I read Romans 8 again this morning.
Like any good Lutheran, I’m always drawn back to Romans, and this part of the book of Romans especially calls me back over and over, always revealing more and more.
A couple of things.
8:6 – “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
I have struggled with “body issues” since 4th grade. Over twenty years. I remember when I got my 4th grade school pictures and a family member commented that I “better be careful or you’ll get chunky” or something to that effect. And it’s true, in that picture I have chubby cheeks and a bad perm and that weird asymmetrical squinty thing my eyes do when I smile for real.
So that’s where it started.
My weight has yo-yoed a lot. I’m not sure if every woman can tell you her highest and lowest weights for the past twenty years, but I can. 99 pounds in junior high, then up to 127 in high school, down to 119 when I went to college, up to 146 when I moved back home, up again to 169 which seemed gigantic when I moved to Fargo, down to 130, up to 170, back down to 114 where I see pictures of myself and think I look too skinny – then up, up, up to 220, down to 143, and back up to where I am now...
...and I suppose I’ll just say it even though posting my weight on the Internet feels like a tiny bit of death…
...up to 181, as of yesterday morning.
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
I saw The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo over the weekend, and for whatever reason, Rooney Mara’s character Lisbeth elicited a weirdly strong reaction from me. During the last part of the movie I couldn’t even follow the story because I was focused in so closely on her – her transformations, her body, the way she looked so effortless in both heels and badass boots (that’s just not fair my mind screamed – that she gets to be both the classy pretty girl and the rad tough girl and she also gets to be punk-rock gorgeous while eating nothing but Happy Meals!)
I don’t know why I reacted that way – I have thoroughly enjoyed plenty of movies with attractive female actresses. But for whatever reason, a bunch of my stupid self-judging, self-obsessed, self-pitying junk got birthed out into the light… again… and I suppose that means I have to deal with it… again.
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
So I was reading Romans 8 again this morning, and it occurred to me that every time I let that stupid liar voice come up again that tells me I’m too fat, that tells me I’m getting too old already before I’m even 35, that tells me I’m not pretty enough because I have asymmetrical eyes and bad skin… I’m setting my mind on the flesh.
I think so often the American-Christian tendency is to read Paul’s talk about “the flesh” as being about obsessive lust, but maybe another aspect of “setting the mind on the flesh” is, well, thinking so damn much about my flesh.
Maybe the sinful, destructive, deadly thing is believing the liar scratching at the door of my Enneagram-Type-1 soul that I’m not good enough for a million different reasons. And maybe Romans 8:1 is right, that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” and I suppose that means I have to stop condemning myself so harshly if God has already made the call.
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
I don’t know if there will come a time when these “issues” go away. I hope so. I’m so tired of the liar at the door keeping me locked in, keeping me from truly seeing you, keeping me from being the complete, free and powerful person God calls me to be in this world.
Craig Koester, in speaking about the book of Revelation, says that evil rages fiercely not because it is powerful, but because it is wounded and losing and dying.
I think that’s true.
8:31 What then are we to say about these things?
I say yes, and I say the liar at the door is getting flustered.
In the words of Ryan Adams he’s “angry like a salesman who just can’t make a sale.”
If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34Who is to condemn?
Not me. The Spirit dwells within, and it is getting harder and harder to look in the mirror and believe the liar.
It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Not even nakedness. Not even the fear of being caught naked, the fear of being seen for the flawed and vulnerable and imperfect person I'm pretty sure you can already see anyway.
36As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
More than conquerors.
More than conquerors.
More than conquerors.
Like a drumbeat, like a heartbeat, it echoes deep, deep, all the way down to the truth that was there all along. A truth louder than the lie when it finally bounces up into reality. A truth that will not be ignored or dismissed. A truth that laughs in the face of the liar, then scoops you up in its arms to hold you close, then takes your hand and says “let’s do this thing.”
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
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