#25
Christmas
Day
Jesus
Comes to Save Us from Our Distress
In the first "Creed" movie there is a scene where the old boxer Rocky
Balboa is training Apollo Creed's son Adonis in the
gym. They are looking into a mirror. Rocky points to the young boxer
and says, "See this guy here? That's the toughest opponent you're
ever going to have to face. I believe that's true in the ring, and I believe
that's true in life."
It's not a stretch to say that many of my toughest battles have happened in my
own mind. Francis Frangipane called the human mind one of the “three battlegrounds.”[i] The
apostle Paul knew about this. He instructed us to "take every thought
captive," because if we don't, our thoughts will capture us.
Neil Anderson writes of this inner battle in The Bondage Breaker. Steve
Backlund shows us how to do battle against false thinking with his “Declarations.”[ii]
A few years ago KoЯn's guitarist Brian Welch wrote his autobiography,
called Save Me From Myself. That was the best book I read that
year, echoing a prayer I've brought before God for over five decades.
When I was in seminary. I was introduced to psychologist Albert Ellis's Rational
Emotive Behavior Therapy. The goal of REBT is to change irrational
beliefs to more rational ones. Ellis's work was about the power of words and
thoughts to affect feelings and behaviors. The transformative power of language
was at the heart of my doctoral dissertation on metaphor theory.
Today, we have Cognitive Behavior Therapy. CBT helps people become aware of
when they make negative interpretations, and of behavioral patterns which
reinforce distorted thinking. Cognitive therapy helps people to develop
alternative ways of thinking and behaving, which aims to reduce their
psychological distress.
Jesus has come to save us from psychological distress. From catastrophic
thinking. Thomas Merton writes:
God, "save me from myself. Save me
from my own, private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act without
reason, to move for movement’s sake, to unsettle everything You have ordained.
Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my
life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for your glory. This is what I
live for."[iii]
This is core to "working out my
salvation with fear and trembling."[iv]
I don’t know about you, but need to be rescued and redeemed and freed from my
own self every day.
We just celebrated Christmas Day. The Son of God came in human form to save us
from our sins, which include self-inflicted psychological distress. That's why
the angel told Joseph to name the baby “God saves.” That is, “Jesus.”