Addict

I recently decided to sit down and read Donald Miller's 'Blue Like Jazz.' There were pros and cons to the book, but there were definitely several passages that stuck out to me and convicted me on different levels. One of the greatest messages I got out of the book is just another reminder of the depth of my own selfishness.

"Life was a story about me because I was in every scene. In fact, I was the only one in every scene. I was everywhere I went. If somebody walked into my scene, it would frustrate me because they were disrupting the general theme of the play, namely my comfort or glory. Other people were flat characters in my movie, lifeless characters. Sometimes I would have scenes with them, dialogue, and they would speak their lines, and I would speak mine. But the movie, the grand movie stretching from Adam to the Antichrist, was about me. I wouldn't have told you that at the time, but that is the way I lived.

The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me. I hear of addicts talk about the shakes and panic attacks and the highs and lows of resisting their habit, and to some degree I understand them because I have had habits of my own, but no drug is as powerful as the drug of self. No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction."

Those of you that have known me for any length of time, you know that I have a deep addiction to self as well. In high school, my pride was one of my defining characteristics. . .people joked about it, a girl that I liked charged me a dime every time I said something proud, and I even ended up having a shirt made that said "Tenor God" to brag about my singing abilities (I still have the shirt if you're interested in seeing it sometime.) In college, God did a great work to break me of my pride. . .but I'm still a self addicted person.

I've joked with people before that when I married Sara, I discovered how selfish I still was. I wanted my own time, I wanted to watch my own shows, I wanted to talk on my schedule, not hers. Over time, I worked through those things. . .but when Zoe came into my world, I again discovered that I was still selfish, just in completely different ways. In every area and aspect of my life, there is selfishness, manifesting itself in different ways, but always there. . . .