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Hi. My name is Mike and I'm a jerk. That's what someone close to me called me recently (actually reference was made to the human anatomy, but I'm cleaning it up a bit here). As I sputtered a series of refutations, I realized she was right and I haven't been the same since.
I begin this with a style of declaration that starts any 12-Step testimonial because being a jerk is like an addiction. While I'm not a jerk all the time, conditions can conspire to put me right in the middle of a good long bout of jerkiness. Under these conditions, when I am a jerk, I'm not proud of the way I act, react and think. I just can't seem to control myself. I become overwhelmed and I say things I later regret and I act like a, well, like a jerk.
Fear is my drug of choice. Precisely, it is the fear of making a mistake or the fear of being discovered as a fraud that leads to the transformation to jerk. I'm capable of compassion and empathy except when I feel like I'm being criticized. When I'm under attack, the meanness comes out under the cover of defensiveness.
My hope is in the belief that I am a recovering jerk. I admit that I have no power over my addiction and my life is presently unmanageable. I believe that only God can restore my sanity and I turn this addiction over to God for care. The third step of the program has far reaching implications. The step calls for a decision to turn our will and lives to the care of God as we understand God.
It is the last part of this step that I'll be considering over the next series of posts. What do I understand about God? In addition to guidance from the 12 steps, I'll also use Alexander Shaia's The Hidden Power of the Gospels.
My hope is in the belief that I am a recovering jerk. I admit that I have no power over my addiction and my life is presently unmanageable. I believe that only God can restore my sanity and I turn this addiction over to God for care. The third step of the program has far reaching implications. The step calls for a decision to turn our will and lives to the care of God as we understand God.
It is the last part of this step that I'll be considering over the next series of posts. What do I understand about God? In addition to guidance from the 12 steps, I'll also use Alexander Shaia's The Hidden Power of the Gospels.
3 comments:
You are not alone. In fact, you have accurately described so many of us, from the "jerkiness" to the fear. Our humanity, similarities and repentance bind us together in ways that cannot be broken. The greatest tie is that we are all children of God with all that brings.
"Hi. My name is Doug, and I am a sinner." The late, great comedian Bill Hicks thought we Christians should run our church services like an AA meeting. I agree. If, in doing so, we embraced our fallen nature and started basing our self worth on the knowledge that we are of infinite value to The Almighty, then this "culture of ridicule" that we live in would have no power over us! The hardest thing to do as an adult is to take responsibility for our actions. It is a problem as old as Adam and Eve, themselves: "the serpent made me do it." This, my friend, is what we call "Original Sin." Only the Son of Man can save us and transform our lives!
As I was logging in to share recent insights into what a jerk I've been my whole life, and steps I'm trying to make toward recovery... I received a call from my wife, telling me her brother just died. I was thinking of sharing something from a book I'm reading by Sam Keen. Life is a mystery of "enchantment and terror". (In the Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred).
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