like a fire

I don’t care for raw tomatoes - at all. I don’t really mind them cooked in something like chili or spaghetti, but I just can’t stand a nice ripe raw tomato. So how is that good news? Stick with me.

I have been counseling more often than anything else lately. Not real counseling like Johnny or Grant or Trey, but what the church calls counseling. Mostly just listening and reflecting some things back. Maybe making some connections and, more often than not, trying to give a Biblical perspective on what I am hearing. So I find myself with a guy with some impulse problems who is saying he really wants to change, while continuing to act on his impulses. So I ask him if he likes tomatoes. He confirms my suspicions by replying in the negative. I ask him if he thinks he could learn to like tomatoes. He thinks about that one for a while and then admits that he couldn’t learn to like tomatoes. I then ask him if he could learn to like tomatoes if our friendship depended on it. He thought that was pretty superficial to base a relationship on that, but he still agreed that he probably couldn’t learn to like tomatoes then either.

I then asked him what desires he thought he could change. He is starting to get suspicious at this point. He through out a couple of half hearted attempts, but he knew that he that he was a long way up the creek by then. So I asked him why he thought he could change the things he loved acting out in. Long silence.

He then asks me if I am telling him that he should just continue following his impulses. I of course said no, but I did leave him knowing that only God could change his heart. I also made the connection of abuse in relationships. That is, how sometimes we follow our impulses and it hurts others. Our relationships, sometimes, are a lot like learning to like tomatoes. We can’t really do it, but we can eat them anyway, if the relationship is hard enough.

I asked if he could stop acting out even if he really wanted to if that would save a friendship. That was where it ended.

I told him that was the gospel. That the good news is that our relationship with God isn’t dependent on our desires or behavior. It does injure that relationship, but it doesn’t negate it.

Hope all is well in the land of impulse.