I guess it's not really a dither. Just...thinking things through, I guess.
I was looking over some notes from speaking with a good friend a few weeks ago. He said one of the tablets was holiness laws and the other tablet was righteousness laws. So, he said, loving God is holiness, loving your neighbor is righteousness.
And in looking over the notes, it suddenly struck me that I am neither. I can have a basic courtesy towards others, but I do not love them as I love myself. And in fact, I'm confused about loving myself. I am selfish and it makes me hate myself, not love myself. (I'm in trouble if the phrase is true, that you can't love others until you learn to love yourself, because I find myself odious and difficult to bear with and I find others odious and difficult to bear with too. But I have no reason to believe the phrase is true.)
And if I can't love others who I see, I am not loving God who I don't see. So I am neither. Unless I say that manners and basic decency are love, which I don't believe. I think manners and basic decency are social conditioning.
But then there is what God says about the righteousness that is by trust. I used to say I trusted Him but I proved myself to be a liar by all of my worry. I went on that way for almost 13 years. But then I began to truly trust and I found that it was not impossible to do, whereas to love is impossible for me. And the last 9 months have been practicing that trust. I can sometimes begin to waver in it for a few minutes when I have a bad week at the shop and no real sales but then I turn back pretty quickly to trust and insist on it. (I realize that others are probably sick to death about me always talking about money/provision but its where my trust issues were, so its what I talk about.)
So...because I have finally begun to trust God in truth, not just in useless words, but actually practicing trust, He counts me as righteous. I don't feel righteous, because even if I manage to do what is right outwardly, my heart is sometimes a seething cauldron of resentment and...just, not loving, but being mannered and having a basic decency. But God says He counts it as righteousness if I trust Him. If the determination were left to me, I would not say I was righteous. I don't even know how it is possible that to trust Him is counted as righteousness, but He has said it, so I just have to believe Him. A righteous man does what is right but it doesn't really make sense to me because even when I do what is right outwardly, its often not really right because of what my heart is doing simultaneously...and yet, I trust Him and He says that is the righteousness that is by trust.
My problem is a lack of love, at least to my eyes. I can only love like the world loves, just a basic and mannered decency that I was taught. So it's almost as if God HAS to count me as righteous because of trust because I'm honestly not ever going to have the righteousness that is by loving my neighbor as myself. That righteousness is an impossibility for me. My heart can't do it.
I was looking over some notes from speaking with a good friend a few weeks ago. He said one of the tablets was holiness laws and the other tablet was righteousness laws. So, he said, loving God is holiness, loving your neighbor is righteousness.
And in looking over the notes, it suddenly struck me that I am neither. I can have a basic courtesy towards others, but I do not love them as I love myself. And in fact, I'm confused about loving myself. I am selfish and it makes me hate myself, not love myself. (I'm in trouble if the phrase is true, that you can't love others until you learn to love yourself, because I find myself odious and difficult to bear with and I find others odious and difficult to bear with too. But I have no reason to believe the phrase is true.)
And if I can't love others who I see, I am not loving God who I don't see. So I am neither. Unless I say that manners and basic decency are love, which I don't believe. I think manners and basic decency are social conditioning.
But then there is what God says about the righteousness that is by trust. I used to say I trusted Him but I proved myself to be a liar by all of my worry. I went on that way for almost 13 years. But then I began to truly trust and I found that it was not impossible to do, whereas to love is impossible for me. And the last 9 months have been practicing that trust. I can sometimes begin to waver in it for a few minutes when I have a bad week at the shop and no real sales but then I turn back pretty quickly to trust and insist on it. (I realize that others are probably sick to death about me always talking about money/provision but its where my trust issues were, so its what I talk about.)
So...because I have finally begun to trust God in truth, not just in useless words, but actually practicing trust, He counts me as righteous. I don't feel righteous, because even if I manage to do what is right outwardly, my heart is sometimes a seething cauldron of resentment and...just, not loving, but being mannered and having a basic decency. But God says He counts it as righteousness if I trust Him. If the determination were left to me, I would not say I was righteous. I don't even know how it is possible that to trust Him is counted as righteousness, but He has said it, so I just have to believe Him. A righteous man does what is right but it doesn't really make sense to me because even when I do what is right outwardly, its often not really right because of what my heart is doing simultaneously...and yet, I trust Him and He says that is the righteousness that is by trust.
My problem is a lack of love, at least to my eyes. I can only love like the world loves, just a basic and mannered decency that I was taught. So it's almost as if God HAS to count me as righteous because of trust because I'm honestly not ever going to have the righteousness that is by loving my neighbor as myself. That righteousness is an impossibility for me. My heart can't do it.