A precious friend told me about this quote last week and I just now found it in a book that I am going through, as I work through these blasted super high standards that I hold myself to in life.... check out the punch that this quote packs!!!
"When anger is so much a part of your personality that you lose your capacity to find peace, it's an indication your good beliefs are ironically working against you."
I was floored when heard it, and then after it sank in good, I was speechless! It makes all the sense in the world though. If I am setting such high standards for myself... and if I am putting enormous amounts of pressure on myself to meet my insanely impossible 'godly' standards... then yes, I am going to get angry when I can't meet them. I am going to be frustrated with myself and also with others. I will be frustrated with others because I can't contain my standards to just myself, they bleed out and onto others around me. So when they don't live up to my standards, then I in turn become angry with them also.
So here is the bottom line question... well in my mind at least:
Where the hell did I come up with these insanely impossible, high, unreachable, supposedly godly standards? The more I ponder this, I am beginning to feel that God does not hold me to these ridiculous standards. He knows me...obviously He knows me better than I do, because He already knows that there is no way in heaven that I can reach the standards I set for myself. He sees what I have to offer and loves me inspite of it, loves me just like I am. He doesn't leave me like I am, obviously, but He also doesn't set these horrendous standards for me that I unconsciously set for myself.
This is the elder brother in me... ugh!!! Recognizing these standards one by one is the first step to removing them... I hope!!!
Along this same line, I make a book recommendation: The Prodigal God by Tim Keller, it's a must! Super convicting and amazing! I have never heard the parable of the prodigal son taught in such a way.
I've been reading and re-reading the letter to the Galatians the last few weeks, because I've such a strong bent toward religious legalism. There is another Scripture I've experienced to be true (people tend to use it in regard to the future final judgment, but I see the principle at work all the time in the here and now): "For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you." Mt. 7:2 The super-spiritual sounding standards we set for ourselves (and others) inevitably come around to bite us.
ReplyDeleteOf course we should be growing in grace and seeing the fruits of the Spirit in increasing evidence in our lives, but as for external regulations, the Holy Spirit has this to say to us Gentiles: "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell." Acts 15:28-29 Of course there are other instructions elsewhere warning against greed, drunkenness and the like, but I think the point is clear that we are not to be legalistic and impose a lot of external regulations on ourselves and others.
I am going to make a point of picking up the Keller book. I keep finding quotes from it everywhere I look.
BTW, I hope you're enjoying having your family nearby again!