Do not pretend living well is not a struggle.

For those who cannot reat the sign, the warning is that “Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free kitten”. Which should be enough to put the fear of consequences into any parent, dealing with ten to twelve hours of calvinball and whining about can I keepz the kitteh. Even if you like cats, there are limits.

Yesterday I put up two posts about opposition, and today we are hit with this passage. Paul confronts us all about the habits of this world we have internalized, from the way that the sexual marketplace works to being snarky and angry. The opposition has no rules, but we are told to obey Christ.

And we all need to be told because we tend to revert to our old ways of thinking, each day, habitually.

Ephesians 4:17-32

and becoming one with those who oppress you.

¹⁷Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. ¹⁸They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. ¹⁹They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. ²⁰That is not the way you learned Christ! ²¹For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. ²²You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, ²³and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

²⁵So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁸Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. ³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

I have a list of good posts sitting in tabs I could cite, but that would dilute the point of this post. There are many bad examples: you can find them in any aggregator. A large amount of what makes “news” is bad behaviour.

What is more interesting is that Paul describes the consequences of this behaviour.

• You lose sensitivity . Your ability to see the beauty in each day diminishes. Instead of enjoying the ephemeral: the leaves have just changed here, or the college students walking to work, or the coffee, one is consumed with lust, or greed, or envy. It ruins the enjoyment of the moment. It also means that you cannot converse, understand and help, because your internal dialogue is going to leak. You have to disavow these thoughts to help anyone.
• Your heart is hardened. You do not see anything wrong in what you are doing. You are justified. If needed, you make stuff up to justify your position. Your conscience is seared away. You are functioning as a psychopath, perhaps using the language of self-esteem.
• You are abandoned to your desires . Disciplines reinforce each other, and letting one’s desires loose in one area tends to open others to exploitation. It may be that one reason so many of us are fat is because we neither discipline what we eat nor do we schedule exercise: we have not been taught any form of self-discipline or duty. We have forgotten that almost everything worthwhile requires hard work. and we criticise and call horrible those very people who say that we should be fit, or continent, or dress nicely, or do any of the other behaviours that used to make up adult behaviour.
• We lie , We are too guilty, and do not want to be caught, or we are afraid of the Social Justice Warrior dogpile, and use as many weasel words as needed so that we do not offend. It is interesting that Paul moves from speaking the truth in love to anger: for if one is told that one is failing from a brother the usual response is either shame or anger. And we should not hang onto the anger, for that will poison us as surely as the American (sugar laden) diet.

Finally, Paul is not writing to the pagans here. He is writing to believers. We are not immune. The second we think we are immune to the errors of this world and this time we are close to falling. Yes, this is a daily struggle. But Christ promised us a cross, not a life of ease.