Exploring Paul's Emotional Struggles

And wow, is Paul's yoke heavy.

And if we don't get hung up on the confusing way he writes, I think we

can feel his emotional anguish.

Paul is struggling.

He is at war with himself. He feels out of control.

He feels like sin dwells within him.

He looks at his body in the proverbial mirror and says,

"I am

a wretched person."

But now, once Paul writes this letter,

he feels haunted by a deep shame,

a deep guilt.

He bears the yoke of regret.

And so, with all of these yokes on his back,

he writes.

Back in seminary, also known as pastor school,

they told us to be very careful with what we bring into the pulpit

regarding our personal life.

My professor would say, "You can talk about your divorce in the

pulpit,

but maybe not right after it happens.

Try a few years later, after extensive therapy."

But I don't think Paul went to seminary, and I don't think he went to therapy,

because he brings his open wounds straight to Rome.

He tells people what he thinks sin is, and he says that

sin is core to all of us, that our flesh is

infected with it.

And from his wounds, his guilt, his internal turmoil, and his

loneliness,

we've created a whole theology

that has stuck around for thousands of years.

Some of us have been taught not to trust our intuition,

our bodies, our own feelings, taught that we can

only trust an external figure. It is that outside force that

decides what is good and evil. We cannot decide.

So Paul didn't go to seminary, he didn't go to therapy,

and it doesn't seem like he had a pastor.

He didn't have a spiritual mentor to grab coffee with and say, "Yeah,

ministry is tough.

It can be isolating. Being a person is tough.

We are so often ridden with guilt and turmoil."

He didn't have a pastor to look him in the eyes and say, "But you are not alone.

You are going to be okay."

Even pastors need pastors.

But he did have the words of Jesus.

So sometimes I wonder, where were they in this text?

But my charitable argument is that sometimes the pain is too great,

the burden is too heavy, and we are weary.

So we get caught in these cycles of self-loathing and regret, and we

cannot open ourselves up to a different word,

a different reality.