Zechariah, A Case Study in the Importance of Silence
Luke 1:5-25 – Part Three
Have you ever had the experience of a
friend calling to ask your advice but as the conversation ensues you are unable
speak? Your friend’s nervous energy and penetrating anxiety overwhelms you and
the conversation. It forces you to simply listen. You hope your friend will
calm down, take a deep breath and become silent. That pause will enable your
friend to listen to you and consider creative solutions to his problem. I
suspect God has that experience billions of times each day. Anxious disciples
under the guise of prayer flee to Him for relief from their fears and adverse
circumstances. Like frightened children who cannot sleep because they fear a
monster lurks in the closet, these disciples seek miracles to eliminate their
tiniest dissatisfaction. They find discomfort intolerable. The “Gospel of
Wealth and Health” tells them that a slight seasonal cold or sneezing resulting
from exposure to pollen and inflamed allergies require angelic intervention. A
glance at a neighbor’s new car, learning of a relative’s move to a bigger house
or observing a coworker’s promotion motivates them to storm the gates of heaven.
They demand God’s direct, immediate and favorable intervention to increase
their social position, material acquisition and financial standing. Silence
would resolve these childlike challenges.
As disciples become still and silent in
solitude, the Holy Spirit speaks, empowers and transforms. Paul instructs his
protégé, Timothy, that God is not the source of any fear. Instead, God grants necessary
emotional stability, reason and strength to overcome any fear that plagues us.
“God has not given us a spirit of fear but love, power and a sound mind.” (2
Timothy 1:7) During times of disciplined prayer, meditation and silence, the
Holy Spirit reminds disciples of God’s unfailing love. Regardless of any errors,
crimes or sins of commission and omission, God’s faithful love does not change.
His love empowers us to transcend any mistakes, guilt, regret, pain or toxic
emotion. The Holy Spirit imparts divine strength and perseverance to enable
disciples to eradicate fear and defeat any internal opposition or external
threat.
“A sound mind” equates with reason,
creativity, ingenuity and willingness to resolve any problems. Conceivably, the
answer to prayers for financial blessing is an earnest desire to grow in
stewardship of your finances. Absolving debt indirectly raises your income as
you have more funds to access and utilize rather than servicing debt at high
interest rates. Paying bills on time avoids late fees. Multiple failed
relationships indicate a personal pattern that requires self-reflection. If you are the least common denominator in
each of these situations, perhaps you are the primary catalyst for any chaos and
dissolution of the relationship. The spiritual disciplines of prayer and
meditation aid you in detecting the behavioral patterns borne of past
experiences that unconsciously propel you towards sabotaging your professional
and personal relationships. Practically, the Holy Spirit enlightens you in
discovering the problem and its root causes. He then equips you with reasonable
strategies to resolve your dilemma.
Self-mastery is a process of taking a
comprehensive inventory. You explore assets and liabilities, strengths and
weaknesses, talents and deficiencies and successes and failures. Humorously,
you examine “the good, bad and ugly.” You embrace a ruthlessly honest appraisal
of your heart, mind and character. Carl Jung, famed Swiss analytical
psychologist, discourses upon “the shadow” which is the dark side of a person’s
character. There, the propensity towards self-centered motives and self-seeking
choices lies. Indulgence of physical instincts that possibly results in myriad
addictions also lay there. Potential to betray people, infidelity, theft,
organized crime, refusal to forgive, toxic emotions and willingness to seize
opportunities to indulge in crime and other adverse behavior. Traditional
religious practices tend to ignore these aspects of a person’s character.
People focus on “the good” with fallacious hope that it erases bad behavior and
choices. However, self-mastery compels disciples to look intently at all
dimensions of their character.
As the recovery community has taught
for nearly a century, a primary step in resolving any internal difficulty is
wholesale acceptance of it. Denial of any problems further suppresses it within
a person’s mind and psyche. Most regrettably, suppression often leads to
perversion. This inverse relationship often manifests in sexual scandals.
Demands for unrealistic sexual practices usually leads to promiscuity, infidelity and unwanted
pregnancies. Self-mastery propels disciples towards holistic self-acceptance.
You unconditionally and unequivocally recognize your total character and self.
Rather than playing games of sinning and making mistakes and then performing
formulaic rituals of forgiveness, you acknowledge these traits. In so doing,
you empower yourself to neutralize them and resist the temptation to satisfy
them. Ironically, admission of addiction empowers its sufferers to surmount it.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Pulling a negative characteristic from the shadow and examining it in
the openness of communion with God yields power and strength to overcome it.
Acceptance of a bent toward theft can motivate you to eradicate that trait as
you refuse to imprison yourself to any detrimental attribute. The process of
self-mastery allows you to find a “strange freedom” wherein you fully
acknowledge all of who you are but equally realize that you do not have to
slavishly indulge negative characteristics. You have liberty to resist.
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