Deeper problems

Lately, I’ve started to become a crazed fan of the TV show House M.D. On each episode, Dr. House and his team of surgeons treat patients who are inflicted with some disease or ailment (rest assured, I won’t be able to pronounce it).

Each case follows the same premise: the surgeons start off by identifying each of the symptoms that the patient exhibits. From there, they toss around possible diagnoses about the patient's condition. Eventually, they run tests, analyze their findings, and narrow their diagnoses down to just one. Incidentally, it never seems to be the real issue. There always seems to be something deeper that was missed; something that hasn't been accounted for.

So the doctors are forced to delve a little further to get at the source of the problem. They run even more tests, they probe even deeper, perform medical inquiries on the patient's parents, siblings, environments, homes, etc. They investigate everything they can to make sure that they get it right.

I think that this show's premise can easily juxtapose our lives and how we respond to sin. If you think about it, the biggest reason why folks can't seem to be "cured" from their sins is because we don't deal with the deep issues. We only focus on the things that are right in our face; the things on the surface. Sure that guy is mean. But have you ever asked why he's like that? Sure that woman is an alchoholic. But have you ever asked why she's like that? Sure that young person is disrespectful, full of attitude, and sexually promiscuous. But have you ever asked why (s)he was like that?

The sad truth is: We respond to sins (both ours and others) like House and the other doctors deal with their patients. We examine the problems that a person has, lists the possible diagnoses, and then we give them the type of treatment that we think they need. What we don't seem to understand is that we're not fixing the problem; we're only warding it off. The sin is not defeated. The person is not cured.

I suspect that most people are only willing to confront the things that appear on the outside; while being completely unwilling to attack the issues that are buried deep inside. We look at the symptoms that are external; the actions, the words, the expressions. But how often do we search deeply to discover the internal symptoms? How often to we examine the deeply internal, indelible existent of sin?

Given all the "sick" people of the world, I suspect not very often.

I think that we don't dig as deeply as we should becuase we're scared. We're scared of what we'll find. We're scared of being exposed as being sick ourselves. We're scared of releasing whatever it is that causes us to sin in the first place. We're scared of change. To be honest, I really can't tell for sure why we don't explore the deeper recesses of ourselves. But I do know that we don't.

But, the fact remains: if we expect to be cured, we must be willing to go into the deep, dark abyss that is our soul and to fight whatever monsters we find there. Otherwise we really haven't built up an immune system strong enough to fight our sicknesses. The same sins will keep manifesting themselves in us. We'll never find healing.

I don't know about you, but I don't wanna be a frequent guest star on House for more than one episode...

- ACL