“For what I want to do I do not do . . . [and] . . . what I do is not the good I want to do.”
- Romans 7:15,19
You go visit your physician for a checkup during which the doctor begins to strongly suggest your need for some lifestyle changes, beginning with exercise. “You need to quit spending so much time at the gym,” he chides. “You’re going to kill yourself with all that exercise. You’d be better off lounging around on the couch snacking and watching TV.” Then he launches into a lecture about your diet. “You need more calories,” he says, “higher fat, more sugar and carbs. Try eating burgers and fries for lunch instead of salad, maybe add a chocolate chip cookie or two, and in the evening a big platter of fried food, with perhaps a wedge of pie a la mode (at least two dips). Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to imbibe three or four good stiff drinks before dinner either.”
Have you ever had a doctor say anything like that to you? Ha, ha, me either! But if you are like me I bet you have dreamed about how nice it would be to indulge yourself endlessly like that, and still keep your body in good shape without the necessity of those torturous workouts at the gym. It is sort of like dreaming about winning the lottery, that if we had all the money we ever needed and the ability to buy anything we ever wanted, life would then be just about perfect. Or would it?
Here is another question: when have you felt best about yourself, the most fulfilled? Has it been when good fortune has fallen into your lap through no effort of your own? Or has it been when you have worked hard for some sort of good and you got to experience the results? The answer, if we are honest with ourselves, is the latter of course. Yet, there seems to be that constant tension we all struggle with between extreme self-indulgence and a deep desire for our lives to be used for some greater good.
“For what I want to do I do not do [and] what I do is not the good I want to do,” the Apostle Paul confessed. (Nice to be in good company with someone who has struggled with the same tension.) Over the years, though, I have learned to appreciate the tension, for I find that it is the ambition to do good that helps me resist being overly self-indulgent, yet it is yielding to the temptation of self-indulgence that helps loosen the grip of pride that can easily accompany good works. Maybe that’s what God intended.