In the movie, Bruce Almighty, God gives all Divine Power over to Bruce, a common man played by Jim Carrey, who thought he could do a better job than God. In the scene when Bruce discovers his powers, the background music is, I’ve Got the Power. Bruce goes around town using this power to dress himself well, do inappropriate things as women go buy, like blow the wind up their skirt, and get back at the bullies who had tormented him. He used God’s power for his own selfish desires. I wonder what each of us might do, given the power to control the world?
What power, what control do we have as mere humans? Or rather, much easier, what is out of our control? I’ll start: I have no control over time. How about you? Let’s list as many things as we can.
It appears that we cannot control anything outside ourselves, right? So what does that leave? What can we control? I daresay, we can’t always control our actions, because many times we react from our reptilian brain, before we have a chance to think things through. And this sometimes saves our lives in dangerous situations, but it can also cause headaches when we say things or do things we wouldn’t have, if we were able to count to 10 first.
Can we control our thoughts? Let’s give it a try. Do not think of an elephant. How many of you thought of an elephant, even though I told you not to? I guess we can’t control our thoughts 100% of the time either.
Well, we know we can make plans and most of the time, we can carry them out. So, we can control some of our thoughts, and some of our actions, even though we can never control anything that happens outside ourselves.
I think we can now admit that we are out of control. It’s hard to admit, right? To the outside world, we want to appear that we are in control, that we’ve got this. We don’t want people to lose faith in us, and our abilities. If that were to happen, we might lose our jobs or worse. So, we live in this very tough situation: we are not in total control of our lives, but we mustn’t let anyone know.
But we, here, now know and we accept you, and you accept the rest of us. We all fail, none of us are perfect. Phew! Now that’s a load of pressure off our plates! We can let our hair down on Sunday mornings in front of each other. Thank God!
Yes, thank God! For some reason, God created life this way. Out of control, without the ability to see the future or to know when our suffering will end, or how it will end. Luckily, God gave us some other things to help us through.
Like scripture. Matthew says, You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. 34 “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”
Luke 8:30 says, “Name the demon so it can be removed.”
So let’s give that demon, lack of control, another name: addiction. We humans are so addicted to a way of thinking, that it is very hard to see it for what it is. First of all, we must understand what the word addiction means, so that we are on the same page. Addiction MEANS being blinded, unable to see what is controlling us. We are in recovery when we can identify what has been controlling us and how it is controlling us.
If we can admit that we are not perfect, that something is controlling us, and when we can open our eyes and our minds enough to see it and admit it, then there is a death – of our old self, of the addiction. A new life is then available to us. Being in recovery is also salvation, and also enlightenment, according to Richard Rohr, the modern Franciscan Friar. And according to Jesus, of course. He always spoke of opening our eyes and ears to the Truth and the Love of God. And to give up our addiction to rules and knowledge of what we think is right and wrong.
And right there we get to the heart of it. We think we know better than God, as did Bruce Almighty, what is right and wrong. And we know we are right, right? And whoever thinks differently than us is wrong, right? Well…
Let’s delve into this one a little deeper. What do you know in your heart is absolutely right? Please, give me some examples.
Now let’s take the example of knowing in your heart that it is right to feed the hungry. Jesus taught us that, whenever we give food to them, we are acting in His behalf. We are doing as we were taught. Therefore, it must always be right. Right?
Well, recently I was doing just that. Giving an individual a sum of money toward the end of each month, so she could eat when her food stamps ran out. I had been doing this for a year, and still I hold no grudges about giving the money. My hands were God’s hands.
And then, she asked me for money so she could see a private dentist rather than the dentist her Medicaid would cover. When I said no, she said that she was upset by my answer and hung up on me.
I realized then that I had gone from helping her to enabling her. At some point she had gone from accepting the help to expecting the help. The situation had moved, very silently, from me acting as God’s hands to me enabling the devil, temptation. What had started out as the right thing to do, became without my knowledge or expectation, the wrong thing. I had to cease my relationship with her.
Since then, I have had to get on my knees and ask God for forgiveness, ask for understanding, ask for guidance. I have had to admit that my life was out of control. I have had to give up my righteousness. This is what Jesus asks of us, doesn’t he? He said that He did not show up for the righteous. He is here for the sinners. Here for the prayerful. Here for those of us who suffer.
And if we are truthful, He is here for you and me, because of these things. We are tempted. We want control of our lives, yet so frequently there is none. We have to admit that we need God and God’s mercy.
This is the feeling of Lent that I have been feeling. I feel like I am in the wilderness, a place I have never admitted to falling into, a place where I have no control.
Here in the wilderness I am powerless. There are a few things I can control: where I go, how I spend my time. But I am powerless over my thoughts and feelings about the situation. Every time I think about it, I turn to God, ask for God’s light and love to fill the dark spaces in my heart. I breathe slowly and deeply. And I think about how God shows God’s face in the world. I look out at your faces now, and I see God staring back. Thank you for you!
Step 1 of the 12 Steps is to admit I am powerless, and that my life has become unmanageable. In silence, let’s look into our hearts and minds, and speak to God, and listen for God’s response.
Finally, let us pray the serenity prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
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