My subject is, “What is Inside You Has to Come Out!” Human behavior is very much like the natural order. We sow seeds, set plants, fertilize and attend our gardens. We enroll our children in school to educate their minds. Every day we learn morality, form habits, build character. At our tables we train our tastes for the foods we prefer.
The Good News Bible version of the Gospel says: “what comes out of a person makes him unclean ... from the inside, from a person’s heart, come the evil ideas which lead him to do immoral things ...” (paraphrase)
What is inside has to come out!
I saw a survey that compared the worst discipline problems in public schools in the 1940s and the 1980s. In the 1940s the worst discipline problems in public schools were: talking; chewing gum; making noise; running in the halls; getting out of turn in line; wearing improper clothes; not putting paper in wastebaskets! Some of the worst problems in the 1980s are: drug abuse; alcohol abuse; pregnancy; suicide; rape; robbery; assault.1
What an incredible shift in behavior patterns in only forty years. I was in public school in the forties, entered college in the late forties. I have grandchildren in public school in the 1980s. These harsh and shocking facts are calling us to make a corrective response. Can we, will we, make it?
Clearly something is getting into our children that is coming out in intolerably destructive ways. What is it that in so short a time school problems have changed from “chewing gum” to drunkenness and drugs, from “getting out of turn in line” to getting out of life through suicide? What is defiling our children, if I dare use that term? Is it their fault or society’s? Is it something within or without?
We Americans are struggling to come out of what has been called the “permissive” generation. We have been basking in the pleasure of passing the buck, trying to lay the responsibility on parents, society, government, employers, union or whatever appears to be an acceptable excuse.
“Dear Abbey” featured a series of debates on “sexual promiscuity” on college campuses. Parents blamed colleges for promoting a “brothel atmosphere” in co-ed dorms. Students responded saying that the students themselves, not the dorms or the universities, make the problems. One girl confessed that she lost her virginity at a “good Christian college” that had separate men-women dorms and strict policies on alcohol and visitation.
I need to emphasize that goodness and cleanliness, righteousness and virtue, also come from the inside. And so the bottom line is: it is a matter of personal responsibility and accountability.
Take a lesson from “computerese.” You who are “user friendly” know that a microscopic piece of dust can cause a “glitch” in your software resulting in “garbled” data and a “scrambled” text. Lightning or other power surges can burn out your transformer.
Take a lesson from our hyped-up EPA consciousness. Ecological awareness advocates are provoking us to handle our “toxic wastes” in ways they term “recycling.”
We humans are like the computer and we are like the natural order. Whatever is inside us eventually comes to the surface. It either blesses or curses. It comes either gently, orderly and gradually like a beautiful flower blossoming, or it comes in a raging storm, some emotional, violent explosion, or the release of gases from industrial plants, cars, garbage dumps. We would like to believe that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are just something that happen and we can forget about it. The fact is, they are bringing the “greenhouse” effect sooner than we think.
We are still infants in our ability to be trustees of this wonderful planet earth. At present we are producing more chaos than order, more pollutants than clean air. And, with the vast knowledge we have about human personality, we are still infants in character building. Nature can adjust to some chaos, but it can’t stand a vacuum. When are we going to take some responsibility in restoring harmony in nature? Humans are the greatest when it comes to handling chaos, but strength of character has to be there first.
Ponder with me some of the ways that what is inside us comes out in blessings (pause) and cursings.
What’s inside us comes out in our work relationships. A certain downtown businessman became fond of the little boy who shined his shoes every day. He did such a good job that one day the businessman asked him, “Son, how come you are so conscientious about your work?” The boy felt complimented. He looked up to the man, and said, “Mister, I’m a Christian and I try to shine every pair of shoes as if Jesus Christ were wearing them.”
The businessman saw something genuine in the shoeshine boy. Soon after that he began reading his Bible. When he decided to be a Christian himself, he credited his decision to the little boy who shined every pair of shoes “as if Jesus Christ were wearing them.” That’s a blessing.
Again, what’s inside us comes out in our social and moral behavior. Here is the other extreme: a boy was raised by a mother who showed him no affection, no love, no discipline. He was a “loner” in school. The girls teased him and the boys beat him up. He joined the marines but only found abuse there and, eventually, was dishonorably discharged. He married and tried to have a family, but his wife hated him. He lost all sense of self-worth. Maybe you’ve guessed his name. One day it was November 22, 1963 he went out into the garage, took a rifle, drove into Dallas, and put two holes in the head of our former President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Yes, his name was Lee Harvey Oswald.
One who lacks self-esteem and has a poor self image is likely to be negative, anti-social and often deplorably immoral.
Also, what’s inside comes out in our health. John A. Redhead, in Getting to Know God, tells of a man who went to his doctor with symptoms of serious illness. The doctor examined and found the man organically sound. In two weeks he came back. “Doctor, I am at my wit’s end. I feel very bad. I am nervous and upset. I can’t eat or sleep. I am in great pain. I’m totally miserable.”
The doctor did another thorough exam and said, “As far as I can see, there is nothing wrong with you physically. Your body is not functioning normally, to be sure, but I find no evidence of organic trouble.” So the doctor confronted the man further: “What is going on in your life? Do you have something on your conscience? Have you done something wrong? Is your heart burdened with guilt?” The patient was insulted and angrily said he came for medical advice not a sermon. He stalked out.
Weeks later he returned in a different spirit. “Doctor, I want to confess that you put your finger on the truth of my illness. I have done something very wrong.” He told how he had stolen money from his brother when his brother trusted his business to him while living abroad. No one knew about his stealing. But his conscience knew it and the disease of guilt infected his body.
“How much can you pay your brother right now?” asked the doctor. “Two thousand dollars,” he said. “Then write the check and compose a letter of confession to your brother including your plan to repay him the rest of what you owe him.”
They enclosed the check in the letter, sealed the envelope, and walked together to the mailbox. As the man dropped the letter into the mailbox, he also dropped a great burden from his life. The doctor testified to that. He saw it happen.2 We are just beginning to see the top of the iceberg of a vast and invaluable body of knowledge in this whole area of health. Dr. Bernie Siegel’s book, Love, Medicine and Miracles, gives us some more insight. Dr. Siegel created ECAP Exceptional Cancer Patients a cancer patient support group. Listen to what he says: persons develop cancer when they hold grudges (resentment and hostility) against a spouse. Persons develop cancer who experience serious depression after some traumatic circumstance. For example, sixty-eight deaths out of seventy-one “terminal” cases had a history of therapy for serious depression.
A study compared smokers having lung cancer with those having other diseases. It indicated that cancer patients had “poorer outlets for emotional discharge,” and concluded, the more repressed a person was, the fewer cigarettes were needed to cause cancer.3
Somewhere I read that “God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won’t.” Ouch!! We can agree on this, can’t we? We are putting things into ourselves all the time not just food, but thoughts positive thoughts and negative thoughts, values, habits, feelings, reactions, successes, failures, disappointments. All of these are powerful forces both good and bad. They keep swirling around inside us. They either create harmony or they create war. They either swirl into a calmness and a serenity. Or they keep swirling and making waves that irritate and threaten chaos of whatever bits of harmony may be there. Happy persons learn to do a regular recycling of their emotions, their thoughts, their habits, their resentments, and their successes. It isn’t easy, but it has good rewards.
Like the little boy who knelt at his bed to say his nighttime prayers while mother stood beside him. He began, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die ...” He repeated, “If I should die before ...” Suddenly he got up, ran downstairs, came back, knelt and prayed the entire prayer, ending with, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” As mother tucked him into bed, she asked him why he interrupted his prayer and went downstairs. He said, “Mommy, I thought about what I was praying. I had to stop and put all of Jim’s wooden soldiers up on their feet. I had turned them on their heads just to see how mad he would be in the morning. If I should die before I wake I wouldn’t want him to find them like that.”
The person who keeps in touch with the inner self throughout life with that kind of accountability is going to be happy. And that mother was blessed to witness the drama of good things coming from inside her little boy.
God provides us all kinds of “help menus” for recycling the toxic wastes inside us: a quiet walk, a visit with a friend, a telephone call, a letter, an arrow prayer as you arise, as you lock your door, as you look out your office window; and don’t exit out all the traditional helps private daily devotion, Scripture, confession, corporate worship. Putting it in “computerese,” God invites you to “reformat,” erasing the disk clean, do a “backup,” starting fresh. And at least one day a week join other believers to renew your faith in Jesus Christ. Here is where Jesus first taught us to “boot” up in the morning with faith, be “user friendly” throughout the day with love, and “shut down” at the end of the day with hope and trust.
1. Newsweek, January 5, 1987.
2. John A. Redhead, Getting to Know God, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1954, pp. 110-111.
3. Bernie S. Siegel, Love, Medicine and Miracles, Harper and Row, New York, 1986, p. 80.