A Drifter Among Us

"Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison"           -C.S. Lewis

Over the past few weeks, I've noticed something creeping into my life. It was slow and subtle at first, the way you often find habits or feelings forming. I felt it in my thoughts with coworkers, feelings with friends, conversations with loved ones, and actions with those close to me. The deliberateness of it soon took control.

Have you ever heard the old saying that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death? Well that's where I'm at right now. I've let the toxins swell within me to a boil. I'm suffering from a critical spirit and it's poisoning me.

I'm not going to try to hammer out why, or where it comes from. That would be to exhausting to uncover and certainly to read. I sat through a sermon several weeks ago and something was said that I found enlightening and I think is an answer for how to deal with my criticism. We all pray. All of us. Even those with doubts of a deity.

Darrin, my pastor, reasoned that we've engaged in an idolatry of some degree in our life. Most of us, in our relationships. When we bitch and complain to our friends, it is taking the frustrations that we should be taking to God (vertically) and dispatching them instead to those we value above God (horizontally).

This is why my prayer life sucks. I treat God like most North-American Evangelical Christians treat one another; act like life is great on Sunday with people you have shallow connections with and then "get real" with the drinking buddies or sororiety sisters or high school best friends during the week.

It's just a thought for an idle Monday, but instead of letting the cynicism take control, take your frustrations vertical before you think of taking it horizontal.