Indecisive -- Who Me? (May/June 2011)
Noah, our Portuguese Water Dog, has a fondness for fine chocolates, frosted sugar cookies and pastries. He even likes common dog food, milk bones, and the occasional beef shank from the butcher. But he routinely snubs vegetables. He’ll take what’s offered, ostensibly just to be polite, but he immediately drops the vegetable on the floor and begs for something more to his liking. That’s why it puzzled me when Noah began stopping along the way on springtime walks to nibble young shoots of grass. His determination to eat grass seemed totally inconsistent with his love of all things non-vegetable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson argues against consistency in his essay “Self Reliance”, stating “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” In this much quoted statement Emerson was making a political case for exercising independent thinking instead of mindlessly following the crowd. And one could reasonably argue that people who are consistently consistent live totally boring lives. There may be some merit to both of these arguments against consistency. But it’s inconsistency that perplexes me.
Just when I think someone is going to act in a certain way, they sometimes do just the opposite. At times the behavior is a pleasant surprise; at other times it’s a nasty disappointment. But every now and then the person with the inconsistent behavior is me. I can make excuses to justify my actions (or lack of action) but ultimately, even if no one else is harmed by what I’ve done or not done, I find my inconsistency unsettling.
The angst of inconsistency stems, I’ve found, from a major mismatch between belief and behavior.
If I believe a healthy diet is important and then consume high fat, high calorie foods, I end up feeling emotionally uncomfortable and regret my actions, especially the next time I step on the scale. If I believe a clean house is important, but reading a novel trumps vacuuming, then the azalea leaves that stick to Noah’s coat (but magically fall off once he’s in the house) and the wisps of fuzz that continually escape from the living room carpet begin to accumulate on the hardwood and tile floors, and the furniture. (Noah enjoys sleeping on the living room couches.) That unsettled feeling strikes again, spawned by the knowledge that my actions didn’t match my values.
In Romans 7:18-19 St. Paul, suffering a similar sense of distress, observed “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing.”
The reader feels Paul’s pain as he laments in Romans 7:21-24, “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Where do you need rescuing? Where are your beliefs and your actions out of sync? God has sent the Holy Spirit, our Comforter and Sanctifier, to help us match our behaviors to our beliefs. Being focused and prayerful leads to right action, banishes the unsettled feelings, and brings us peace of mind.
Noah’s breeder has assured me that many dogs love to munch on tender shoots of springtime grass. Maybe he munches grass because the tender shoots taste sweet. In that case, eating grass is totally consistent with Noah’s love of sweet-tasting, high carbohydrate goodies. No inconsistency angst for this dog.
Julie Peace
| 
| 
Share
