Lecture 11: The Eight Deadly Sins (Part 3)

The sin of acedia is, “I don’t care anymore.” The sin of tristate is sadness, wrongly processing suffering and loss, allowing the soul to close in on itself and refuse instruction from God. Tristate is neither a result of other people or of our outward circumstances. Satan wants to get us off the track in stupid presumption or in sinful carelessness. God redeems the hurt that evil has done.

I. Reformation of Deformed Disposition

So, now, we let the Lord show us what is called the reformation of deformed disposition. This is the tendency that we have in ministry the idea that the difficulty has increased too broadly for me. What do we do when this happens? I was coming out of a situation where I moved from pastoral leadership and was grieving the whole process. Then, my wife and I went on a Celtic Pilgrimage where we traced the Celtic Christian movement starting in England and Ireland and then in Scotland. I got back home and I was physically tired, I was drained from some of the conflict that we had in the local church.

II. Psalm 9

I was walking in the park and reading Psalm 9 where it says: ‘I will give thanks to the Lord and I will do it with my whole heart.’ This whole-hearted thanks, means to put your whole body into it; to put your whole life into it. ‘I will tell about all your amazing deeds! I will be glad and exult in you.’ That is like jumping up and cheering, like at basketball games or if you are a football fan. You jump and cheer and shout. ‘I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.’ So, as I walked around the park I decided to count my blessings. I started thanking the Lord for different things. You may have grown up singing a song, ‘count your blessings, and name them one by one.’ This is really a great old Gospel song and there is real truth in it. Psalm 100 starts off with, ‘I will enter His gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise.’ This is thanking God for all kinds of things. It opens a door allowing the Holy Spirit to enter our hearts to the reality of grace that is everywhere and all of his presence. John P. Qu’sod had that classic saying that the grace of God is everywhere and always present but is only open to those who have the eyes to see it. When we enter the gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise, what happens is that you are empowered to overcome these two deadly sins that get a hold on Christians. These are the two most likely ones to destroy us. It is the deadly sin of sadness and the deadly sin of acedia of not caring anymore. This is the great danger of leadership. I just don’t care; you can have it; just forget it and count me out. I quit. But, let me say, there are very few leaders who haven’t quit; at least they said that they were going to quit many times.

III. The Sin of Tristitia

What is the sin of tristitia, what is this sin of sadness? It is important to really understand this thing. It is wrongly processing suffering; it is not saying that there will not be suffering. It is wrongly processing suffering and loss. It is allowing the soul to close in upon itself and it refuses the grace of God and refuses instruction from God. Yet, you do need to have time for grieving and you do need to go through loss; but you also need to hear the love of God and experience that love. It is ‘both’ and an ‘and’ package. We are not going to be cruel, but we are going to allow God to be with us through the suffering that we have to go through. Tristitia is neither a result of other people or of our outward circumstances writes Thomas Merton. Just focus in on this; how often do we say, ‘if I can just get this in place or just get that in place or if I just didn’t have to deal with that or if I didn’t have to struggle with this?’ In other words, my well-being is determined by outside factors. This will destroy a marriage or a relationship very quickly. ‘If she would only or if he would only.’ The wisdom of the ancients is that your well-being cannot be determined by what others do or don’t do. Your well-being is caught up in a relationship with your Lord. Thomas Merton wrote that it takes real courage to recognize that we are the cause of our own unhappiness. He was addressing the sin of tristitia and of course when someone has experienced a massive tragedy in their lives, you don’t throw this kind of stuff at them. They are unhappy and they are going to go through that time. What we are talking about here is our preference to complain on what is wrong. Why do I know that this is so applicable? All you have to do is to show up in any convention of pastors or church leaders. I have done this with Roman Catholics and with Protestants and with Orthodox denominations. I have seen this in Asia, Central America and in the United States. You get groups of pastors together, regardless of denominations, and it is only a few minutes until gripping and complaining starts coming out. Listen leaders, wherever you are around the globe; this is not the way of Christ. If you have a system that is not dealing with issues, please let us know. Whether you are in a higher structured ecclesiastical setting or you are completely independent. There are going to be issues that you are going to have to deal with and one of the greatest issues Merton says that we have to understand is our own preference for sadness. Lord, save us from that.

IV. The Sin of Acedia

Help us Jesus. The early church would call it morbid sadness. Let’s keep in mind that we have made a lot of advances in mental health since that time. When I know someone who is clinically depressed, I ask them, when was the last time they had seen a physician and the last time they have spoken to their physician about this. God can do miracles through medical intervention with mental health issues here. So, let’s don’t get this confused; this morbid sadness involves the propensity to dwell on how bad things are. There was a show in the 1960s in America called Heehaw. It was a funny show and would sing this song: ‘gloom, despair and agony on me. If it weren’t for bad luck, I would have no luck at all.’ This becomes a way of life for a lot of ministry leaders. It cannot be a way of life for us because it is a way that leads to death. The Gospel is not about gloom, despair and agony; it is about chains being broken and people receiving life and love. So, when this stuff keeps on and something worst happens; then the noon day devil of acedia comes to us. The noon-day devil grabs our wiry and anxious heart. It is a demonic spirit that will grab anxious and wiry hearts and drives us to the tragic conclusion that our ministry simple doesn’t matter anymore. Acedia is the wiriness of life itself; being fed-up with everything. It applies to discouragement; it is a paralysis of the spirit combined with restlessness and indecision. It is in fact, one of the great spiritual diseases of our times. It is a disease of the best minds! It is a disease where well-educated people who are trained in the ministry thinking that things are impossible. We are not going to overcome this stuff. The early church speaks to us and the Holy Spirit checks us and tells us that we are veering off. Satan wants to get us off the path, either to the right in stupid presumptions or to the left in sinful carelessness. We go either to the left where we break God’s laws or to the right where we presume upon grace. We become arrogant in our lives and make wrong interpretations about life. This is what happens with acedia. This is the frustrated and sad heart, crying out, ‘I quit. It is not worth it anymore. I am not going to put up with it.’

V. There is a Way Out

A. The Goodness of God

There is a way out and now we are going to look at the goodness of God. God loves you too much to let you quit his kingdom. Not only is his kingdom here but it is also his coming kingdom. His kingdom is triumphant. It is unshakable. The atonement says that the back of evil was broken. Jesus is victorious and evil is not going to have the last say and disorder is not going to be the last word. The light and the love are real and it is here and it is triumphant. We need to understand faith, hope and love which Paul talked about. This is an absolute trust and confidence in Jesus. This is not wishy washy stuff. Here, hope is from confidence. This is confirmed in my life. I know that I know that I know that God is good and that his kingdom is here and it is also coming. I know this that all shall be well in him. It is a gift to those who literally abandon themselves to Christ and his benevolence and goodness and to the beneficial meaning of everyday events, circumstances and things. God holds all things together. Evil is not his purpose, he is not the author of evil, but instead, he redeems the hurt that evil has done.

B. Infused Hope

Infused hope says that there is nothing that he can’t touch and nothing that he can’t heal and you haven’t gone so far that you can’t be brought back home. That is infused hope.

C. Face the Conditions of the World Today with Sobriety and Compassion

The Christian knows how to face the disastrous condition of the world today with sobriety and compassion. We have compassion on the fallen that are around us. My boss is a man by the name of Dr. Timothy Tenet and he is an awesome person. This whole business of sexuality right now, for example, is going to take the church a long time to get it sorted out, but we have confidence because God has the big picture. God has the way here. The Christian knows how to do this without falseness and shallowness but with theological hope. I stand on that because of the resurrection and the ascension and enthronement of Christ. That is why I can have hope. In order to do so, we have got to resist this temptation to hopelessness. I look at leaders all over the world; your situation is not hopeless. Hopelessness is selfish; it looks around at the world and it says that I’ve used all the resources that I know of. There is nothing left; this is a lost cause. Do you see how selfish that is? There are resources that we can’t even dream of. God is in control of history; he is sovereign and he is working in and through history. He works in redemptive ways that amazes us and surprises us. Your situation is not hopeless. He is at work. So, we resist this temptation to acedia enabling us to cease blaming our unhappiness on people and circumstances outside of us. Rather than focusing on what is wrong with our lives, we focus upon who God is and how he is at work in our lives. We stop writing these formulas, these false scripts for happiness. It is not ‘I hope that’ for this boxes God in. Instead, I hope; I have confidence that God is at work in this situation and I thank him that even though I cannot see any way out of it, I have confidence and I thank him ahead of time that he will deliver me. He will work this situation to the praise of his glory. I hope.

Infused hope enables me and you to throw ourselves into a love relationship with Jesus where we spend time with the Living Word who is Christ and the miracle of the written Word that he has given us. We give thanks for that written Word. We listen for his voice; we make commitments to love his people, the people where we have been placed even with the old grouchy ones. How is the Lord calling me to faithfully love the people in my life? We give thanks that he is going to let his grace come in and encourage all of our hearts. We affirm that infused hope is a gift from Jesus.

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