The problem of complexity

Inner transformation requires us to undergo an unpleasant experience in the dark recesses of our souls. According to the opinions of many …this look is nothing more than an admission of a tendency to impatience or the expression of a particular critical spirit. Most Christians will admit quite readily that their sinfulness is more than just a manifestation of behavior that violates established norms. Of course. We struggle with deeper issues, selfish motives, and so on. But at the level of unconvincing generality, most of the time, it stays.
On the other hand, others resist looking at the ugly inside, preferring
to consider struggles rather than sinfulness. “I don’t have enough self-confidence. I’m just so insecure.” “Why am I such a perfectionist? I take everything too much; I’ll go crazy one day.” Such problems provoke sympathetic concern in others and an almost heroic sense of self-pity in ourselves. On the other hand, confessing our sinfulness is condemned by others. Those who speak of their struggles feel noble, while the sinners feel worthy of scorn.

In many churches, a sincere concern to repair the damage in human life has led to an understanding of man that quietly pushes aside sin
. The truth that suffering people need encouragement sometimes focuses our attention too much on people’s struggles and has weakened our ability to understand their sinfulness. In the efforts of some conservative Christians to emphasize the problem of sin again, we can see an inevitable swing of the pendulum away from an emphasis on “helping the suffering.” In the righteous indignation at modern efforts to mitigate the horror of sin by pointing to its psychological conditioning, these people want to point again to sin in its visible form (fornication, laziness, lying, etc.) to emphasize that people often struggle but also sin.
This observation of theirs is accurate. We certainly struggle as victims
of the unkindness of others. We are victims of someone else’s sin. But we cannot excuse our sinful reactions by saying that others have sinned against us. We are responsible for our actions. We are both strugglers and sinners, victims and perpetrators who suffer and hurt. But notice what has happened. If we look within ourselves, we tend to see ourselves as people struggling with our buried pain and psychological complexes. But when we decide it’s time to get serious about our responsibility to follow God, we return to the surface and try to do what we expected. Struggle tends to be associated with looking inward (“let’s see what your real trouble is”). At the same time, sin is typically handled by transforming our outward actions (“It’s time to stop all this introspection and get to work. How much time do you spend with your wife?”).
Committed Christians who want to change have two options: seek help in honestly exposing the pain in their own heart or accept the responsibility of correcting sin in their behavior. Pain in the heart and sin in behavior are two categories we must contend with. And yet neither of them will lead us to our souls’ dark, ugly, distorted corners. Neither of them will help us penetrate the sin in our hearts that we must touch to be inwardly transformed. Sin affects something more than our outward attitudes (sin in behavior), and we must confront much worse problems than deep-seated psychological problems (pain in the heart).
I do not want to deal with external sinfulness or internal struggles in this chapter. I want to expose the sin in our hearts. However, I want to
The Problem of Demanding to be stricter than those who regard inward sin as a tendency to impatience or the occasional expression of a critical spirit. The problem of our heart is much more severe than many think. When we look into the inside, we find more than just ugly memories and painful feelings. In any case, a candid look will reveal something ugly – demandingness. We are a demanding people. Because we stubbornly pass over God’s water sources and dig our wells, our survival depends on the water we dig. Our self-defense mechanisms don’t – work. If we take responsibility for putting our thirst into our own hands, our survival depends on the success of our quest.
We demand that our partners meet our needs; we demand that our children bear the fruit of our godly activity; we demand that our church be responsive to our needs by providing specific services; we demand that drivers who drive slowly leave the overtaking lane of the highway; we demand that we no longer no one to prepare us for the disappointments we have already experienced; we demand that we be given the legitimate joys that have long been denied us. How absurd! Can you imagine an army in which conscripts and societies whose policy is determined by messengers? And yet, here are mere men shouting their orders into space. Such folly is the inevitable consequence of taking responsibility for our happiness- a burden too heavy for our shoulders. When we accept responsibility for what we desperately desire but have no control over it, we irrationally demand
our efforts succeed. The ugly disease of demanding is deeply wedged in our thirsty souls. Inner transformation demands that we face our demanding problem and do something about it. The spirit of demandingness must be recognized to see it in all its horror and then to rid ourselves of it through repentance. Let’s think together about this problem from three different angles:1) how God sees it, 2) how it arises, and 3) what to do about it.