#2-(Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero): Symptoms of our unhealthiness.

Chapter 2: The Top Ten Symptoms of Emotionally Unhealthy Spirituality

Scazzero starts out by giving us the top 10 symptoms of unhealthy spirituality:
1. Using God to run from God.
     -engaging in 'religious' activity; using Scripture to judge others; avoiding situations requiring me to change.
2. Ignoring the emotions of anger, sadness, and fear.
     -many Christians feel that these 3 emotions are sinful and stuff or try to spiritualize them away: but they don't go away. "To the degree that we are unable to express our emotions, we remain impaired in our ability to love God, others, and ourselves as well." By denying these emotions, Thomas Merton says that we have "merely deadened our humanity, instead of setting it free to develop richly, in all its capacities, under the influence of grace."
3. Dying to the wrong things.
     -Iraneus said, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." We are to die to our sinful flesh but not to His image in us: the healthy desires and pleasures of life: friendships, joy, art, music, beauty, laughter, nature etc.God wants to free that true self He created to grow and blossom by stripping away the false constructs we built around it through the process of sanctification by the Holy Spirit.
4. Denying the past's impact on the present.
     -Sanctification demands that we go back in order to break free from unhealthy and destructive patterns that prevent us from loving ourselves and others as God designed. These include: gender roles; the handling of anger, conflict and shame; how we defined success; our view of family, children, recreation, pleasure, sexuality, grieving; our relationships with friends have all been shaped by our families of origin and cultures.
5. Dividing our lives into 'secular' and 'sacred' compartments.
     -We 'do' church but the rest of our lives are just like the world. Ron Sider says: " Whether the issue is marriage and sexuality or money and care for the poor, evangelicals today are living scandalously unbiblical lives....The data suggest that in many crucial areas evangelicals are not living any differently from their unbelieving neighbours."
6. Doing for God instead of being with God.
     -Productivity is a high priority in Western culture. But Scazzero says "work for God that is not nourished by a deep interior life with God will eventually be contaminated by...ego, power, needing approval of and from others....our activity for God can only properly flow from a life with God...doing for God in a way that is proportionate to our being with God is the only pathway to a pure heart and seeing God."
7. Spiritualizing away conflict.
     -Healthy Christians do not avoid conflict; like saying 'yes' when we mean 'no'; like saying one thing to someone's face and another behind their back.' like making promises we have no intention of keeping' like avoiding, withdrawing and cutting off.; like giving the silent treatment.; like giving in because of fear of not being liked...etc.--that is all part of false peacemaking by sweeping the ugly under the rug.
8. Covering over brokenness, weakness, and failure.
     -avoid the pressure to appear spiritually together. The best of people are deeply flawed and broken.
9. Living without limits.
     -Jesus modeled limits for us. He did not heal everyone, feed all the hungry..etc. While we are called to lay down our selves for others, we first need a 'self' to lay down. Parker Palmer said: "Self-care is never a selfish act-it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have..."
10. Judging other people's spiritual journey.
     -We have a tendency to turn our differences into moral superiority or virtues and create never-ending groups to categorize people. "Pentecostals lack structure" "Men are idiots." "The poor are lazy." etc....Scazzero says: "By failing to let others be themselves before God and move at their own pace, we inevitably project onto them our own discomfort with their choice to live life differently than we do. We end up eliminating them in our minds, trying to make others like us, abandoning them altogether or falling into a "Who cares?" indifference toward them. In some ways the silence of unconcern can be more deadly than hate."

Prayer:
Lord, when I consider this chapter, the only thing I can say is, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner." Thank You, O God that I stand before You in the righteousness of Jesus, in His perfect record and performance, not my own. Lord, I ask that You would not simply heal the symptoms of what is not right in my life, but that You would surgically remove all that is in me that does not belong to You. As I think about what I have read, Lord, pour light over the things that are hidden. May I see clearly as You hold me tenderly. In Jesus' Name, Amen."