Disappointment.

There is no greater disappointment than what we are to ourselves. We look back at what we were and most of us are better than that. We look back at how we made choices and there are some regrets, but for the most part we are satisfied with the choices. If we are not, hopefully we are mature enough to realize that hindsight is perfect and had we had to do it all over again, we would have done the same things for the same reasons than we had.

When we look back at the expectations that we placed on ourselves.., when we re-visit the dreams we had for ourselves, we have to hang our heads in shame for the failure of ourselves. We have to admit we over-estimated our own strength, our own commitment, our own wisdom and our own temerity. We look at the person we had become and wonder if we will ever measure up to the person we thought we would be.

Maybe this greatest disappointment of all can account, not excuse but account, for a few of our behavioral problems. The first is the blame game. If we blame our mistakes, our failures on someone else or something else we can escape the shame we feel toward ourselves. We can hate someone or something else and play the “if-only” game within ourselves and never really face reality. Facing reality may mean that we will have to face the character flaws that kept us from attaining the heights we once hoped for.

We may take a page from the animal kingdom and stick our head in the sand like the ostrich and ask: “What flaw?” If we do not acknowledge it, it is not there. Or we could be like the chameleon: “We all have our issues” and blend into our environment of dysfunction and brokenness so that the spotlight will safely pass us by. Or we may be like the ant and blindly cover ourselves with all manner of activity so that we never have to stop and think about the things that keep us from really seeing and being what we were designed to be.

Or we may be a little more inventive and develop a theology, a doctrine that completely theorizes all negatives out. We may come up with some interpretation of scripture that ascribe all negatives, all conviction, all sin and all that we are not comfortable with as part of the old covenant, the Old Testament. We may make up a believe system that says we are okay just the way we are and there is no need for change. Or we may even create a god of our own choosing, our own design, one that we can be comfortable with.

It is fairly easy to design our own god, our own doctrine. It only takes a certain level of stubbornness, some charisma and a bit of Bible knowledge, not too much so that we actually will come under conviction, but just enough so that we can bend, butcher and twist scripture to say what we want it to say. And soon enough we believe our own creation to be the truth and all others to be the lie. We curl up in our comfortable, self-feathered nest with our self-content and never have to be disappointed or disturbed anymore.

 If only King David of old knew some of these tricks then he would never had to cry out:” I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me.” Or maybe if Paul, the apostle, knew how to spin it, or blame it, he would never have had to declare: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  If Jesus could only get the hang of always being positive He would not have to have the terrible words come from His lips: “My God, My God! Why have You forsaken me!”