Life is not theoretical or hypothetical. It simply is. Perhaps it would be more accurate to consider it paradoxical. Well, whatever it is we need to be sure not only to contemplate our lives but to truly live them.
As a lover of words and ideas I must admit that acting on what I have conceptualized is where I most often fail. I can weave thoughts and beliefs together into unique, eclectic designs, but what purpose do those novel concepts serve if they are never realized? Empty, unused ideas; arranged in such a way to give an air of practicality but still have yet to be tried.
I need to bridge the gaping disconnect between what I say I think/believe and what I actually do. The canyon between the two leaves me being nothing more than a hypocrite (perhaps a well-meaning one, but a hypocrite just the same). As my mind is becoming more like Christ’s, my hands and feet need to follow.
Paul says it best, I believe, in Romans 7:14-25 (shared below). It is a long passage, and can be slightly mind-bending at times, but extremely profound and true.
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me, I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is not longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
