The unexamined life

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

I used to always examine my life. How was I doing? Where was I going? I almost always found my life to be lacking. I seemed to be full of, even defined by, my shortcomings. Everywhere I looked in my life I found failure, deficiencies, and squandered opportunities.

Accordingly, I was often depressed.  And, oddly enough, neither the poor personal report cards nor the depression led to a better life or better behavior.

Somewhere along the way, I learned two things: 1) That God doesn't want me to sorrow over my failures, unless it is the type of sorrow that leads to righteousness (2Corinthians 7:10 - Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death), and 2) a lot of bad feelings have a biochemical source.

Let me explain the second one a little: I discovered that I often feel depressed after eating a lot of sugar. Before I realized this, when I felt this way I would cast about, looking for the cause, and inevitably hit upon what was bad in my life or what I had recently failed in. I would then conclude that the reason I felt bad was because of the things that I had identified.  But they weren't the cause; the sugar low was.

What I have learned, then, is that there are some ways in which it is not so good to examine my life. If I feel bad, I don't have to hunt around for a reason.  If I feel less than peppy, I don't have to conclude that it is because I am awful or unloved.  Sometimes, it is better to just say, "I feel bad. I don't know why, and I am not going to search for why. I am, instead, going to trust that if God really wants to tell me something, he will let me know explicitly, and won't just give me a bad feeling."

I had this experience this morning.  I dragged into church. I felt tired, unloved, unspiritual, and fearful of people.  Many people really got into worship today, but I was not one of them.  I had the luxury of not leading worship today, and I felt that to force myself to worship hard would do violence to my soul, and so I just sat.  Initially I started down the route of blaming my shortcomings, but then I realized that this was that type of generalized down feeling that is related to consuming lots of sugar the day before. So I just accepted where I was at, and waited it out. I thought about different things (I'm little ashamed to say that one of them was television shows I've recently seen) and resisted the urge to flee the room.

And hey, I made it. Here I am, not caught up in depressing thoughts, and ready to lead worship tonight. So it seems that holding off from examining myself was a good thing.

1Corinthinas 4:3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.