“I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want,
but I do the very thing I hate.”
–Romans 7:15
I don’t usually remember my dreams, but one night recently my subconscious imagined an encounter with Jimmy Dixon. I had not thought of Jimmy for a long time as he was a childhood friend who I last saw in 1969. Whatever the narrative of that particular dream–and I don’t recall it–that imagined encounter caused me to remember a real and embarrassing memory.
One day when I was eight years old, Jimmy and I decided to build a raft. He was my next-door neighbor and closest friend. We were always cooking up schemes, but this time actually carried through. We drew a sketch, rounded up materials and soon the sound of saws and hammers echoed in my basement. The raft that took shape was big enough for six or eight people and certainly too heavy for our neighborhood creek. We had not thought about how to transport it as neither family owned a truck and the nearest body of water, the Chattahoochee River, was miles away. Yet we weren’t worried about such things because we were eight.
As that day’s labors wound down, we estimated needing a few more hours to finish it when we encountered a production problem: the next day was Sunday. Jimmy and I attended the same church. It was close enough that we usually walked together. As we swept up the sawdust and put away tools on that Saturday afternoon, Jimmy announced he would come home after Sunday School and could resume work by 11. I knew my family would be staying for worship, which meant I could not join him until after lunch. The thought of having to wait two extra hours was more than I could bear. Why I felt the project was on deadline defies explanation.
The next morning, as Sunday School ended, I watched my friend start for home. I was so eager to join him that all sense left me and yelled “Hey, Jimmy wait up!” I ran over. “Don’t you have to stay for church?” he asked. “Nah,” I answered, “my parents said it was okay.” Of course, I had not asked them. When I got home, my grandmother, who had stayed behind with one of my siblings running a fever, asked why I was back early. I repeated my lie.
Soon thereafter, I realized the foolishness of my actions. The pastor of our church was my father. How could I have possibly thought he wouldn’t notice my absence? My only hope was for an Easter-size crowd, yet holding my hammer on that August morning I knew that such a turn-out was unlikely. Instead, I grew increasingly confident that some kind of punishment was in my immediate future. It was, and the raft never saw a drop of water either!
Looking back on that series of events I give myself some grace because of the age at which I made that poor choice. Even so, it caused me to ponder the Apostle Paul’s lament about choices he made. “I do not understand my own actions,” he wrote. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Paul was an adult when he penned that line. He was not talking about building rafts instead of attending worship and then lying about it, but other moments of life when he gave way to temptation, doing the very thing he did not want to do. The Apostle does not go on to enumerate such things in more detail and didn’t need to we are clearly his descendants in that regard, too.
Most of us, including this 67 year old, can think of things we have done this week, maybe even today that were not the best version of ourselves or our priorities. My faith tradition speaks of it as the tendency toward idolatry, which basically means there is something in the human spirit that has always been drawn to actions or priorities that do not arise from God. From a Biblical standpoint, it happened first with Adam and Eve when they chose to eat the one thing in the Garden of Eden that was off limits. For you and me, the evidence comes in some other wrong choice that we can make progress in controlling, but never fully eradicate. As a result, many of us can know of moments, too, when we “do not what [we] want, but [we] do the very thing [we] hate.
Paul wrestled with that dynamic in his own life yet didn’t leave himself or us to wonder what can be done. Instead, he went on to ask “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” And then answers “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” I pray that such a gift will give some encouragement and hope, too, as you build your own rafts today and tomorrow.
Ever-faithful One, thank you for the certainty of your grace. I rely upon that gift, especially in the moments when my own choices dismay me. Amen.
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