Disconnection
Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Romans 7:24 NASB
Wretched – Have you been taught that this verse is a cry for personal salvation? Are you the product of Augustine’s error, claiming that this is Paul’s personal pre-conversion state of mind? Do you employ theological categories when you read this verse, or do you hear the heart of a man who is experiencing the deepest form of traumatic abandonment? How you answer these questions might tell you more about yourself than about Paul.
Of course, we could follow the well-laid-out trail of Christian exegesis here. We could investigate the phrase talaiporos ego anthropos (”wretched man I am”) as if Paul is speaking about that “all important” question: “Where will I go when I die?” We could be diverted by a “Sinner’s prayer” message. Or we could look at this another way. Paul is writing about the natural, emotional trauma of discovering we are disconnected from our own lives, living apart from our real selves that we have hidden away in order not to experience pain that resides in us. We could notice that we are wretched, not because we fear Hell but because we are afraid to be vulnerable on earth. We could read this as the cry of our own souls, murdered by our fear of rejection following personal disclosure.
“Liberman argues that the natural impulse of all emotions is simply to move through us. It is only when we hold them within that they get stuck. And although other people in our lives appear to be the source of our unresolved emotional issues, they are simply external mirrors of our inner experiences. We project our relationships with ourselves onto others. These unresolved emotions are usually primary factors that keep us from being fully present in our relationships. In this sense everyone we meet in our lives offers us the opportunity to see ourselves more clearly.”[1]
Do you think God is concerned about us? No, not about whether or not we will “get to Heaven,” but about who we are now—how fully we are alive in this moment. Do you think God cares that you are afraid to be real? Does it matter to Him that you have a mask? That you feel separated from those whom you love the most? That you desperately want someone to know you, all the way through? Isn’t this what Paul agonizes about? Romans 7 isn’t about getting saved. It’s about belonging, being accepted unconditionally, in order to be alive now! Does Heaven really matter if you can’t be free to be yourself now? “What is suppressed pain? . . . it is the disconnection from the natural rhythm of the self during the interference. Paradoxically, pain means, ‘I’m not in full contact with myself.’”[2] Does “salvation” mean transition through pain or do you have to wait until it’s all over before you can be free?
Topical Index: pain, trauma, salvation, Romans 7:24, wretched man
[1] J. O. Steenkamp, SHIP: Spontaneous Healing Intrasystemic Process: The Age-Old Art of Facilitating Healing, (Pretoria, South Africa) 2002, p. 75.
[2] Ibid., p. 21
Thank you, Skip, for all the sweat and tears you have spent to make the Bible a Book for the rest of us. I remember being sold the notion that all the people in there were somehow ‘holy’ (as if I weren’t in there because I sure wasn’t). I had to read it as if I were peering over the gate into a ‘good’ neighborhood that I was too dirty and flawed to belong to. When my world crashed I continued to go to church like a good girl (except it wasn’t ‘working’ any more) and I continued to desperately read and read the Bible trying to find relief and answers (I still remained lost and clueless and sick). It finally came down to, after ten years of this, only one verse left that I could see might be for me, and that was the description of the Laodicean church in Revelation and the admonition that “because you are neither hot or cold, I will spew you out of my mouth”. I realized I didn’t have access to that “hot” stuff, and sure was tired of the lukewarm stuff, so decided that the only other option for me was the “cold” stuff, and decided the only way left for me to be obedient was to walk out of the church. I had the desperate hope that if I could figure out what “cold” was, perhaps I could find “hot” from that place. I stepped out into the perfect storm and my heart froze. I held that verse close for decades before I got to a place where I could relate again to any others.
Paul had PTSD, I am quite sure, out of guilt for killing so many people in cold blood for wrong reasons. When he woke from the brainwashed insanity, that is. He had to start all over again from a very cold place. He had to have been completely torn up, but there was no time to lick his wounds. He had to find a way to heal as he ran, driven by the same Spirit that drove Samson. For the rest of his life, I am sure every follower of Yeshua he looked in the face activated that guilt and accompanying stress. For the person formerly known as the perfect Pharisee, that had to have been living hell, and enough incentive to drive him for the rest of his life. He could have avoided Rome; everybody told him not to go, and he went any way.
My mama had a stress disorder, too, with associated guilt. When she came down with Multiple Myeloma, good friends shipped her off to India where it was legal to treat her cancer, and it went into remission, but she chose to come back, knowing that it was going to be a death sentence, for the treatment was illegal over here. Her reason? She wanted to make her peace with me, and get rid of her guilt. What good was living with guilt? I think she thought that if she were dying it would put her in the right place to do all that. Well, that was her truth and faith in it, and, because it was, she succeeded, even though she died in the process. Stress and PTSD fallout will do that to you. It is a very different place from which to try to make sense of the world and our place in it.
May YHVH bless and keep all stress survivors and meet them where they are at and may we all strive, with Skip, to meet each other in that place – that so-very-lonely-place – and start over there, together. Amen.
Thank you dear sister from sharing from the depths of your truble, may you glory with Messiah in the victory he wrought through it!
Wow, Laurita! That was powerful. Thank you.
AMEN!
John M. Gotta , Ph.D. in his foundational book “The relationship cure” Illustrates our relational composition. After some 40 years of clinical observations he concludes that most communications between people are what he defines as ” Bids” for a conection, an offer of relationship. He determines the these bids are responded to in three ways. People turn toward the bider, turn away from them, or turn aginst the bidder. We know Yahwah alone promises not to turn aginst us if we are in rightly related too him,( and his grace has vast alowences for our failures). Other people however are different animals altogether. Most of the trauma is related to disconnecting from one another or ourseves. The pain from the turning away or aginst our “bides”. After so many years of that we tend to experiance as rejection we build expectations, vast structures of self defense or sel-justification. All these ways to protect our hearts actually isolate us. We can’t actually know ourseves out side of community or interdependent relationship because that’s how we where made. I’m finding going with the flow of the emotional stew of relationships with out going aginst or worst yet trying to controll them is actually life in the Spirit. The Spirit of YHVH is ever present to Guide us into all truth”. In truth we are safe and secure, in Truth we find what works and what does not. In Truth and holding close to the reality of the moment even when it hurts our pride, vanity or false self images we become free of them. On my blog worksofwords.live I write about “The glory of the fire of judgment” and how the truth, the judgment of God sets us free from our false often defensive selves. It makes us able to bare who we are not to become who we were met to be. That is what I belive Paul is struggling with in this verse. He is recognizing who he is not aginst the light , the truth, of who He is called to be. That is “The normal Christian life” as Watchman Nee might call it. That is how we become free.
“Does ‘salvation’ mean transition through pain or do you have to wait until it’s all over before you can be free?”
Isn’t “salvation” present progressive? If so, the answer is…..YES…..not either/or but both. Salvation means transition through pain now AND you have to wait until it’s all over before you can be free.
יְשׁוּעָה SALVATION
yeshû‛âh
yesh-oo’-aw
Feminine passive participle of H3467; SOMETHING SAVED, that is, (abstractly) deliverance; hence aid, victory, prosperity: – DELIVERANCE, HEALTH, help (-ing), SALVATION, save, saving (health), WELFARE.
We who know Him are being saved, delivered, healed, made whole. And even more so as we intentionally, diligently seek Him and find Him now, even as we still find ourselves somewhat lost and disconnected from Him, ourselves, and others.
With this understanding, who would want to just wait until it’s all over? We may. But why would we when we can seek Him and find Him NOW? Because when we find Him now, we are saved, delivered, healed, made whole, purified even now.
“Loved ones, now we are God’s children; and it has not yet been revealed what we will be. But we do know that when it’s revealed, we shall be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” [1Jn 3:2 -3]
I’ve always identified with Paul’s stated struggles of not doing the good
he’d like to do but to keep doing that which he hated.
Sin is a domineering task master that requires far more than just recognizing
it as so. And mastering it, as God told Cain, is no easy task either.
The Good Lord has allowed me to discover three keys below that
have dramatically turned things around, at least for me.
1. You have to passionately want to stop the rupture/sin more than
anything in your life.
2. You have to simultaneously know and trust that He wants that
stoppage, too.
3. You must open your “new self” (while casting off the “old”) to the
revelation that “it is God who works in you to will and to act
according to His good purpose.” Phil 2:13
The interplay I’ve experienced between My Lord and myself continues
to amaze and enlighten me. He leads. I follow.
It’s a concept that works.
I improve. He approves.
It’s my daily bread!
Brother Lawrence practicing the presence of God…to find strength, purpose, and peace continuously in Him. The freedom that comes from recognizing what is false and letting it go, that’s a life long process. Isn’t it the “working out of our salvation”? Not works of salvation, but the understanding of salvation. The God who loves me and sustains me now can do whatever He pleases with me after death..