Bad Choices
From the Series—Choices
November 7, 2003This evotional begins a new series titled Choices. Next week’s evotional will focus on how to make big choices. The following week we’ll explore the topic of pre choices. The most important choices we make are the choices we make before the choices we make. This week’s evotional focuses on bad choices.
During our weekend services on 11.02 we showed the music video Hurt—Johnny Cash’s rendition of a song originally written by Nine Inch Nails. Cash’s interpretation of the song is so powerful and so profound because his life was so full of bad choices. The sense of regret is almost palpable. In my estimation, it’s a 21st century approximation of a 10th century BC song known as Psalm 51. The circumstances are very different, but the feelings of regret are very similar. Check out the video before you read the rest of this evotional. You can watch it @ http://www.losthighwayrecords.com/e/cash11403.html.
One of the greatest dangers we face in reading the Bible is that you can read it, but if you don’t feel it you miss the point. I think there is more regret and sorrow and shame and grief concentrated in this one chapter than any other chapter in Scripture. Feeling it is as important as reading it. David sleeps with Bathsheba—the wife of Uriah, one of David’s thirty-seven mighty men. And then he has Uriah killed to cover it up. The prophet Nathan confronts David and David repents by writing Psalm 51. Take a few minutes to open your heart and open your Bible and read it.
Benign Choices
When you read the words “bad choices” I know fifteen hundred people think about fifteen hundred different things! So before your mind starts racing, let me make a distinction between two types of choices.
I think some choices are what I would call benign choices. You make a bad choice, but it doesn’t have any lasting impact. Last week our staff went out to lunch to celebrate a birthday. Have you ever ordered something and when the meals arrive at the table you wish you had what someone else ordered? That’s what happened to me on Tuesday. If you know me you know that I take ordering at a restaurant seriously. When I go to a good restaurant I don’t just pray over the meal. I pray over the menu! To me, food choices are important choices! And to make matters worse, and I don’t to incriminate anyone, especially Pastor Joel and Pastor Scott, but two of the people at the table got something that looked really good and smelled really good and they wouldn’t share. And I got stuck with this boring bowl of cheese ravioli. I don’t know what I was thinking. I never order cheese ravioli! I made a bad choice, but if you pin me down, I’ll admit that it wasn’t the end of the world. That bad choice falls into this category of benign. It doesn’t have any lasting impact on my life. Benign bad choices are opportunities to laugh at ourselves!
Malignant Choices
But there is another category of choices. Some choices are benign, but other choices are what I would call malignant choices. They metastasize and spread like cancer. And no part of your life is left unaffected. Maybe another way of saying it is this: the impact of malignant choices is farther-reaching and longer-lasting. David’s sin falls into that category. It was a malignant choice. There is no part of his life left unaffected. The way David says it is this, “My sin is ever before me.” The Living Bible says, “It haunts me day and night.”
Some of you are haunted by the bad memories of bad choices. In fact, I think most people are prisoners to a few bad choices they have made. Some of you have made some bad sexual choices—you’ve crossed some sexual boundaries and you don’t know how to get back. Some of you got married or didn’t get married and you can’t stop second-guessing yourself. You’re haunted by the “what if” question. And all of us have said something or done something we shouldn’t have and we can’t unsay what we said or undo what we did.
Your bad choices have metastasized. And they haunt you. Hurt says it this way, “Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair. Try to kill it all away but I remember everything.” And then that haunting question, “Who have I become?”
I don’t think David can believe what he’s done. When you make a really bad choice there is something surreal about it. It’s almost like an out of body experience. You ask the rhetorical question, “What was I thinking?” or “How could I have done that?” Most of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
You need to know that you’re not alone! In fact, it seems to me that the people God uses in the biggest way are the ones who made the biggest mistakes! They were haunted by bad choices.
Flashbacks
A few weeks ago I was reading about Paul in Acts 26. Paul says, “I threw these believers into jail right and left and whenever it came to a vote, I voted for their execution.” I read that right before bed one night and I’m not sure why but as I fell to sleep that night I wondered if Paul ever had nightmares? Did he see their faces when he closed his eyes? Did he ever have flashbacks? I’m pretty sure Paul was haunted by the memories of those bad choices. He robbed wives of their husbands and children of their mothers. He brutally killed innocent people! But here is the amazing thing: God uses this mass murderer to write half the New Testament.
I had a thought this week: Did Peter feel a twinge of guilt every time he heard a rooster crow? There is a poignant passage in Luke 22:61 right after Peter denies Christ and the rooster crows. It says, “The Lord turned and looked at Peter.” I don’t think it was a vindictive look. I just think Jesus wanted to establish eye contact to maintain relationship. Peter went out and “wept bitterly.”
You know how sometimes certain sights or sounds or smells can trigger a memory? I’ve got to think that every time Peter heard a rooster crow he winced—there was a twinge of guilt. He was haunted by the memories of a bad choice. Three bad choices! But here is the amazing thing: God chooses and uses him to inaugurate the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.
What I’m trying to say is this: we often see our mistakes as the reason God can’t use us. The truth is: the people God uses in the biggest way are the ones who have made the biggest mistakes. If you’ve made some big mistakes you qualify to be used by God in a big way!
Autopsies
David was an expert on bad choices—he knew how to make them, but he also knew how to re-solve them once he made them. Too many of us never learn from the mistakes we make because we never do an autopsy! We shouldn’t wallow in our mistakes, but we’ve got to examine them so we don’t make them again. Autopsies begin with acknowledgement—you simply look for what went wrong.
For David, the process begins in Psalm 51:3. He says, “I acknowledge my sin.” The healing process begins when you acknowledge what’s wrong. You cannot heal what you don’t acknowledge. You need to identify the problem, the sin, the choice, the issue. You need to name it.
A few weeks ago our team went to the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s hard to describe what happened there, but I walked away from the conference sober. I didn’t feel good, but I didn’t feel bad. I can only describe it as a sobering experience. The conference revealed some holes in my heart. I’ve got some heart issues I need to work on, but the healing process has begun because I’ve identified the heart issues. That is what acknowledgement is all about. It’s sort of like going in for a physical—you hope there is nothing wrong, but if there is something wrong you need to know about it so you can do something about it. You need to get the right diagnosis before you can get the right prescription.
Abstract Confession
I think one reason so many people never seem to find true forgiveness is because all they ever do is make generic apologies! I think we’re way too abstract when it comes to sin. We pray these generic prayers—“Forgive me for all my sin.” And I’m not saying that’s bad in all instances, but it is pretty generic. And the more generic the more meaningless it is.
Every once in a while, when I Lora and I get into an argument, I’ll try to end an argument with a half-hearted apology. It’s half-hearted because I have no idea what I’m sorry for. I just know that I want the argument to end! That’s pretty disingenuous isn’t it? Is an apology an apology if you don’t even know what you’re sorry about? Generic apologies are pretty meaningless.
Sometimes we make these abstract confessions and then we wonder why we have this lingering sense of subconscious guilt. The reason is pretty simple: abstract confession = abstract forgiveness. The word abstract means “disassociated from any particular instance.” When you make an abstract confession what you get is abstract forgiveness! You aren’t really sure you’re forgiven because you aren’t really sure what you’ve confessed—it’s all so abstract. Get specific. Name your sin.
Far-side Joy
Oliver Wendell Holmes said there are two kinds of simplicity. There is simplicity on the near-side of complexity and simplicity on the far-side of complexity. “I would not give a fig for simplicity this side of complexity,” He said. “But I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” In the same sense, I think there are two kinds of joy. There is joy on the near-side of sin and sorrow. And there is joy on the far-side of sin and sorrow. Near-side joy is pristine—it’s the kind of joy Adam and Eve experienced in the Garden of Eden. It’s the kind of joy children experience before the loss of innocence. It’s simple joy, pure joy. But there is another kind of joy that is so much deeper and fuller and richer. And there is only one place to find it—on the far-side of sin and sorrow. It is the joy of having and losing and finding again.
David has lost the joy. And he wants it back. Psalm 51:12 says, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” The word “restore” means “to return to original condition.” David wants his spiritual feeling back. He wants that supernatural sense of divine favor.
I can relate with the lyrics of Hurt. “I hurt myself today to see if I still feel.” One of the dangers of life in general and ministry in particular is a calloused heart. One of my bedtime prayers for my kids is that they would keep a soft heart. It’s so easy to harden your heart when you get hurt or when you hurt others. One of my definitions of sin is the loss of spiritual sensitivity. Our spiritual nerve endings become numb.
Maybe you’ve lost feeling. “Beneath the stains of time the feelings disappear.” What you need is what you think you don’t need: a broken spirit and a broken heart.
Remodeling
David says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart.”
The body’s 206 bones are constantly going through a biological process called remodeling which simply means that the bones are always being broken down and built back up. Osteoclasts break down the bone and osteoblasts rebuild them. It is that same process of remodeling that the body goes through when a bone is broken. And very rarely does a person break a bone in the same place because it’s thicker and stronger than it was before the break. What a perfect analogy. A broken spirit and a broken heart are constantly going through this process of remodeling. We are broken down and built back up. It keeps us from becoming calloused.
In his memoir, The Sacred Journey, Fredrick Buechner writes about his father’s suicide when he was a young boy. And he shares about the healing process. Buechner says, “When it comes to putting broken lives back together—the human best tends to be at odds with the holy best.” What a great distinction. “To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still.”
Million Miles Away
I think the last line of lyrics in Hurt are so powerful, “If I could start again a million miles away. I would keep myself. I would find a way.” The good news is that you can. But you’ve got to let God do for you what you can’t do for yourself. You need to let him forgive you and restore you.
I think one of the things that amazes me about David is that some of the most depressing and most hopeful psalms come from the same pen. David wrote Psalm 51—this regretful ballad. But he also wrote Psalm 103. “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; As far as the east is from the west so far has God removed our transgressions from us.” Translation: you can start again a million miles away!
I think the biggest challenge we face when we make a bad choice is that we give up on ourselves. S.I. Hayakawa said that there are basically two kinds of people: the kind of person who fails at something and says, “I failed at that” and the kind of person who fails at something and says, “I’m a failure.” Hayakawa says the first person is telling the truth. The second person isn’t.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said it this way. “Never confuse a single mistake with a final mistake.” Single mistakes aren’t final mistakes. If we made good choices all the time we wouldn’t need grace. But we do because we do. And God is in the business of turning final mistakes—mistakes that we thought we career-ending, life-ending, relationship-ending—into single mistakes.