I Won't Swear Not To Drink Or Drug Again

"Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.’ But I say to you, do not swear at all;* not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one."
Matthew 5:34-37

Today I continue delving through the Sermon On The Mount with four verses that in many ways I feel the meaning and application of them is better left to more learned men than me. There are as many different interpretations and applications of these verses as there are denominations it would seem. They run the range from those who will not swear to tell the truth in court or sign a contract to buy a house or car to those who believe they have nothing to do with such things in the material realm but are a spiritual guideline to keep one from being locked into a belief tomorrow based on today's understanding. I am not going to try to settle the issue or debate one interpretation over another. I am not qualified. All I can do, and all I am going to attempt to do, is offer my experience, strength, hope and understanding that I feel when it comes to these verses and especially how they relate to my past, my present and my recovery.

I can say that I am obviously not in the extreme camp on one side, because I have taken vows. Vows such as those to love my wife to the best of my ability as Christ loved the church and gave His life for her. There are other vows or promises that I have made that I take very seriously. One such is that I promised my wife that if I began struggling with the obsession to drink and drug I would tell her rather than fight in solitude and silence until perhaps I am overwhelmed. This is an attempt to prevent the mistake I made in the weeks before my last relapse where I would not speak to anyone about what was going on inside my heart and mind until finally I broke. But I have not promised my wife or anyone else that I will never drink or drug again. I would not make that vow, and the reason why has to do with how I apply the verses at the beginning of this writing to my life and recovery.

Thanks to the work of God in my life and the program of recovery that I choose to work, today I try to live by a code of rigorous honesty in all things and at all times. This was not always the case. There was a time, I am ashamed to say, that little that came from my mouth could be trusted or believed. The result of such dishonesty was that my oath had to mean something. It was well known by those close to me that I could lie at any time about anything, but that a promise meant something. Still, I used the promise or oath as a manipulation tool, because the way I would carefully word my promise almost always left me an out, a loop hole of some kind. And yet I would have the trust of the person I swore too, because they knew that I did my best to keep my promises even though I was a liar. The other negative result of this approach came from guilt and condemnation when in an honest desire to change my life and do the right thing I would swear that from this point on....... When I would fail at whatever promise I had made to try to set boundaries and regulations on my behavior I would fall into self loathing and berate myself over promises not kept. This became especially dangerous to me because most of these broken promises were to God, and it was hard to believe that God cold still love me after I had failed to honor my oath to the Lord so many times.

Today I live differently, and many of those who have the most reasons from the past to doubt anything I say know that my word means something. I do not defend myself against doubt or disbelief in something I say by swearing that it is true and by promising to see it through. I simply let my yes be yes and my no be no. To the best of my ability I make sure that if I say that I will do something, I follow through on that and do it. On the opposite side of that, if I say that I will not do something, I will work hard to make sure that circumstances do not arise that would cause me to go against that. I am not perfect at this, but I am getting better. The people in my life today can trust me in a way that I have never experienced before, and I do not want to lose that. I do not back up my commitments with oaths or vows for the most part though, especially not an oath to God. This keeps me from being able to hold that oath against myself in a way that would cause me to flee from the presence of God rather than run to the Helper that I so desperately need in a time of failure and crisis.

For me, the biggest danger in oaths or vows came from their origins within me. Seeing the pain and confussion and misery that my life had become I would try desperately to fix my life and stop hurting those I cared about. Knowing the answer was a spiritual one but totally misunderstanding the nature of grace I would determine to better. I would clean up my act, start doing the things that I felt would mean that I was a good Christian and had a good relationship with God and stop doing the things that meant I wasn't and didn't. The problem was that I couldn't fix or control myself for long in any way. I tried to earn my way into relationship with God through good and seemingly spiritual behavior. To try to force my will to conform to what I sincerely believed I needed to do, I would swear to God that this time I would......and the list of what I would start and stop doing to make myself better would follow.

I can not impose God's will on my own. I can not bridle and control myself. The past has proven this repeatedly. Nor does promising or swearing to do the right thing add any power on my part to do it. It does however add strength to the condemnation that follows failure. What I can do is surrender. I can let God work His will in my life. It is His power working in my life that brings about change, not any power or strength of my own. I can simply say yes to what He would have me do today, I don't need to promise to obey completely for the rest of my days. God would much rather I simply say yes and obey one thing at a time until there is no time. I can not swear to never drink or drug again, because that gives me the illusion that I am in control of my addiction. It sets me up for pride and then falling into the bottom of a bottle. What I can do is say yes to relationship with God today and what He wants from me at this moment and in this present and, one present at a time, the present times to follow, say no to self. I don't have the power and control over myself to swear to do what's right for the rest of my life. If I did, I wouldn't need God. But I do have the ability to do what is right once, especially when I am in active surrender to God and sacrifice self on the altar of relationship with my Creator.

My heart never beats more than one beat at a time. I can not take but one breath at a time. I can choose to obey and surrender to God one instant at a time. One instant after another, faithfully turned over to Him, results in a lifetime of spiritual success. Whereas one vow to impose upon myself to from this day forward somehow, someway, start loving and behaving as a man of God should puts the weight of bringing that to past squarely on my own shoulders and inevitably leads to failure and condemnation. Which, when the feelings not measuring up and falling short once again make me hide in the garden rather than run to my Father, I eventually end up using something else to attempt to fill the hole in my life that is formed from the absence of God.

No, I no longer make vows to God about how I will live my life. Today I simply say yes to Him and no to the things that would create distance from Him. One thing, one instance at a time, sometimes failing but remembering that in my weakness He is shown strong, I allow Him to have the control and do the changing within me. I can not fail this way, because it is not me keeping me sober and clean and practicing patience, tolerance and love, but God in me. And when I fall short of perfection, I have not failed. I do not need to do anything better. I simply need to surrender more.