So Long Insecurity Read online

  Most of my control issues with Keith are fairly benign these days, but that’s not the way it always goes. Our attempts to control can take us all sorts of places we never meant to travel. Sometimes we impose ourselves on our controllee, but other times we’re invited there. Even dragged there. When was the last time somebody put you in charge of his or her problem? Has anybody besides me ever had an addict make you responsible for keeping him or her away from the substance in question? Ever been in charge of an alcoholic’s liquor cabinet? Ever heard the words, “If I could live with you, I’d do so much better” or gotten the feeling that somebody was thinking, If you’re going to tell me what to do, why don’t you do it for me? The misleading part of our pursuit of omnipotence is that the setup actually appears to work for a while, particularly if you’re dealing with someone who is passive-aggressive. Eventually that person is going to start kicking out of the confines, however. Sooner or later, all false gods get fired. Or tired.

  The tricky part is that God blatantly instructs us in Scripture to help one another, so how do we know when help has morphed into a quest for control? The first clue is when the helper is the one doing all the work. Simultaneously, the one being helped lazily lapses into the mentality of a victim of his or her own weakness and all the while gets to be the center of a strong person’s attentions. What a deal.

  It’s frustrating though, isn’t it? Some of us know from personal experience that joy really is possible, that victory really is possible, that freedom really is possible, that meaning really is possible. So why are there so many people who talk a big talk about what they need to do but then won’t do what it takes? Sometimes it’s because there’s something about unhappiness that is working for them. It could be the attention they’re getting or the excuse they’re milking. Some won’t do what it takes to liberate themselves because their particular form of bondage provides a momentary respite from real life. It took me forty years in the wilderness to realize that at the end of the day, people do what they want to do. You can’t make them do something else. You can’t force them. You can’t change them. You can’t deliver them. Only God can. And that’s why He’s omnipotent and we’re not.

  We are not in charge. Somewhere along the way, we each have to acknowledge that our loved one is a separate person from us—someone God loves, pursues, and when necessary, chastises. When we try to do God’s job, we get in God’s way. We are called to cherish, support, and pray for others, but tying our security to them is a lost cause. That knot we keep tightening is no more fair to them than it is to us. Hand that rope over to God. Let Him undo that tangled-up mess and retie your security to Himself. He’s the One with all the power.

  The second divine attribute that insecure people find most appealing is omniscience: the ability to know it all and see it all. Of course, only God is omniscient, but boy, do we want it—and for good reason. If we’re trying to play God, we need an ample dose of omniscience to fire up our omnipotence. We can’t control what we don’t know, and we can’t secure what we can’t see. It is dangerous to play God, and the minefield is never more fully loaded than when we covet His omniscience. I’d like to share with you how God opened my eyes to the trap of thinking I had to know everything. Sometimes I learn a divine concept over a stretch of time, study, and experience. Other times I seem to get an instantaneous revelation that nearly takes my breath away. This was one of those times.

  It happened just recently. A young woman I’ve come to know and love came to me with a serious confession. I knew she had been through the wringer over a broken engagement, and the trauma was heightened by her absolute certainty a year earlier that she had found the godly man of her dreams. Over time, however, something had begun to go awry, and several of us began to wonder if they might not be such a perfect match. They were both wonderful people, but perhaps not such a wonderful pair. I had hoped that she was healing somewhat, but from the expression on her face, I could tell that her emotional entanglement with him had only grown tighter. They hadn’t been in touch for months, so the intensity of her turmoil was bewildering.

  “I’ve got to tell you something, Beth, so you can hold me accountable, or I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”

  “Stop what, sweetheart? Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  And so she did. Apparently while they were dating and then planning their wedding, she had become increasingly convinced that something about her fiancé was not quite what it seemed. He had appeared to be a steadfast young man of faith with strong ministry intentions. A catch if you’d ever find one. However, she constantly caught him ogling other women. At first she thought she was imagining it, but after a while she found it maddening. When she confronted him, he always denied it. In the aftermath of a fight, she would second-guess and condemn herself for being so suspicious and insecure. After all, he was such a great guy. Such a spiritual guy. Still, she couldn’t shake that feeling. Though she had never caught him red-handed in a single serious infraction, her suspicion spun out of control until the fabric of the relationship began to unravel. He emotionally retreated and came just short of calling her unstable.

  As painful as the breakup was, she knew God providentially accomplished what was best for both of them. Even through her tears, she had said to several of us, “This is the right thing. I know it is. I know God stopped it.” But alas, trusting His providence wasn’t enough. She became obsessed with whether or not her suspicions were founded. She got on his e-mail account and tried to figure out his password. Smart girl that she is, it was only a matter of time until she broke in with a cheer. Thankfully, she did not discover pornography, but she read e-mail after e-mail where he had crossed the boundaries of familiarity with a number of girls. He was a flirt at best and a fraud at worst.

  He was not the man she would have wanted to marry, but of course, God had already told her that. Instead of coming to peace with His protective will, she became completely fixated on her ex-fiancé’s e-mail account. She got on numerous times a day, reading every piece of correspondence he sent and received and then thought about them all night. She had her proof, but strangely she didn’t feel better. Not only did she get angrier by the minute, she also grew less secure. After all, what did those girls have that she didn’t? My friend knew that what she was doing was wrong, and she promised herself over and over that this would be the last time. I’ll know all I need to know after this. Actually, she already knew more than she needed to know. Months had passed, and she was now utterly miserable. Her fixation glued her to the very person she needed to forget.

  Imagine the quandary. My young friend had a stack of incriminating evidence but could do nothing with it because of the fraudulent way she had attained it. The information was exploding in her head, and she was at her wit’s end trying to figure out what to do with what she knew. I listened carefully to her story, and when she finished, something came out of my mouth that I’ve never said and never thought about before.

  “Darling, you have fooled around and eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

  “What? Beth, what do you mean?”

  “I mean you have done what Eve did. You’ve eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You wanted to know what God knew. Think about it!”

  Do you remember the story? The serpent used powerfully shrewd and deceptive reasoning to tempt the woman to disregard divine instruction and eat from the one forbidden tree: “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). There you have it. The first human pursuit of omniscience. Eve wanted to know what only God was meant to know. And so did my young friend. The parallel was as plain as day to me.

  God had already told her what she needed to know and what her heart and mind could tolerate without self-destruction. But she insisted on knowing something she was wholly incapable of handling. We talked a little more, and then we came up with a plan to help her stay out of the trap of too much information.
As I placed my head on the pillow that night, I thought of the times I’ve done something similar. Times I also insisted on biting into a piece of information that I couldn’t swallow after all. It happens every time I beg to know what I end up wishing I never knew.

  Surely we’ve walked together on this journey long enough for you to know that I’m not a proponent of ignorance or denial. The pursuit of knowledge for the edification of soul and community is a priority passion. But that kind of positive result comes from eating from the “tree of life,” metaphorically speaking, not from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:9, 17).

  There is an enlightening knowledge that builds up and fortifies the human psyche, but there is also darker knowledge that rips it to shreds. There is knowing. And there is knowing too much.

  I believe those two trees in humanity’s first garden were living symbols of these very concepts. One promoted life. The other promoted death. Because God is complete perfection and immutable holiness, He can handle omniscience. He can know all things—good and evil—without responding with sin, weakness, horror, or despair. We, on the other hand, don’t have that luxury. Think how many times we’ve begged someone to tell us something and sworn we could handle it only to flip like a flapjack the second it was out of the person’s mouth.

  What God initiates, He equips us to handle. This is true even when emotional assimilation requires a process. Have you ever come upon information that was shocking, disheartening, or difficult, yet you somehow found that because God insisted on that discovery, He also provided you with the grace to handle it? Even though the unsolicited information might have caused pain and great conflict, if God initiated the revelation, He had a goal in mind that was steeped in great love. Even if He used a messenger you didn’t like, He worked through His sovereignty to open your eyes to something vital. Perhaps God knew that the discovery was necessary for an area of healing or deliverance to take place. Maybe He knew it would shake you from your slumber.

  When we scratch and claw to dig information out of the dirt, however, we don’t get the same kind of grace that accompanies divine revelation. God graciously forgives, restores, and even resurrects as we bring Him our needs, but the pursuit of omniscience costs us dearly in the meantime.

  You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.

  Genesis 2:17

  Since the concept is figurative and spiritual in our regard, we don’t experience a physical death after eating from that tree, but make no mistake. Something in us does die, and usually it’s our security. Let’s put a few examples on the table.

  We can insist on knowing more about our mate’s past relationships than we end up being able to handle. What is it about women that makes us so intent on knowing the gritty details of our men’s histories? I think it’s that whole omniscience-omnipotence complex. We feel like we can’t control what we don’t know. Don’t get me wrong. We need to know vital basics like whether or not they’ve been married or engaged, slept around, been in jail, battled an addiction, had a track record of unfaithfulness, or left a string of shattered hearts. We’d also better be crystal clear on where they stand spiritually. By all means, let’s seek to know their hearts inside and out, but must we force ourselves into the closets of their minds as well?

  Details like what he did with whom and how can paint vivid murals on the walls of your mind that jump to life every time you close your eyes. Inordinate curiosity can kill more than the cat. We ask until we harass, then one day we’re told. Most of the time the information emerging from our persistent, prurient interest proves very harmful. What’s most baffling is the cycle of insecurity it causes. We pry because we are insecure, and then we are more insecure because we pried. God is the only one who can know a person’s every thought, every motive, every temptation, and every flaw yet still feel good about Himself. If we want to become secure women of God, we must cease asking questions we can’t handle the answers to.

  We can discover a pornographic Web site our mate has visited and then stay on it. Instead of knowing what we need to know so that we can confront it factually, we insist on going through those images one by one to see exactly what he saw. That, beloved, is eating from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Long after he’s sorry (assuming that he is) and the hard drive of the computer has been swept clean, those pictures will still play like broken records on the screens of our minds. God will equip us with the grace to deal with the initial discovery. Indeed, He may have even plotted it in order to bring eventual deliverance. But in order to receive His grace, we must halt with what we need to know rather than moving from “the tree of life” to “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and insisting on seeing more than we can handle. God will grant us the grace to heal if we seek Him, but our memories will bear unnecessary scars for years to come.

  We can go beyond the bounds of sound doctrine on demonology and open a door to the occult. Once again, God protects what He directs, but when our curiosity takes us beyond a knowledge that edifies and fortifies to a knowledge that exposes and terrifies, we might find that we are in for the psychological and spiritual battle of our lives. Don’t kid yourself. There is a very real and deadly demonic world in the unseen realm that we need to stand against, not stand amid. We can crack open a door, but by the time we realize what happened and cry out for help, an avalanche of evil could land in our laps.

  How do you know when you’re moving from one tree to the other in your pursuit of knowledge? Usually you will be able to feel it. Something inside of you says, I know enough. I need to stop here. Because the air around them can get foggy, make sure you’re differentiating between the healthy pursuit of knowledge and what I’m calling the human pursuit of omniscience. Reflect for a moment on the young woman who became obsessed with reading her former fiancé’s e-mails. Her colossal misstep was seeking knowledge in the dark rather than knowledge in the light. As Ephesians 4:18 says, she became “darkened in [her] understanding” instead of enlightened. She went where she did not belong and acquired what she could not confront. Remember, God had already conveyed that the young man was not the best choice for her. She already knew in her heart what she needed to know. When she insisted on a little slice of omniscience (knowing what God alone needed to know), she ended up with information she could not handle.

  On the other hand, many smart husbands and wives leave their e-mail accounts wide open to one another’s eyes. Keith can look in my in-box any time, just as I can look in his. None of our correspondence is off limits. Because we have that freedom, we often feel little need to act on it. Knowing that the other has access is enough to spur caution. At our house, we also have full access to Internet histories, and they’re often right there on the margin of the screen. That’s not an attempt at omniscience. That’s just being open and honest.

  Healthy access to information is important in a marriage, but it can be a matter of life and death or safety and peril to our children. Parents would be out of their minds in this sketch of time not to be in their children’s personal business. I would not only be all over my daughters’ computers, I’d also get ahold of their cell phones. In this culture, making frequent spot checks of texts, pictures, and unfamiliar names and numbers is part of responsible parenting—and you shouldn’t be bullied out of it by your children. If I happened on a pornographic site one of my daughters had accessed on a computer, I would react differently than I would if it were my husband. No matter how distasteful, I would likely glance through every image in order to see how far my child had gone and what kind of help might be warranted.

  What may be the equivalent of eating from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” for a child could be the equivalent of eating from “the tree of life” for the parent if it leads to help, healing, and deliverance.

  In matters of explosive information, these are the questions to ask: What is God showing me? Or what am I demanding to be show
n?

  Playing God is never more dangerous than when we seek to be omniscient. We toy at it every time we attempt to get all the way into somebody’s head and credit ourselves for essentially reading his or her mind. All we’ve really accomplished is a speed-reading of our own skewed minds. A fool sticks her ostrich head in the sand about generalities that would help her understand her man better and closes her mind when he’s begging to tell her something he desperately needs her to know. That’s acceptance, not omniscience, and even when the disclosure stings, we can receive the grace of God to handle it like big girls. But we try our hands at omniscience every time we corner guys into oversharing too many details about their thought lives, temptations, attractions, and fantasies.

  Keith and I somehow have our best conversations in the car, and since we’re both road warriors, we get plenty of opportunities to have them. A few days ago while we were on our way home from West Texas, he grew very serious at the wheel and confessed several fears to me that I never realized he had. Both were fears that I could help quiet as his wife. I was so relieved he told me, and I loved him even more for his openness. That kind of free disclosure is the heart of true intimacy. It differs dramatically from drilling into the well of somebody’s innermost thoughts, struggles, and imaginations and asking loaded questions we can’t handle when they’re answered. Guys would have similar difficulty dealing with some of the temptations, doubts, and dreams that run through most women’s minds—though they’re not as apt to beat that door down. In all fairness, our gender’s propensity to want to look inside the hearts and minds of others comes from an admirable desire for true intimacy. This is its dangerous distortion.