Living with the Intimate Enemy
“And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.”
June 15, 1980
The story of Jacob covers a number of chapters in the book of Genesis. As I read them this week, I was shockingly reminded that God uses some of the most unlikely characters (then and now) to get his work done in the world. Like most of us, Jacob had about two parts scoundrel for every one part saint in him. A born con man, he entered the world looking out for number one. He tricked his brother Esau out of his inheritance. With the help and instigation of his mother, Rebecca, Jake, as I call him, deceived his old, blind father Isaac into giving him the blessing which rightfully belonged to Esau. Esau would have killed Jake if he could have gotten his hands on him, so Rebecca put her favored son on a Greyhound bus to Haran to stay with uncle Laban until things cooled off.
On the way to Haran, Jake had a fantastic dream. He dreamed he saw a giant ladder going up into the sky. On that ladder were angelic beings and he heard a voice: " I am the God of your grandfather Abraham and your father Isaac. The land on which you lay will be yours. Your descendents will be as numerous as the sands of the beach. And I will take you and bring you back from the far land safely.' Jake didn't realize at the time what all this meant, that through his descendents David, Jesus, and many others God would get his love into the world.
Meanwhile, he arrived in Haran and wound up staying there for 21 long years. He fell in love with Laban's daughter, the beautiful Rachel, but was tricked by his uncle into marrying her older sister, the cross-eyed Leah, first. The old fooler found out that he wasn't the only fast operator in the family. Finally, when Laban refused to let Jake have his share of their business and move on, Jake took his family and possessions and hightailed it out of Haran with his uncle hot on his heels. The only thing that saved Jake's neck this time was that Laban had a change of heart upon catching up with him.
Yet not sooner had Jake buried the hatchet with Laban than he got the word that his long ago wronged brother Esau was on his way with 400 men. It seemed like Jake's fancy footwork and fast talking were about to run out. Sending his family ahead, Jacob very much alone bedded down beside the river Jabbok. That night Jake had the fight of his life. The man who had played the ends against the middle all of his life finally had to meet his greatest enemy. It wasn't Laban, not even Esau, it was the intimate enemy of himself. One came and wrestled with Jake all night long. The text says it was a man; Jacob addressed him as God. I have a hunch that he fought all that night with God and himself. Although he came out of it with a limp, he was a new man. At the end of that wild night he had a new name: Israel, "he who struggles with God. He went on the next day to make peace with his brother, to live on his land, and to be the kind of man future generations would honor.
Jake Isaacson or Jacob son of Isaac reminds me of me, and he reminds me of you. We can do our fast talking for just so long, keep the front up for a while. We are masters at being busy-busy so we don't have to face what we are doing to ourselves and what we are doing to others a long time - but not forever. Yet if we are ever going to be anything more than a problem to ourselves and others, then sooner or later, we are going to have to slug it out with our God and ourselves.
You see, the intimate enemy of me is a cagey one. If the people I work with each day get to be too much for me, then I can make an excuse, hang up the phone, end the meeting, get in the car, and drive away. If at home on that day the joy of parenthood is a bit wilted and the chemistry of marriage is not so hot, then there is refuge between the stereo earphones or in the pages of a book. The one who knows me better than I want to be known has said that the second coming combined with a nuclear explosion could not distract me from my books. And when all else fails, there is sleep. Yet wherever I go, be it meetings, home, car, between the earphones or dreamland, I take me. As hard as I try to escape sometimes, it's me and my shadow, and it is not always much to sing about. Even sleep offers no sanctuary. There in living color, at times living horror, dance across the movie screen of my mind all the people, situations, and parts of me that scare me, those truths from which I am running, and the desperation of searching for one to run to.
Like Jacob, we prefer wheeling and dealing with others to facing ourselves. We keep ourselves distracted with a big deal, a trip, or new purchase. Sometimes we try to stay mellow with a pill or drink. Yet it crops out. Maybe high blood pressure, perhaps an ulcer. More than likely it will be a vague sense of unhappiness, a recognition that we are dying by inches. And so before it is too late, like Jacob we must fight it out with our angel, that combination of God and ourselves.
It might help to remember that when Jacob finally fought it out with his intimate enemy he became who he needed to be all along. The fight with the intimate enemy may just be our life saver more than our life taker. So, what has to happen when we fight it out with ourselves and our God? Here are some of my hunches.
FIRST, WE HAVE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR OURSELVES. Cartoon strip character Andy Capp is a sort of English Archie Bunker who would rather drink ale in the pub than work and mixes it up often with his long suffering wife Florrie. One day he is walking down the street obviously with a few under his belt when he meets up with the Vicar, his minister. How are things going, inquires the minister. Andy woefully answers: "I'm up to m'eyes in debt, Vicar, and I don't know which way t'turn. " Here is the chance the good reverend has no doubt been waiting with Andy: "Andy, you know what is responsible for your present condition don't you? Alcohol and alcohol alone. Never to be gotten, Andy answers: "Thanks fer bein' so understandin', Vicar. You're the first bloke who hasn't said it was all my fault."
To be able to live with ourselves we have to escape the blame game: the making of excuses for why we don't do any better and the making of rationalizations for why we are crabby and self-centered. Jake no doubt had a long list of excuses for why he socked it to Esau and Laban. Daddy always liked Esau better. Mother told me to do it. Laban cheated me. And all that may be true with Jacob and you. Your parents probably didn't do as well by you as they could have. You may have been the victim of circumstances in that situation. You may have deserved more recognition for a job well done than you got. You probably deserve more attention and affection than you get on occasion. I have heard business and professional people justify excessive spending on themselves with rationalizations like: "We had it tough starting our business and we really had to scrape while we were in school." And all of these things may be true. Yet sooner or later, we have to stop making excuses, realize that this is me and I am what I have to live with. And with God's help I am going to get and give as much love in life as I can. I may not be as strong, pretty, rich, or young as I want to be, but this is me and griping and crying about my raw deals will never make me happy. There are no instant replays in life. Live it or lose it.
To take responsibility for our lives, to quit blaming others for our unhappiness and to stop making rationalizations for our crabbiness and selfishness is not easy. We need God's help. I would never do it without God's help. That help comes through worship, prayer, and Bible study. God often uses people to make us face the truth about ourselves. God only knows the ways he can get us to stop running and start changing. We can't do it without God. he can't do it for us either! If Jacob, you, or I are ever to live with ourselves, God, and each other, then we have to stop playing the poor me game, making excuses for thinking only of ourselves, and take responsibility for ourselves.
(2): To be able to live with ourselves is not only the toughness of taking responsibility for ourselves, IT IS ALSO LEARNING TO ACCEPT AND LOVE OURSELVES. We make a big mistake when we equate self love with selfishness. They are opposites. The most selfish people I know, the times I do the most damage to myself and others, occur not when too much is thought of ourselves but too little. God, protect us from the times we put each other down as we desperately try to put ourselves up. One of the biggest struggles each human faces is the fight to love oneself.
A few years ago, I decided to go to the public library to do some studying. I asked my secretary to call me there if someone needed me. After an hour or so in the reading room where 25 or 30 other people were also seated, I received a tap on the shoulder. A librarian said: "Are you Rev. Morgan? You have a call. I figured out how she found me when I reached the phone and saw her notepad: "Call for Rev. Morgan: late twenties, glasses, balding." That was a blow. I knew my hairline had been moving up, that I had been having more face to wash lately. But that I was really a balding person had not yet dawned on me. It dawned on me that if I was basing my value and appearance on hair, then I was in trouble. These facts about ourselves that we must accept as we seek to love ourselves move from the comic to the tragic: hairlines, waistlines, family situations, financial setbacks, on and on. At some point in life, all of us have to accept that we are who we are and that we may never be all we wanted. We must accept ourselves as loved and valued even by God as is. It is only when we face, accept, and love ourselves as is that we may be able to grow into the more loving, caring person God means for us to be.
We don't always take Jesus seriously when he said, "Love your neighbor as yourself.” How can you love others as yourself until and unless we love ourselves. Jesus did a lot of talking about loving our enemy, forgiving 70 X 7, and turning the other cheek. I think Jacob has taught us that perhaps the biggest enemy we ever face is the enemy of ourselves. Think about it. Most of us spend so much time being down on ourselves: I'm not smart enough...I don't look good enough...I don't have enough... I have done some rotten things... I have just never done anything that matters,..on and on go the self put-downs humans perpetrate on themselves. No wonder we do so much damage to others on whom we take out our feelings of inferiority and insecurity. For God's sake, for your sake, for the sake of the people who have to live with you, step in front of the mirror or maybe better, bow your head and pray, "God help me to love me the way you do."
(3) Third, after we take responsibility for ourselves by stopping our excuse making and blame casting, and after we are able to love ourselves, warts and beauty marks together, then we are ready for the most important act of human life. THAT ACT IS GIVING OUR LIVES TO A CAUSE THAT MAKES LIFE WORTH THE EFFORT, in those torture centers of the Nazi concentration camps, psychologist Viktor Frankl, himself a prisoner who survived, studied just what it is that humans need most to live when all of life's superficialities are blown away.
He discovered in those hellholds that humans need in the end not sex, possessions, power, or even food to survive. Frankl concluded that what keeps humans alive and human when everything is falling apart is to have meaning in life, to have a sense that our life counts for something, to have a purpose to live for. This meaning and purpose come only, according to Frankl, when humans give their lives to a cause beyond themselves. Happiness and meaning are never directly gotten. They always come as a by-product of giving yourself to another.
But to say that we must give our lives to something is not enough. Journalist Theodore White tells of his experience in China during World War II in his recent book IN SEARCH OF HISTORY. Americans and Chinese were allied against the Japanese who had invaded China. Toward the end of the war, only one last Japanese stronghold prevented the reopening of the Burma Road. That fortress was high atop Mt. Huangshan. Hundreds of Japanese soldiers fought to the death instead of allowing themselves to be captured. When White and the soldiers finally entered the defeated camp, he managed to get his hands on the Japanese flag which had flown above it. On that flag, White discovered the last of the Japanese soldiers signed their names in their own blood. He comments that these men had given their lives to their country and their leaders and wasted those lives.
To say we must give our lives to something is not enough. You see, we all sign our name on some flag in life. Your flag may have a big red number 1 on it: my cause is what I want, when I want it, regardless of what others need. Despite our attempts to disguise it, many of us have signed our names on the flag with a dollar sign on it – the almighty dollar. Some of us have signed a flag with a big ice cube on it. We want to stay cool, aloof, and uninvolved with the muck and mess of other people's problems. So it goes.
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus challenges some people to sign their names on God's flag. Yet this sounds like stuff we have heard before. Give yourself to Jesus: that sounds like stock preacher subject, tape 202. But before you turn the television channel of your brain to something else because the minister is preaching summer reruns, take another look at what giving yourself to Jesus' way of life means.
In a MASH TV episode, Radar wants to impress a nurse who is a classical music buff. Hawkeye tells him that he doesn't have to know anything about composers to make her think he is up on music. All he has to do, advises Alda, is say: "Beethoven, ahhh! Mozart, ahhh!, Bach, ahhh!" Thus, she will be impressed. It seems to me that many of us deal with Jesus that way. We go around saying: "Jesus, ahhh! Give yourself to him. And we don't know what that means or we sentimentalize him beyond recognition.
Theologian Hans Kung in his thick book ON BEING A CHRISTIAN says Jesus was a man who gave his life totally to God's cause in the world. Jesus did not ask humans to worship him like an idol or good luck charm. He bid humans to care about what God cares about in the world. Now, what is God's cause in the world as revealed by Jesus and the Bible? God's cause is the making of human life more human. He created humans in his image. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. He even makes the life giving rains fall on the just and unjust alike. He grieves for us like a father when we are hungry, lonely, and hurting ourselves and others. God and his Christ want us to give ourselves to their cause in the world: the cause of feeding, hugging, helping, and loving all his various and sundry children on earth, even the ones we don't like.
If you and I are ever going to be any good for ourselves or anyone else on earth, then we are going to have to fight it out with the intimate enemy of ourselves. First, we are going to have to stop making excuses for why we don't do any better and stop rationalizing why we look out only for number one. Second, we are going to have to look in the mirror and say: "I love you, warts and beauty marks together, God doesn't make any junk, and that includes me.” Thirdly, and most importantly, we must resolve: "I'm going to write my name on God's flag. I'm going to start this day to pay attention to the people who need me across the dinner table, down the street, across the tracks, and in the places in the world whose names I can't pronounce. Thank God, he can use me and you as part of his solutions and not just additional aspects of the world's problems. Amen!