There are few places in our lives where I think we are more self-deceived than in our own willingness to become healthy and whole people. This does not mean that we don't, at some level, desire to be healthy and whole.
But the problem is that we want wholeness on our own terms. We are like the addict who can't imagine life without the addiction--we want to manage our pain/anger/self-righteousness/whatever, not do away with it altogether. Intervention comes our way, an opportunity to find another life--it promises wholeness but it requires that we altogether abandon life as we know it.
So instead, we cling, we dig in, we demand that wholeness look a certain way, most often shaped by the whims of our culture or the status of our hormonal/emotional/digestive life. This is particularly disastrous when the clinging and demanding-ness happens within the context of religion--Christianity, perhaps, worst of all. Jesus was ruthless towards those who used religious pretexts to prop up their addictions.
And so, as C.S. Lewis memorably says, hell is locked from the inside. Those who are there do, in some sense, want to get out--but only on their terms. They refuse the offer of life. They want to be strong in their own strength, the very strength that has failed them time and time again.
They (and we) must therefore be strong in His strength. He has no other strength to give us.
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