Evading God

I've been thinking about what Steve said about evading God when he thinks he is actually reaching out to God, and it occurred to me that I do exactly the same thing. It's amazing how stupid and illogical something sounds when it's about someone else, and how tricky it is when you realize it's about you.

My version of this is that I love to read about prayer. In fact, as soon as Steve recommended it, I immediately ordered Richard Foster's book, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home. When the book arrived, I eagerly opened the package, and glanced at the first page, and suddenly realized that I had to choose between spending time in prayer, or merely reading about it. Wouldn't it be great if I could report that I sailed right into a beautiful time of prayer? Actually, I had a snack, and answered an email first. It's amazing how something in me can generate distractions out of nothing. I think I'll take the book as train reading, so I can save primetime for actual prayer instead. I'm trying to learn from what Brennan Manning said -- that our time with God should be when we are at our best. I've been experimenting with shifting things around according to this principle. It really runs counter to what comes naturally.

I think there are two reasons for this. The first, as I said earlier, is simply the distractions. The second reason is a variation of that. My family culture was very results oriented, and prized doing chores. In my house, if we had read the Bible we would have definitely thought that Jesus was wrong about Mary and Martha. It's obvious that Martha is the good guy. So I always have a genetic urge to 'clear the decks' first. However that's a deception, in this case. 'Clear the decks' pertains more to doing chores before relaxing, or eating vegetables before dessert. It's a false excuse that sounded vaguely admirable. Oops.

On the other hand, I've been doing pretty well at cutting out the aimless TV watching. I'm still watching a few of my favorite shows, but I've mainly cut out the random background watching, and the insidious 11 oclock news. Boy, I just thought of a parallel between the 11 o'clock news and Steve Robbins -- with both of them, they whet your appetite with a preview of what they are going to talk about, and then it's half an hour before they get to it. Just kidding. Actually, the apparent digressions in the lectures are often fascinating.