be done?” That’s the way our hearts feel.

This is where God enters the equation. I defy anyone to be able to truly understand the nature of grace in the act of God giving Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins. We accept this at the moment we ‘receive’ Christ, but we spend an entire lifetime coming to terms with what grace is, the mercy of God, and how practically we’re called to live out that grace to the effect of our relationships with others.

Compute this: God in Jesus forgave all humanity despite the abuses Jesus suffered mortally and despite the abuses God suffers from humanity eternally, and we’re commanded (woah, strong word!) to forgive just as God in Christ forgave us.

Imbibe that: at my age and stage of faith I’ve experienced the grace to forgive some absurd betrayals and yet there are other betrayals I’m still on the journey toward forgiving. (I’ve forgiven the people, but not the acts, for justice I still pray is on its way, so all may learn what I believe God wants us to learn.)

Try as we might, we cannot forgive anyone in our own strength. We can only find the grace to forgive someone if that grace is given to us by God. That WILL that cannot come from the selfish, justice-demanding human heart of ours, to let the offender off the hook. That WILL can come only as a miracle of God’s grace where we find ourselves letting them go. And it’s important that we receive this grace from God, for if we don’t, we will forgive and forgive and forgive and none of it will stick.

Don’t we see, that if our forgiveness is done purely to remove our pain—and not as an act of obeying God by imitating Christ—it either doesn’t work long term, or it works only as a pragmatic measure that needs work.

But the forgiveness that comes from God, because we sense the enormity in the grace we have received personally, is the grace outpoured on another sinner who just so happens to have set themselves against us.

Forgiveness from this viewpoint is absurd, because we’re willingly choosing to lose, just as God in Jesus chose to lose (his life). Somehow, however, in losing God came to win through the resurrection. It was the greatest turning-over the world had ever seen or will ever see. (And as a further benefit of our genuinely letting our offender go, we may well have a resurrection experience of our own.)

The only way forgiveness works is if we generously hand our offender their pardon.

I know, what about abuse? Just because we pardon our offender doesn’t mean there won’t be justice. We ought to always pray for and hope in expectation of the coming of truth.

But we can also know that we’re to forgive not to save ourselves pain—though that will be a benefit—but we’re to forgive because God commands us to, and because our Lord has made a way for us to do it, and that it is the only way we can live out peace within the lives God has generously given us.

As God set the tone for justice by forgiving us, we atone by forgiving others, leaving the justice to God in faith that God sees all and God will judge.

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What frustrates me as an egalitarian man

We can believe the genders deserve equal opportunity, equal respect, equal love, and still see that men and women were created differently (hello?). We think differently, act differently, and are turned on by different things, as a general rule.

There is little wonder women are confused by men, and men are confused by women. Ask many married women and men, their partners frustrate them; at least occasionally… when they’re being honest.

I know there will be blissful marriages where spouses say, “Not us! We have a delightful relationship, where we understand each other all the time.” There has to be the odd exception, but I’m also sure (based off experience) that there are so many couples out there that say they’ve got the perfect relationship and really, they don’t. They don’t have the perfect relationship, but some couples are insecure enough to need to project the image of marital bliss. The best marriages are anything but.

Indeed, experience dictates that it’s the couples that have conflict that are in the happiest of marriages, because their marriages are not defined by their conflicts, but by how they reconcile them.

What frustrates me about being an egalitarian man, who wants women to be accorded the same respect in the world as men, is that there are women and men that want to polarise it all and make us equals where there are definitely differences; and to God be the glory in that!

I have counselled far more men that have physical touch as their primary love language than women. I have counselled far more women that have quality time as their prime love language than men. Men far more commonly need sex and are most commonly frustrated in this area. Women are frustrated by a lack of attention from their men; a lack of time that their men give to being with them.

Are we not allowed to be different and yet be granted the same opportunities; rewards, pay, gifting, preaching, executive membership, housework, surnames, etc and the like?

If women require men to be constructed psychologically like women, to think and feel like women, we have a problem. Likewise, if men push women away and say they shall have no part to play in ‘men’s business’, we also have a problem.

Surely we can be granted equal opportunity—although we’re still so far away from this ideal!—and still appreciate our innate gender differences.

Think about it for a minute. It’s a fact that opposites attract. There is something in a woman that attracts a man, and likewise for the woman. It’s a force that cannot be stopped. It’s not our sameness that attracts us. It’s what the other has that we want. There is something in a woman that likes the physical strength of a man. There is something inherently beautiful to a man in a woman. Call these stereotypes if you wish, I just find that there are irrefutable evidences for this.

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As things have been, they can no longer be

It usually takes a long time to draw toward the relational precipice, but once that edge appears, no longer is it on the horizon. As it dawns on us, we realise whatever reflection time we had is now over. A decision must be made.

We may not have seen it coming, or perhaps we saw it a long time ago, either way it’s never easy to find ourselves in that place of needing to implement change. Never.

Or, maybe it’s just the case that someone we’ve known for some time has suddenly done something quite unexpectedly. We’re at a loss to make sense of it, let alone meaning. This too forces our hand. We may feel compelled to act.

~

In strong and stable relationships, communication is straight and plain, and the truth is exposed, because there is trust between parties that love underpins the communication.

Indeed, such relationships bear the hallmarks of integrity.

But it’s easy for relationships to fall into periods of comfort and complacency, where “it’s all good” becomes the pre-loaded mantra. Conflict occurs and truth goes under the radar. Everything appears fine, but usually one in the friendship or partnership or marriage is secretly or unconsciously seething, whilst the other remains relatively clueless. It also does happen that by silent ascent, denial is allowed which, like cancer, metastasises just as silently.

One of the key indicators we’re in a safe relationship is the ability to challenge the other person about how they’re impacting you. If we can’t do this, it’s a sign there’s a lack of safety, a lack of trust, a lack of security. 

~

Sometimes it can be the case that our partner or friend or co-worker or boss could handle what we’ve got to say, and perhaps it’s us that struggles to bring a hard word to them. Maybe we fear rejection, or just want to keep the status quo for some other reason.

Quite often though we would say what we need to say if we could. Something holds us back; it’s an instinct that we cannot fault.

Somehow, we know we can broach certain topics, but we can’t broach others. And it depends greatly on the cost of not being able to communicate our truths.

Sometimes it might be an inkling or a suspicion we need to follow up on. At other times we know it’s something that isn’t going away and often it’s affecting others as well as ourselves.

Sometimes we just know that we know that we know; things just cannot remain as they presently are. As things have been, they can no longer be. It could be that we’re tired or fed up with a pattern that’s existed over days or weeks or months or years. We could also be very concerned how the other person will take it; we could wear that burden that their life is in our hands. We don’t want to cause them grief, but…

~

We do need to bear in mind whether we’ve given them enough chances already to change. Sometimes we’ve gone on about it, ad nauseam. Other times, it would be a shock to them to find out what exactly we’re thinking.

We do need to determine whether we’ve been clear enough, but we also need to be firm within ourselves when we’ve already given plenty of second chances.

Each of us is perfectly within our rights to think, feel and say, “As things have been between us, they can no longer be; it stops here… [and here is the reason why]”

Truth between two people is paramount if trust is to exist and blossom. Where we cannot be truthful, we stand a step closer to betrayal. Where truth is not valued, compromise erodes the foundation of an otherwise sound relationship and it dissolves. Where truth threatens the existence of the relationship there is no relationship.

Truth is paramount as a foundation for love, and love is needed in all relationships. Love is far more than romance. Love is more about goodness and goodwill and integrity. To be loving we must be truthful, for what is it if we shrink from speaking truth? It’s a failure to love.

~

When we get to the place of, “As things have been, they can no longer be,” we have to wear the fact that they might say, “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

With truth, it’s better late than never, but truth on time is best.

We must expect resistance. Confrontation brings anxiety in both parties, but what is necessary must necessarily occur. And where we stand on the other side of the confrontation, and we’re the ones being confronted, we must pray for the poise to respect the one bearing sad news.

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Respect known by another name

Can you imagine what I’m called when I appear in the behaviour of one to another; and it doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, white, black, brown or ginger, northern hemisphere or southern. For all have a claim of respect.

Whether I’m seen out-and-about, behind closed doors (even better here though!), or anywhere else is inconsequential. Others notice me most in my absence; when there is evidence of rudeness and crudeness.

When I’m seen, it’s clear that I live for the other person, even as I in doing it receive life from God. I’m a form of respect. The regalest form.

People notice me, of course, but they may struggle to put their finger on it. They see me as pleasant, as attractive, even kind.

Many people think it’s men who most need me, but I can tell you that this is a form of respect that women crave more than men, but I’m not for one moment saying that men don’t desire it much.

Oh yes, this one’s proof that women need respect as much as they need love. When my name is revealed you’ll know why.

My name is gentleness.

Women love a gentle man, for instance. Yes, that’s a common name given to men—gentlemen. So, what happened? When us men demand to be respected, we’re not being gentle. Gentleness demands nothing.

Yet, gentleness is also a requirement if we understand the need of respect across the board.

Gentle men are not ‘softies’, but in appearing gentle, men who do not get it will see a softness that grates. Gentleness is the decorum of reliability and sacrifice—the heart of God exhibited as in the fruit of the Spirit. When we bear this capacity of respect, whoever we are, we have the ability to win humanity to friendship; no strings, just mutual safety and coherence.

Respect is ecumenical. Everyone needs to be respected. 

And gentleness is respect known by another name. 

Be gentle with another person and they’re respected. 

When they’re gentle with us, we feel respected.

Gentleness is the centrality of respect that resolves conflict and speaks a breezy peace.

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Stop killing relationships with kindness

As my son overwatered his new plants, God said, “That!” It’s the word that most gets my attention in terms of God speaking to me. I knew straight away what ‘that’ was about. Like he’s done a few times beforehand, my son was killing his plants with kindness.

You know where I’m going with this; we do the same thing with our relationships.

We kill our relationships with kindness in this entitled age. As empaths, we enable our narcissistically-oriented partners, parents, siblings, children, co-worker/boss, friends (etc, etc) by doing things for them, by allowing them to treat us disrespectfully, by always being the one to go the extra mile, by always being the first to apologise, by offering the other cheek time and time and time again, by rescuing them in a hundred different ways, by ensuring they will never learn… ad nauseam. 

We pretend to overlook things that should be confronted—thinking we’re being good Christians to do such things—but really, we’re avoiding conflict that needs to take place.

If we can’t have the conflict, presumably because we have a partner, parent, sibling, child, co-worker/boss, friend (etc, etc) who will not react well, we have deeper problems. But you know that already.

Now kindness is very important—yes, it’s a biblical trait to be kind. But it isn’t kind to be submissive in the midst of an aggressor, and someone who’s always taking advantage of us is an aggressor—particularly (as the test would have it) if and when we would say, “No! Enough’s enough!”

It isn’t being kind being the doormat all the time. We gave them a chance; perhaps we’ve given them a few hundred chances. It isn’t kind to them or us to continue to submit to familial tyranny.

No, rather the kind thing would be to call it to gentle account. See where it goes. Calling a matter to conflict is the surest way of doing a true kindness.

The only way others can learn how best to interact with us is if we give them feedback. “I didn’t feel respected when you did that… what I’d prefer you do next time is… can you come toward me this time?”

Feedback is crucial if we aim to be genuinely kind.

It’s kind to offer others the truth about how we feel after engaging with them.

The only way we can learn if we’re in a safe relationship or not is through challenging the status quo. If we’re ‘allowed’ to challenge our partner, our parent, our child, our sibling, our co-worker or boss, our ‘dear’ friend, we can tell we have an authentic, trustworthy, safe relationship—one worth keeping.

But if we find that our challenge changes things between us—and we find there’s a degree of conditionality about the relationship as far as the other person sees it—then, too, we know where we stand.

~

Being truly committed to kindness ensures we speak our truth in love. It also means we give others this same consideration—that we respect their kindness of truths spoken in love.

When we do this, we don’t fall into the trap of ‘keeping the peace’ which is literally about killing the relationship with [a fake] kindness.

What I find often in coupling counselling, especially in the early going, is the phenomenon whereby either or both partners were being too ‘kind’ to express what they really felt. And it always ends badly, because it’s a shock… “You were thinking and feeling THAT?”

Actually, I could extend this observation out to any relationship, and especially workplace relationships. Most conflicts are either avoided or they destroy the relationship. There is a third way.

In reality, what most concerns us is if we speak up, we fear being rejected, ridiculed, talked down to, or them giving us feedback we don’t want to hear. It’s actually the other way around in great relationships. We need to be able to speak up in order to have a relationship worth keeping.

~

We find this most compelling in reflection upon some relationships that died long ago. They died because we overwatered them. We didn’t trust them with our truth, they didn’t trust us with theirs, and when we finally spoke the truth to each fracture occurred.

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Schooling transgressors in respect with boundaries

Boundary transgressors come in all shapes, sizes, situations, overt and covert, both subtle and belligerent and all manner between. If we take Jesus seriously in living a life devoted to speaking truth in love, we will need boundaries for many kinds of people and scenarios. Sure, none of this is easy, but it is all imperative.

Boundary transgressions happen to us in the supermarket, in schools and colleges, on sporting fields, and, hazard to say this, even in our own homes! (Who would have thought?)

Actually, they happen in our own homes most of all; within our families and rippling out from our closest friendships to our least acknowledged acquaintances.

You know that feeling of having been used, don’t you? Sure, you do. We all do. Unless that is, we’re a ‘use-ee’. Here’s an everyday, minor example: it’s the friend request from the person who, the moment we accept, bombs us with page and group suggestions without even a hint of, “Hey, I’m so-and-so.” It’s just another way of being spammed. We let it go. There are, however, far more despicable transgressions we need boundaries for.

Speaking the truth in love requires courage but be encouraged; if it’s doing God’s will that motivates you, you’ll love executing boundaries.

Boundaries are a loving way to say, “Ah, wait a minute; no you don’t!” You see, it’s loving to not let people get away with pushing us around. It’s called being assertive, and biblically there’s a name for it. It’s called peacemaking. Not peacekeeping! PeaceMAKING.

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When we make peace, we do what we need to do to make peace occur in our living situations. We insist that our peace is something we wish to retain. We cannot exude peace if someone causes us to lose our peace. We must retain our peace, then, to be of any good effect in others’ lives.

Making peace with others who disrespect us is done through boundaries. When we execute a boundary by saying, “Umm, no!” we invite the other person to learn what would be preferable. It’s not our fault if they reject our invitation. But if they take us up, our invitation has given them an opportunity to learn what is reasonable in terms of the status quo between us. We’re on a journey of creating peace between us.

But if someone insists we’re being unreasonable by stating what we think is reasonable we have a bigger problem on our hands. The relationship as it stands is untenable. We may need to check that we have spoken the truth in love—that it was communicated calmly and gently though clearly and firmly. We might seek clarification over what we did wrong in communicating our requirement; did it hurt their feelings, for instance?

If it hurt their feelings (or that they were angry) and we were being gentle with them, we have another bigger problem. We may need to communicate that we’re puzzled as to why they would be hurt (or angry) when we were merely communicating clearly and calmly. The conversation itself is a boundary conversation. Grown people should be able to negotiate without threatening each other.

For those who insist on doing what they want, when and how they want, despite what we might feel, our mere raising of boundaries may send them into shock and flurry. Be prepared for it. We hold our ground in humility and courage.

So, here’s the test of whether you’re relating with a narcissist or not. A narcissist will not take kindly to our assertive request that a boundary be honoured. It will either be greeted with anger and rage or a simmering vengeful discontent will fill them; watch out for this latter response! “Expect it when you least expect it,” might well be their modus operandi.

~

We understand that we have a role in their discipleship. When we understand our lives in the context of the glory of God, we understand that God requires of us to deal maturely in all manner of our lives, including, as it pertains to this, how we interact with others. We must speak the truth in love.

So, having taken our responsibilities seriously in loving others appropriately, for to love is appropriate, we commit to doing and saying what must be done and said. Even, especially even, when it causes conflict. How will they know what we need otherwise?

We take counsel of these words, too, in our own lives. We learn that when others speak the truth in love that they’re to be honoured, even when it feels challenging for us in the moment; when their boundary is reasonable, and it requires change of us. How can we expect them to respect our boundaries if we flout theirs?

~

Boundaries are beautiful. They give us a frame for relating with others. They help reinforce respect, and where respect thrives trust survives. Boundaries breathe freedom into relationships, for when we know the boundaries, we can respect them and be blessed by those who appreciate our respect.

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Okay, let’s talk inappropriate sexual relationships

How can an experience that feels so wonderful (or promises to feel so incredible)—a mountain-top experience for the senses—be so absolutely fundamentally wrong as to be one of life’s most treacherous paradoxes? If not one of the most, THE most. There is no hint of exaggeration in this!

Anyone who’s been betrayed by marital infidelity knows how deep the cut goes; eviscerating us at a soul level—the person we trusted most involved in not only the worst unfaithfulness can be, but it changes our whole life, and other innocents we care about, and instant grief journeys commence with ferocious immediacy.

But this is not just about marriage. It extends to every relationship. 

In every relationship other than with our marriage partner (which is also fraught with its own dangers especially due to assumption and miscommunication) we are capable of acting complicit or otherwise with others in ways that may bring disgrace that is almost impossible to erase; reputations completely re-written seemingly overnight.

Every inappropriate sexual relationship has as its end the damaging of other relationships that extend out in a ripple of shame.

And this article, from the get-go, is not against sex-before-marriage relationships per se. Sex-before-marriage, between two ‘free’ adults, is nothing like ‘inappropriate’ in comparison to affairs and many forms of sexual abuse.

What about ‘consensual relationships’

Let’s talk consent. How wrong it is for men and women to make assumptions on the issue of consent. Rape or sexual assault occurs within marriages where men (usually in this case) assume they have a right to sex, and then act on that ‘right’. Of course, there’s no such right, even in marriage. Intimacy as a fruit of trust goes before the sexual encounter for sex to be truly consensual.

But what about other inappropriate sexual relationships, like a doctor with her patient, a pastor with his worship leader or parishioner, a manager with an employee, that may seem at least for one person as ‘consensual’. This is not just about the power differential; though that’s the obvious thing. Those in loftier positions need to guard their hearts to the degree that even inappropriate sexual thoughts are no-go zones, let alone the accommodation of flirting and actions that easily become sexual advances.

Where we don’t guard our hearts,
we should expect our hearts will fall.

Those in loftier positions don’t just have more power, they have a power, a charisma, an allure, an untouchability, an attractiveness that people in ‘lesser’ positions will be forgiven for coveting at either a conscious or an unconscious level. Consciously, those with less influence are given to feeling guilty for ‘advancing’ with this other person, which is the very genesis of the effects of sexual abuse. If they’re unconscious to what’s going on, and this happens very often, they’re actually being betrayed by the more influential party at a far deeper level that may well create future trauma.

To make the person in the less powerful position in any way responsible for ‘flirting’ or bringing the relationship into being is a farce of the evilest proportions.

And something specifically for people in pastoral positions. There is what’s termed a fiduciary function that is fundamental to such ‘pastoral’ roles. They are inherently about trust—the trust all manner of people place in the office. Pastoral roles are integrally ambassadorial. Pastors are regents—it isn’t our power we wield, because we are custodians of the most awesome power given in holiness by God.

How utterly anachronistic it is then that a pastor would find themselves in an inappropriate sexual relationship. It ends the call to ministry, unless by some grace on God’s part that some ministry could emerge out of the pastor’s recovery, but probably not as a pastor. The only way one could foreseeably be reinstated pastorally is if there was, for some valid reason, a universal chorus of ascent to the concept.

For the rest of us

There are thousands of attractive people in our immediate reach—all good looking, all good sounding, who move in interesting ways, all cute in their unique way, all mysterious enough to captivate our attention.

So, why pick one to have an inappropriate relationship with?

Wouldn’t it be better to concede before God, “Lord, You know I need protection from myself here, because without wisdom, discernment and self-control I know I’m capable of doing something that is not only totally inappropriate, I could bring so much harm as to destroy life through my betrayal.”

Those who think they’re beyond temptation in the area of sexual sin are just fooling themselves. Let us rather be honest about how virulently our hearts are won to sin. Let us imagine the betrayal that is experienced by those we love and others along the way who never deserve to be dealt a grief process. All, in some cases, for a ‘fling’.

For Christian men, we must remember that Jesus was pro-women in many ways that complementarians may deny. We must hold this in tension with the angling of our hearts when it comes to the women in our midst, and even those we see on our screens.

A final word on pornography. It’s an inappropriate sexual relationship just as bad as one with a real person. Recall Jesus speak in castigating terms about even a look of lust…

Which leads me to finish by saying this. None of us is pure, and all of us have at least had thoughts, feelings and temptations. Let us commit afresh, each day, to cutting these off at the pass with clinical precision. God is always watching.

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Depression as a spiritual nemesis to be expected and faced

It’s no new thing for Christians and pastors to struggle with depression. I think to Charles Spurgeon, and John Bunyan and Martin Luther suffered tremendous anxiety. Depression is an occupational risk for pastors and it’s a vocational reality for many Christians.

Spiritually, we’re all targets. The enemy wants us discouraged, despairing and disillusioned. And ultimately the enemy does have success to a degree.

Add to this reality the nature of relationships, which are innately upsetting (others to us, us to others). Whether we like it or not, we give people a certain power over us. Their opinions matter, whether we loath that idea or not, and just about all of us do.

Then there are the unrealistic expectations we have for ourselves, often driven by unspoken demands of others. For ten encouragements, we may find that one negative thing feels like a spike driven straight into our heart, and this is particularly the case when we sense that we’re targeted by someone who is not ‘for’ us.

Finally, there’s the fact of our existential aloneness, and this can seem especially surprising to Christians, but it shouldn’t be. We were built for connection, and yet we ourselves are islands by nature. We must be very intentional about connection and courageously honest if we’re to stay mentally healthy.

But the idea of our spirituality—whether we seriously consider ourselves ‘spiritual’ or not—is enticing. My wife was telling me that at an RUOK Day talk they mentioned stomping on ants—ants being automatic negative thoughts. Our mentality feeds and feeds off our emotions and all this affects our spirit.

It’s not just that the work we do to build God’s Kingdom is a threat to the enemy. That’s the given. It’s the idea that we are God’s property that the enemy hates most of all. If there’s any way we can doubt our surety of salvation—that we were worthy of Jesus’ sacrifice, of the Father giving the Lord over, for us—the enemy is in on that. It’s a spiritual conquest that follows us pre-salvation, all the way to the cusp of death.

I can tell you personally, as a person who was called to ministry 15 years ago, who has held multiple pastoral positions, given 7.5 years to Masters level study, and counselled and mentored many, I have been astounded as to how quickly I can slide into a depression, and how insidiously anxiety has become me.

The descent of those thoughts, the downward spiral, the negative trajectory, can be so sudden, and there’s nothing personal about it, because this phenomenon is common to all humanity. We’re not weak to be susceptible. There’s much more to it than that!

Why would we not expect pastors and Christians not to get depressed or suffer anxiety and panic attacks? Perhaps our susceptibility leads us to God in the first place, and once we’re the Lord’s there is suddenly a higher price on our head.

The enemy wants to steal our hope, kill our faith, destroy our love for God; the enemy does this through deep discouragement and by causing us to doubt that God indeed loves and protects us.

The more God matters to us, the more the enemy hates it. The more God matters to us, the more the Kingdom matters, the more susceptible we are to lament this broken world and indeed our own brokenness. Of course, we must balance all this up with a healthy dependence on God, which is never an easy proposition.

The more we trust and love and fear God, the less we will trust and love and fear things that don’t deserve our reverence.

But we must expect mental illness and face it when it arrives. There are no guarantees as far as recovery is concerned, but one thing is guaranteed: God loves every single one us eternally, no matter the status of our mental health, and there’s nothing any of us can do to be separated from God’s love.

We face our depression when we have expected it. More seminary courses need syllabi on this occupational risk. More Christians need to hear it preached in sermons. More pastors need to take the risk of being transparent. There’s no shame in having depression. But we do need to be reminded of this when we’re suffering.

For me, the moment it dawns on me that I’m depressed is a good moment. My wife will tell anyone it’s when I begin to face it that I begin to climb out of it. I’m not for one moment suggesting, however, that that’s a foolproof method. But it is a fact. Whenever we face something, we receive hope in exchange for the courage we show.

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash