I am an American, and as such, I have never known anything but life without a king or political tyrant. I was raised with the silver spoon of freedom always in my mouth. I have not had to fight for it, or sacrifice what is dear to me. But my parents instilled in me a sense of what authority means. I learned to fear it respectfully and to shudder at the possibility of resisting it. But I also learned that my interior life is my own, and I am free to resent that authority as much as I wanted. I am adept at passive-agression.
I am a champion "resenter". I can hold the most subtle grudges, not even noticing myself. I resent what I believe to be unfair, most decisions by others that I don't understand but have to live with, and those I do understand but disagree with. Where I work this means I spend a lot of time resenting. I discovered I resent in my family as well. I discovered that I want my wife to be here and take care of me and resented that she wasn't. That added another element to my resentment criteria. I resent anything I don't like. I feel like I'm getting shallower with each paragraph.
The point Chambers makes is that the disciple accepts the injustices suffered without resentment. I resent stuff that I don't like, forget unjust stuff. And then he says that I can't have as my purpose to be a disciple. Disciples are made supernaturally by my Master. He has to choose me and then make me His disciple. Great, now I need patience too. Let me just throw that brick on the resentment pile along with the others. And then Chambers says that my Master will not use me where my talents lie, but where His grace within me abounds. So, He's going to use me at the point of my addiction? There's another brick for the pile.
The practice I have discovered as a means to get rid of those heavy bricks of resentment is confession. So, what I do in this entry actually throws them out, not onto my back or into the deep recesses of my mind. It brings these ridiculous attitudes that affect so much of my thinking into the light where die. Like molds and fungus, they die in direct Son light. I learned very slowly how many resentments I have already, and how fast I gain them. They are the effects of my residual rights to myself and my obstinate hold on them.
The right to myself means that I am my own master. In this country, the whole culture teaches this. Very close on the heels of this lesson is the lesson of entitlement. I have avoided that one to some degree, but not entirely. I need to unlearn that I have a right to myself. I don't. I have a responsibility to my Master. He has all the rights to me; rights to all the gain that comes from my abilities, rights to the fruits of my labor, rights to all that grows from my creativity, and all the rest: time, body, thoughts, and so on. Instead, I horde those things to myself.
I don't know if I'm alone in that, and it doesn't matter. Even if I crawl out by myself alone, I have to crawl to my Master. The pit of self-absorption may be crowded, but that doesn't make it more right nor does it make it more comfortable. I suspect that I will find a lot of people at the foot of my Master too. Only there we're not crowded in like sheep pens, it's like pasture land. Freedom, according to the Scriptures, is found in my Master only.
It's one of the ironies of humanity that the freedom we seek is really found in servitude to our Maker. In some way it is like the freedom experienced by a drill that stops being used as a hammer and is finally used for its designed purpose. It lasts longer too (guess how I know that?). It is so hard to reframe my life this way. The framework I give up runs deep in me and my culture. But the benefits of being free from resentments are enormous. To not be resentful when my Master leads me through the garden of pain and loss means a level and degree of peace I can't imagine; serenity gone wild.
So, today, I will crawl a bit further out of the self-absorption pit. It will be somewhat easier today since today is a worship day. Yet even now I sense the desire to be a "someone" in this church. I know that is wrong. I must desire my Master instead. The only way I can follow Him with this local body of believers is to desire only Him, not the acknowledgement of my fellow believers. If I do gain attention, I must then bow to my Master and point those looking at me toward Him. Attention I gain is an opportunity to point to my Master and brag about Him. The measure of growth is how often I do, and when I do, how often I have to think carefully about extracting myself out of what I say. One day it will be my natural response. That will be nice, and peaceful…and very strange too. I can't wait!
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