When Life Takes You Into Cul de Sacs

[HKHaugan]

Carpe Diem, 'Seize the Day.' (Latin quote from the poet Horace) and other cul de sacs.

Seizing the day is a popular idea. It implies we can take charge and control our attitude toward life and the world in general. Like many sayings from the past they are ‘ice-box (refrigerator) material’ we stick on the door or bulletin board to inspire our daily life. But I have to ask, does it work for you? No? Well then, read on.

Philosophers, poets and religionists work on the assumption that with the right intellectual, romantic or mystical approach we can shape our lives all by ourselves (1st century gnostic beliefs). All we need is to be open to whatever pithy expression or system of thought tickles our fancy. There is always that lingering temptation to let TV, intellectual, psychological or religious gurus’ insights soothe the moment’s need for an ‘aha.’ One moment leads to another and you are caught in an endless drift for the next fix.

All that’s really happening in that moment is allowing our mind, heart and spirit to follow what sounds authentic only to end up at some point in a cul de sac of disillusionment. The problem is that the journey down their paths could be lifelong and the trail strewn with crumbs of seemingly brilliant self-satisfying moments but the cul de sac like all cul de sacs is empty and always is “..down at the end of lonely street in Heartbreak Hotel (well stated in an old Elvis Presley hit).” It is an intellectual, emotional and soul death because it has placed the self above all else. That cul de sac is a personal, relational and spiritual death.

Now think about that cul de sac for a moment. If you have ever been down a street that ended in a cul de sac there was warning sign, either No Outlet or Dead End. True isn’t it? But, and here is the good news about cul de sacs, you are always going to find that most cul de sacs are circular and give you space in which you can turn around and go back out, right?

Enter Jesus, Savior and Lord.

At the end of every path leading to a cul de sac is Jesus who shows us how to turn around and take a new path. Whether it is a mind issue, a heart issue or a spiritual issue, all of them outside of God fulfill the promised warning sign, Dead End, unless we take seriously that at the end of each cul de sac stands the person of Jesus. In Him we can turn around.

Now, guess what the ‘turnaround’ word is---that’s right---repentance (Greek, metanoia-reverse direction-literally to get back in one’s right mind. Its opposite is paranoia which is to be ‘out of one’s mind’). Metanoia is to see Jesus and know that a relationship with Him turns us around, reverses our lonely direction and puts us on a new way to live. We are real ‘I am’s’ with an individual mind that can sort out our experience. We have individual emotions that move our hearts and give us relational meaning. We have individual spiritual being that can discern good and evil in its multi-dimensional forms.

Saul, who became Paul, traveled that ‘lonely street.’ He lived by world principles dressed in religious garb. His cul de sac was religion. His mind was held in the cul de sac of intellectual pride, the emotional cul de sac of anger and the spiritual cul de sac of sin. He never heeded the warning signs from Genesis through Malachi even though he knew them intellectually. He reached the inevitable end on the Damascus road. It was Jesus who confronted him there, a confrontation that turned him totally in the other direction and made him the missionary that carried the truth of Jesus around the Mediterranean until it swept across Europe and influenced the development of all civilization.

But Paul gave us a real practical approach to the understanding of cul de sacs. Living in the world is really a spiritual battle of ideas, emotions and spirits. In each without God there are always the ominous dead ends for the mind, heart and spirit. They are called strongholds. Strongholds are cul de sacs.  They are secular principles, ideas and concepts we make up apart from God to handle the way we interact with people and situations in the world around us. So Paul not only defines them, he gives us a way to handle them spiritually. “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2Cor.10:4-5).”

What we do is take any thought or pretense that removes a personal God from the equation of life and give it thorough evaluation, consideration to see if it is obedient, that is if it lines up with and is consistent with the person of Jesus. Being the exact image of God He qualifies as the definition of what it means to be and live as a human being in the most perfect sense. Is an idea we hold to be true, something we rely on to be a human being, does it work to grow us in our intellect, our emotions and our spirit? Or is it a pretense, a path ending in a cul de sac, that takes us away from our source? Is sin, our self-centeredness apart from God, a fact and our real problem? Does it line up with why God would become a man and live the dynamics of a perfect life and die to prove the point? Does it square with what it means to love, to have compassion, the kind only God has revealed in Jesus? Does it fit with the Resurrection of Jesus which showed Jesus’ lifestyle as the only lifestyle that survives death in all its forms? Does it coincide with the relationship Jesus offers with Himself that is a turn around cul de sac in which we grow from event to event eternally? Human contrived strongholds have no warning signs and are one way in only.

Our methodology is to take our strongholds captive and submit them to Him until He becomes our one stronghold that replaces all others. We have the Bible to challenge us in our ideas, our emotions and our spirits. It becomes our mind’s stronghold. We can then ask if what we believe about life is true and check it there. If we question the emotions that motivate our hearts we can see how the Word surfaces our heart needs and meets them. If we become aware of the spiritual realm around us we have the Word to show us the discerning means to walk through it.

Therefore it is no longer carpe diem, seizing the day, but rather carpe stigmei, taking every moment captive, because every moment is more than ideas. It’s the full personal dimension of our being an image of God with a mind, heart and spirit, an eternal event in the making, expanding moment by moment with an awareness that is individually conscious, thinking, feeling and spiritually sensitive.

---Carpe stigmei---take the moment captive and submit it to Jesus.