Letter #209: Quitters Win

You Just Have to Quit the Right Stuff

Spence!

Oh, so it’s the old knife-fight-in-a-Nairobi-Dance-Club Lenten parable again. Don’t you ever get tired of dragging out that chestnut? Actually, I’m glad you never told me that story before, since I remember that trip and it made me nervous enough as it was. Every time you went to a new country, a revolution broke out in the country you’d just come from. I couldn’t decide whether you were in the CIA or just a lucky SOB with excellent timing.

But in either case, you raise an interesting issue. There’s an expression popular among sleepy-eyed California surfer types: If you want to know where you want to be, look at your feet. In other words, if you find yourself in a violent Kenyan dance hall, there’s a good chance you chose to be there.

Like most sleepy-eyed Californian expressions, this one is often untrue. People don’t want to fall ill or have parents who abuse them. But still, a lot of the evil we don’t want to do but do, we do want to do. If you get my drift. Thus, whenever someone tells me they are “struggling with a porn addiction,” I am prone to respond: “Well, stop struggling with it and just stop watching porn.” Don’t do it anymore, and see if that helps!

There is another expression, this one from Arthur Schopenhauer, who would have been a sleepy-eyed California surfer if he could have been. This is usually translated something like, “A man can do what he wants, but he can’t choose what he wants.”

Yet, like a lot of sleepy-eyed German philosopher expressions, this is also only half true.

This Lent, I found myself approaching the season with a new intention. I was seeking to empty myself in order to make room for Christ to live inside me. I would totally understand if Christ chose a cleaner flophouse, but never mind that. The point is: I can’t remember ever actually wanting that before. Before this, I could have prayed the humility prayer all day long — deliver me from the desire for honor and praise, etc. — and I’d’ve been lying like a CNN anchorman. Nowadays, though, what the world has to offer means so little to me that I’d only be half lying. More like news-side at the Wall Street Journal.

Sure, this change was worked upon me by the worker of changes. But in my experience, he does this by opening a little space in your heart and giving you a chance to shuffle sheepishly into it. You give up porn or drugs or whatever, and then you find, oh, I really don’t want that. Or at least, I want my freedom more. Take that, Schopenhauer!

I place a high value on authenticity, especially when talking to an omniscient God who can’t be fooled anyway. But when the self is broken, and every self is broken, you sometimes have to choose which authentic part of yourself you want to be.

Welcome to Lent.

Love, Dad.