Knowing our deformations
Author
Dr. Roberto Miranda
Summary: We need to be aware of the unknown forces within us that come from our subconscious, which can affect our lives without us realizing it. We must ask the Holy Spirit for discernment of our character flaws and work to control them with humility, prudence, and self-control. The lack of introspection can lead to problems and neuroses in our personality. Sometimes, God may allow us to struggle with our inner deformations for a long time until we can overcome them through confession, prayer, and submission. This struggle can become a benevolent opponent, leading us closer to God and making us more dependent on His grace. The example of the Apostle Paul's thorn shows how God can use apparent weakness for our good, keeping us humble and protected from spiritual pride. We should rejoice in our weaknesses because when we are weak, we are strong in Christ.
It requires a very lucid awareness of the unknown forces that continually struggle within us. The human subconscious is a bottomless sea. Many of the actions that affect our lives come out of it, many times without us being able to realize it.
We have to ask the Holy Spirit for a very deep and incisive ability to discern those structural flaws, those “Achilles tendons” of our character that, like invisible cracks running along a wall, endanger our stability and permanence. We all have those flaws. In many cases we will not be able to eliminate them entirely, and we will only be able to control them and keep them under discipline throughout our lives.
The emotional defects and deformations that life bequeaths to us are often powerful and persistent. The reality is that, many times the maximum to which we can aspire is to subject them daily to the word of God, preventing them from leading us to self-destructive behavior, administering a dose of humility, prudence and self-control every day. As people with a persistent health condition, we must keep our "disease" in view, and take appropriate steps to keep it under control. This in no way denies the power or reality of God. Nor does he deny his ability to eventually change us if we give ourselves heartily to his transforming grace.
A BENEVOLE STING
One of the greatest Greek philosophers has declared: "The unexamined life is not worth living." Many of the problems and neuroses of our personality are due to the lack of knowledge and introspection about ourselves. The psalmist prays: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there is a wicked way in me, and guide me in the everlasting way ”(Ps 139: 23 and 24). The reality is that many times there are invisible obstacles in our psyche, subtle deformations in our character of which we are not fully aware. These negative energies move clandestinely in the unrecognized or explored areas of our personality. This lack of discernment on our part often allows our character flaws to continue to manifest and distort our behavior.
On many occasions, we will have to struggle with these internal deformations for a long time, patiently exploring and examining them in the light of the Word, gradually reducing their compulsive power over us, until finally we can banish them through confession, prayer and submission. active to God.
More mysterious still, there will be times when God will sovereignly decide to keep alive that agonizing inner struggle within us until some mysterious purpose known only to Him has been accomplished. In these cases, our inner struggle, the awareness of our own spiritual weakness, will become like a benevolent opponent, a mysterious coach that God has to use to draw us closer to Him, keep us more humble and make us more dependent on His grace.
Again, the famous thorn of the Apostle Paul is illuminating in this case. After receiving glorious revelations, Paul had to endure a persistent and humiliating inner struggle of which we are not given many details, but which evidently caused him great agony and a sense of guilt (see 2 Corinthians 12: 7 and 8).
After asking the Lord three times to deliver him from this painful spiritual condition, and receiving the same refusal accompanied by a call to simply surrender to his grace, Paul understood that God allowed this apparent weakness for his own good, and that it fulfilled a mysterious sanctifying and strengthening purpose. His "thorn" kept him humble. It reminded him that, despite his privileged experiences, he was still a mere prisoner of God's grace, perpetually in need of his mercy. That forced humility protected him. It was a kind of preventive discipline. It kept him safe from the inevitable ravages of spiritual pride to which he would have succumbed given the exalted revelations he had received. Hence the beautiful words of 2 Corinthians 12: 9 and 10, which we do well to abide by ourselves:
9 Therefore I will rather boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.
10 For this reason, for Christ's sake I rejoice in weaknesses, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions, in anguish; Because when I am weak, then I am strong.