A Big Hole in Our Home
I am tired of recording and writing entries to my diary for there is nothing worth recording. Shall I record my defeats?
I am so weak but I must fight to live. Fighting against the "old man" is now a matter of survival. How can I thrive in life without surviving the fight first? I must be triumphant first in my walk before I can expect the graces of God planted in my heart and soul to grow and thrive.
I already spent more than enough years with sin. For 19 years, I have been under the condemning power of sin. And the following 37 years, I was not able to experience deliverance from the indwelling power of sin due to my failure to mortify the flesh. It is my prayer this time that God will grant me 24 more years to experience that vibrant, peaceful, and productive life of service. That is a life worth living despite the previous setbacks and misery.
This afternoon, I was supposed to share a message for our Thursday Prayer Meeting in the school. It is good that two Pastors from the Center for Community Transformation (CCT) came and they told me that the President requested them to share a message.
The message that I was about to share is a story of an unhappy couple. Reading their story, there are cases that I could relate to the experience of the man and in other cases to the experiences of the wife.
The man is a theological educator, just like me, and yet unlike me, he owns an extensive library of theological books and Bible commentaries of great writers known in history. However, another similarity that we share is there is a huge gap between his library and the actual "video" of his life.
This is where I stumbled upon the term "paraplegic" that I shared on Leo Threads this morning. The term is used in the context of relational dysfunctionality. The man though skillful when it comes to his theological articulation is suffering from relational tension with his wife and children. Such tension drains his energy to be effective in his public ministry.
The problem is that no one detects who the man is in his real life. He never fought with his wife publicly, never separated, and never considered divorce. They kept attending Sunday Worship Services and were faithful in their tithes and offerings. In Sunday School classes and Bible studies, the man displays his knowledge of the biblical text. However, at home, he cannot control his anger, is easily irritated, and is often explosive. Most of his time is spent in front of the computer. He and his wife only discussed superficial matters and his words towards her were harsh and impatient. Love, grace, and joy are strange in the life of this theological educator.
The man was not physically abusive, not addicted to any substance or pornographic material, and remains committed to his marriage. Many people looked up to him. However, the wife could no longer endure such a situation. She wanted to live a life without her husband.
One day, the woman told her husband that they could no longer continue with this kind of life. She asked him to seek counseling.
Meeting the counselor, the couple had time to share their life story. Listening, the counselor was surprised to hear the story of a theological educator and his believing wife and yet God has no place in their life.
The man and his wife though they have an intellectual understanding of the gospel, its power to transform their relationship is strange to them. Lane and Tripp describe this situation as a "big hole" in a home. Here is how they explain the nature of this hole:
They walked around it every day. Things would fall into it, and the hole would get bigger, but they didn't seem aware that it was there. They didn't realize that other houses didn't have holes and that those that did need to be renovated or demolished (Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp, How People Change, 2006, p. 2).
The man even owns a "manual" on how to fix such a hole. However, his failure to see the hole inside their house caused her wife to suffer from its "dust, smell, and heat that drifted up from the hole . . ." (ibid.).
I am afraid that the story of our theological educator and his wife is not exceptional. Due to our gap in understanding the true nature of the gospel, many Christian couples live as if the hole doesn't exist.