UNDERSTANDING OUR NATURE

Who are we? The answer to this question is essential. If we cannot accurately answer this question, we will find that we are unable to manage our lives effectively. It’s like managing our car properly, which requires accurate knowledge. We have to be able to answer:

• Where to I put the gas, oil, and water?
• How much and how often?
• How do I maintain it?

We also need to be able to answer these kinds of questions about managing our own lives:

• What should I eat? How much? How often?
• How should I regard myself? Others? How should I treat them?
• Should I follow or suppress my desires? Apologize? Forgive?

In either case, the way we answer these questions can either be constructive or destructive. Much of what Augustine had written around 400 AD in his Confessions does not resonate with a generation convinced that they have to learn to believe in and to like themselves:

• By confessing our own miserable state and acknowledging your mercy towards us, we open our hearts to you, so that you may free us wholly, as you have already begun to do. Then we shall no longer be miserable in ourselves but will find true happiness in you (Book XI:1).

Augustine represents what is pejoratively called “dirty rotten sinner” religion. Instead of building himself up so that he could feel good about himself, it seems that Augustine was doing the very opposite thing – groveling in his “miserable state.”

However, according to Augustine, the way down was really the way up to finding “true happiness.” Much of what Jesus had taught agrees with Augustine:

• “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 14:11)

How can this be? It sounds so negative and demeaning, right? When we humble ourselves to make a complete confession of our sins, it is like lancing a festering sore, squeezing out the puss, and exposing it to the light. The festering sore cannot simply be covered with some positive affirmations like, “I am a wonderful person.” Instead, it has to be cleansed of its poison.

To cover our moral failures with affirmations to the contrary is cover a corpse with a sheet under the hot sun. Soon it will stink, and we will spend the rest of our lives trying to disguise the stink with deodorant. While this might seem to be a successful strategy, in the long-run, it requires a continual struggle to suppress or cover what cannot be covered.

Denial is costly. It also destroys relationships. It is like telling your wife, “I am a good person who feels good about himself. I am not going to allow you to make me feel guilty simply because I had a fling.” Denial causes us to not only be out-of-touch with ourselves but also with others.

However, denial is often our strategy-of-choice to deal with uncomfortable realizations about ourselves, but what we deny will not be easily silenced. The Psalmist David wrote about the cost of denial:

• For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. (Psalm 32:3-5)

Any form of healing must address the underlying problem. In the case of our relationship with God, it always begins by going to the root of our alienation from our Healer by confessing our sins.

All of this suggests that we have a moral nature, which must be understood. Why? If we fail to live in accordance with our nature, we will suffer.

Human freedom is maximized when we live in accordance with our nature. Just imagine a goldfish who sees a great world beyond his fish-tank and desires the freedom to explore it. With a massive effort, he leaps out of the tank to flap helplessly on the floor below. What he thought would be his freedom turned into his destruction. Why? He lacked the necessary understanding of his nature.

When we reject the accurate understanding of our nature, we too languish. The world might applaud us when we exhibit the “courage” to change our sex, but they are unable to put our pieces back together again. However, when we go with the flow of our nature, the struggle is minimized.