May 05, 2011
Protective Custody
I like to watch a TV crime drama series titled ‘In Plain Sight’. It’s about the witness protection program where people are taken to a new location, given a new identity and must start a new life. Invariably the character being protected can’t stand leaving their old life behind…especially on such short notice. That so reminds me of our new life in Christ. We keep trying to find a way to let our new self walk arm and arm with our old self. Maybe those who struggle with being a new creation should start thinking in terms of just being in protective custody for awhile.
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Gail;
-----My computer at home has a virus infected Java file. We run scans on it and continue to find the same virus in the same file even though each scan indicates a successful quarantine. I would like to simply delete the infected file, but I fear what would happen to my system, because I know nearly everything my computer does uses Java. Since the virus is quarantined by each scan, its continued presence must not actually be a continued presence, but some source either in my computer or on the internet which keeps writing the virus to that file. I am not entirely sure what to do about the virus other than to keep cornering the issue until I have its source isolated and removed. My desire to avoid wiping the hard-drive clean and rebuilding the system again has yoked me to this process of struggling against the destructive element within my useful computer.
-----It is like our struggle with the old self. We are very much like my computer, except far more complicated. We talk about new self and old self as if one can simply be discarded like a filthy T-shirt and the other summarily pulled on. But the first acknowledgement of the inability to do so is the fact that both the old self and the new self must utilize the same physical body. And that body has particular physical flaws and exceptional qualities even in the brains ability to generate consciousness and use it. One flaw of my brain is a merely ordinary memory. Many words don’t come to me automatically, although concepts do. I have to search for certain words, sometimes for days, while mentally relating to a concept I can neither think with efficiently for the lack of a term nor express to another. I must endure the frustration simply because that is the way my brain is physically wired. Then beyond the physical level, consciousness is as complex as the body. Like the body is constructed of organs all working together, consciousness is constructed of information and emotions interrelating even at a most basic level to form thought, feeling, habit, character, and personality. Any one of these can no more be eliminated for its containing a deadly virus than the heart can be eliminated because it has a weak valve.
-----So here we are, stuck inside bodies which could be glorious if not for their flaws, being characters which could be glorious if not for their flaws. But desire is somehow to ourselves as the computer user is to the computer. And the Word of God is to us as the anti-virus software is to the computer. That software does not run other than according to the parameters set for it by the user. The Word of God runs no deeper within us than what we desire it to run. But thank God His mercy and help comes to us by our desire. Desire has no ability, it only has a crying out for a particular objective. When we cry out for salvation, His ability gives grace through Christ, then adds to us the Holy Spirit. When we cry out for renewal, His ability gives His Word and opportunity to use it. But as the user must give anti-virus software broad parameters for better effects, our desires must also give the Word broad parameters for sifting all our aspects. “Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life.” (Prov 4:23)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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