While I Ran: Spiritual Schizophrenia

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat… Luke 22:31

Just be callin’ me, man, be calling me man! I just gotta go do it. I need help! – Pookie, New Jack City

In the movie New Jack City, Pookie (played by Chris Rock) was a crack addict who didn’t want to be a crack addict. While I’m no crack addict, I, too, heard a voice calling my name while I ran.

Karsten…Kaaaarsteeen…I almost answered, but by the Grace of God, I just turned up the volume on my HTC Evo 4G and let Trip Lee’s Between Two Worlds bang louder so I could run harder. It wasn’t crack. It wasn’t dope.

It was the recliner and the couch.

Even though I’ve turned toward a healthier lifestyle, I still have lazy tendencies. Like crack to Pookie, laziness and gluttony calls me daily. Sometimes it wins. Usually it doesn’t. Still, I wonder why my old ways of lacking in exercise keep trying to return. It’s almost like it didn’t get the memo that I fired it. What’s even more confusing is that I sometimes rehire it. It’s like I have Spiritual Schizophrenia. Just like Peter.

When Peter was born, his parents named him Simon. When Jesus and Simon met, Jesus gave him a new name of Peter (Matthew 16:18). Simon was pre-Jesus; Peter was post-Jesus. After Jesus came, He was known as Peter, until the 22nd chapter of Luke. Then something baffling occurs: Jesus, the Name-Changer called Peter by his before-Jesus name. Jesus warned Peter that the devil had desired to sift him as wheat (and the devil did just that), but Jesus advised that He had prayed for Peter. Later on, we learn that Peter denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed, just as Jesus prophesized. Peter reverted back to Simon. Post-Jesus digressed to pre-Jesus.

The new man dug up the old man.

Wow. How could you be that close to the face of God and forsake Him? I’m asking that question to you and me, not just to Peter.

Maybe it’s Spiritual Schizophrenia. We call ourselves Believers, but our actions say we’re unbelievers. Pastor Craig Groeschel calls it the ‘Christian Atheist’: believing in God but living as if He doesn’t exist. We don’t know who we want to be. We glorify God with our tongue, then turn around and curse the first person who gets smart with us (James 3:9). Maybe it’s Spiritual Necrophilia. Through Christ we have buried the old us and put on a ‘new self’ as Paul calls it (Colossians 3:10), but we have a fetish for the dead. We leave the presence of God, go to the graveyard of sin, dig up the old us, and fornicate with the dead. That is exactly what happens everytime a Christian embraces sin again. We make love to a carcass.

God has given us a Peter life but we still have a Simon mentality. Ladies buy Christian tee shirts to match their atheist fitted jeans. Now guys praise God when they read the Scripture on your shirt but picture you on a stripper pole when they see how your jeans are spray painted on your behind. Guys have Scripture tattooed on their chest. They remove their shirts in public, and ladies don’t know if they should call upon the Name of Jesus of which the Scripture speaks, or call upon the Name of Jesus because the guy looks so lustfully good. We give to the poor but we bootleg Kirk Franklin CDs. We stopped fornicating but we still watch porn. We pay tithes and offering off the money we saved by buying clothes and electronics out the trunk. We listen to Jeezy rapping about frying in hell louder than the atheist bumping Drake rapping about the best fornication he ever experienced. We look down on the girl selling her body for money while we destroy our own body with alcohol and fast food. We’re wearing the new man but saving up to buy back the old man. Sin won’t get the memo until Jesus returns. Until then, it’ll still call us, day by day.

May we all do what I did while I ran and laziness called me. Turn up the Gospel and run harder.

photo credit: marcello99