BRANCHESME AND MY SHADOW

APRIL 2013 | southwood.org

five questions

with bryan chapell

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AN EXCERPT FROM A FUTURE BOOK ON SANCTIFICATION BYJEAN LARROUX

10 APRIL 2013 | SOUTHWOOD.ORG

I am left-handed. That means I am right-brained. This means I tend to think spatially and more abstractly than some-one who is primarily left-brained. Right-brained people are more artistic. Left-brained people are more analytical. Right-brained people become writers and painters. Left-brained people become accountants and engineers. I live in Huntsville, Alabama. There are more engineers per capita in Huntsville than anywhere else on planet earth (a fact that I cannot verify, but as a right-brained person don’t really lose sleep over either). When you jokingly say to someone in Huntsville, “Who do you think you are, a rocket scientist?” nine times out of ten they actually are rocket scientists. God’s decision to put ME, a left-brained, writer-artist type, in Huntsville was his little practical joke on all of us. Jo-Jo the monkey boy comes to the “Rocket City.” That’s me.

Me &My ShadowMy Shadow

WHAT SANCTIFICATION REALLY LOOKS LIKE

WHAT SANCTIFICATION REALLY LOOKS LIKE

An excerpt from a future book on sanctification by

Jean F. Larroux, III

Because I am right-brained, I think in illustrations and object lessons.

Once I can “see” something then I can understand it. With regard to

sanctification people always want to know when they are going to get

“better?” I have struggled for years to answer a recurring question about

betterness and sanctification. That question is this: how can believing the

Gospel and focusing on Christ actually produce holiness or the fruit of the

Spirit or obedience? How does believing actually make me better?

My right-brained mind answered that question with an illustration. Now

you need to know that every illustration breaks down at some point, and

that will be true with this illustration as well, but try to embrace the points

of continuity as you read this illustration. Now if you are an engineer or an

accountant, try to turn on the right side of your brains, put down the slide

rules and imagine something…

Imagine that Christ is represented by light (I promise I’m not about to go

Oprah on you!). Imagine that this light is incredibly bright and beautiful.

Imagine salvation to be that first moment when you are exposed to the

light. All at once you see the beauty of the light, and concurrently that light

is exposing things about you that you have never seen before, your sin.

Salvation (or Justification) is a realization that you are a sinner; that Christ,

the light, is your savior and that once you believe, you are “in the light”

and there is nothing that can take you out of the light. You are adopted,

loved and accepted as a child of God.

Imagine that Christ then tells you, “Follow me…” Your life at that point is a

journey toward Christ, toward the light. Each step that is taken shows you a

more brilliant picture of who Christ is and a clearer picture of who you are.

You concurrently see yourself as a sinner and as a son. The light shows you

his love, but it is also exposes more and more of your sin.

With your eyes focused on Him and your life moving toward Him, there is

a by-product produced by your movement toward the light. It is a shadow.

The shadow cast by moving toward Christ and living in the light is now

visible. Remember shadows are only produced as something which itself

is not the light but is moving toward the light. Let’s call the shadow cast

by our lives “betterness” or personal holiness or piety or obedience or

righteousness. All of those things are the necessary by-products of faith,

cast by the life of someone who is in the light.

Each step toward Christ produces three things concurrently: a deeper

understanding of who Christ is (we see the light more clearly); a deeper

awareness of our own sin (the light is exposing more and more of my sin) and a

bigger shadow (as we move toward the light a shadow must be produced). In

this picture holiness and obedience are clear by-products of faith, not products

of our own faithfulness. As you move toward Christ, the shadow grows.

Now imagine that as someone who is living the “Christian life” becomes

focused on performance and personal piety instead of focusing on Christ

(the light). If that were to happen and someone were to focus on their own

faithfulness, their own holiness or their own personal piety, they would have

to, by definition in this illustration, turn around to focus on that. They would

have to turn away from Jesus to see those things. They would have to turn

their back to the light and look toward the shadow in order to see the

shadow. Pay attention, because at that very moment the shadow ceases

to be what it was intended to be, a by-product of faith. It has now become

the focus of faith—the product of “faithful Christian living.” Chasing the

shadow actually moves you further away from Christ, but it masquerades

as a deep commitment to Christ. We deceive ourselves into thinking that

this shadow chasing is for Him, but it’s really for us. Because we know that

he wants the shadow to grow; to see holiness increase; to see sins put to

death and to have holy desires come to life, we convince ourselves that

My ShadowMy Shadow

HOLINESS AND OBEDIENCE ARE CLEAR BY-PRODUCTS OF FAITH‚ NOT PRODUCTS

OF OUR OWN FAITHFULNESS. AS YOU MOVE TOWARD CHRIST‚ THE SHADOW GROWS.

focusing on those things is the same as focusing on him. Although our

motivation for shadow chasing may start out as something we do for him,

it ultimately becomes something we do for us.

There are two very unfortunate by-products of shadow chasing. The first is

that the shadow actually shrinks. Moving toward the shadow and away from

the light actually brings about a smaller shadow. It is no longer the brilliant

shadow towering over our lives when we were running toward Jesus; it

actually becomes smaller and the edges become more well-defined. For

shadow-focused people everything is black and white, precise and clean.

Although it feels spiritual and holy to comfort their consciences and be

shadow-focused, the shadow is actually becoming less impressive.

Because of the new shrinking shadow, shadow chasers start to compare

their shadows to others. As long as we can perceive our shadows to loom

larger than the shadows of those around us, then we feel comfortable.

We employ various strategies to soothe our anxious hearts. Our anxious

hearts bristle with defensiveness because as we are comparing ourselves

to others and we are concurrently seeing our own shadow shrink.

Therefore we have to do something to compensate for the anxiety we

feel and the shrinking shadow that we see. We’ll call that something—

shadow pictures. We become very adept at this.

When I’m focused on me and my performance, I must now do

something that looks like a true Christian shadow in order to soothe

my conscience. We make pictures in the shape of mission trips, Bible

Studies, volunteering and outreach. The shadow pictures falsely promise

our troubled hearts and noisy consciences that we are still in the light

(after all, you can’t do any of this without the Lord, right?). Unfortunately,

they last only for seasons and they only soothe our consciences so much.

They masquerade as reflections of the light, but they are not the brilliant

shadows we formally had while basking forward toward the light.

The second devastating by-product of shadow-chasing is two-fold: we no

longer have a growing sense of our own sin, nor do we have a deepening

appreciation for his holiness. The light is now simply the source for shadows,

not the source for life. We tell everyone that all the shadows are from him,

for him and all the credit goes to him, but sadly the focus is not on him. We

are focused on the shadows, not on the light. In this illustration our last real

profound look at our own sin was the mental moment just before we turned

around. Because of this our sense of our own sin actually shrinks. It must. By

chasing shadows we don’t actually see many of the things we saw when we

were moving toward the light. We see less sin, less depraved motivations

and less darkness in our hearts. How could we not? If I’m focused on making

shadow-pictures and making those shadow pictures better than yours, I

can’t possibly admit or see the darkness that still lurks within my heart. We

falsely presume that we must be getting better, healthier, fixed (i.e. more

holy). After all, we rationalize, there is less visible sin, more visible shadows,

lots of shadow pictures and you are giving all the credit to the light. You are

getting better, right?

Now take a deep drink of Jesus, because our story is about to get ugly.

About that time someone passes you going toward the light. There is the

sunshine of God’s grace radiating on their face. You immediately notice

their sin. It is obvious in the light. They see it too. They even acknowledge it,

but they don’t seem surprised by it, or scared about its presence. They are

walking toward the light. They seem to be more enamored with the Light

than with anything else. Because of this something infuriating is happening.

Their shadow is growing. Remember, they are moving toward Jesus and

we shadow-chasers are moving toward the shadows. Because we have

turned around and focused on the shadows, we can see the shadow of this

sinful, light-chaser growing, and it keeps growing. Their shadow is actually

getting bigger than ours because their propensity to move toward the light

is actually producing, as a by-product of faith, all the shadow pictures we

have been trying to produce as an end-product of faithfulness. Emotions

like anger, judgment and frustration well up from within us. Because we

aren’t facing the light directly, those emotions aren’t seen as wickedness;

they masquerade as righteous indignation, holy anger and “concern” for

your liberal, non-shadow-focused “brother.”

WHEN I’M FOCUSED ON ME AND MY PERFORMANCE‚ I MUST NOW DO SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A TRUE CHRISTIAN SHADOW IN ORDER TO SOOTHE MY

CONSCIENCE. WE MAKE PICTURES IN THE SHAPE OF MISSION TRIPS‚ BIBLE STUDIES‚ VOLUNTEERING AND OUTREACH.

Because the Holy Spirit never lets go of his children, somewhere

deep inside you remember the joy you felt when you walked the

other way—toward the light. There was a time when you had

nothing but your sin and Jesus, but that feels like a long time

ago. It was before you became so shadow-oriented. In moments

like these, God usually does one of two things to sober us up: he

either dims the light to such a flicker that we are sent into despair

thinking we have been lost or he increases the lumens of his

grace so brightly that our newly exposed sin makes us fear we are

lost forever. In both cases he meets us again. In both cases he is

showing mercy. In both cases he shows us our sin again. He shows

us the light to turn us back around. The Gospel promises that no

one in the light can actually ever be lost, right? Right. Having been

re-oriented and re-directed, we put one foot in front of the other

toward the light, again.

This pattern of living is the pattern of Christianity. It is the pattern

of faith. Living by faith and repentance, which produces fruit as a

by-product of faith, is the Biblical pattern for Holiness. The fruit is always a by-product of our faith, or there is no faith

at all! The fruit of our faith is the shadow cast by our lives. Things like Bible study, prayer, and worship are some of the

tools God regularly uses to “show us the light,” but they aren’t the light. They are, and I mean this quite respectfully,

a means to the end of seeing him, not an end in and of themselves.

We must remember that this “turning” is not a one-time turning or a once-a-year kind of experience. The

Christian life is one of constant faith and repentance. Sometimes there is repentance over the sin that is exposed.

Sometimes the repentance must be for the shadows we substituted for the light. This is a daily, hourly, moment-

by-moment journey of faith. Some of the most impressive shadows I’ve ever seen have been by

people who rarely looked behind themselves. Their lack of concern for Holiness regarding their

shadow wasn’t due to a lack of self-awareness or some type of false humility. It was the result

of an entirely different orientation altogether. They were humble and holy because they

regularly saw their sin, and they were moving toward the light as their only hope. Shadows

like that are impressive. When you meet someone like that, their life makes shadow

pictures that we marvel over, but they hardly notice. They consider such shadows to be

by-products of their relationship with him, not the products of their faithful lives. If you

asked people like that what they are impressed with, they always talk about the light.

Much time, effort and energy is spent in Evangelical circles trying to make impressive

shadows—trying to project shadow pictures. Many Christian self-help books are

shadow picture how-to manuals. They are often filled with chapter after chapter

of “this is how you make a bird” or “this is how you make a child who doesn’t do

drugs” or “this is how you make yourself a Proverbs 31 woman.” Consequently

we have ended up with a Christian sub-culture of shadow chasers instead of

a true Christian counter-culture that chases after the poor, broken and needy

the way Christ chased after us. Maybe God will use this little right-brained

picture to tap you on the shoulder and turn you around back toward the

light. That’s what he did with me. When he does that, we are always better

Christians because of it.

This is an excerpt from an almost complete manuscript which Jean Larroux has been writing “off” and “on” for a couple of years. The book is on the subject of Sanctification and the working title is “Getting Better: a book for everyone who is trying and all of the rest of us who have given up!” At present the book is in the exciting first stage called: rejection letters. Look for it to be published sometime prior to the return of Jesus.

WE HAVE ENDED UP WITH A CHRISTIAN SUB-CULTURE OF SHADOW CHASERS INSTEAD OF A TRUE CHRISTIAN COUNTER-CULTURE THAT CHASES AFTER THE POOR‚

BROKEN AND NEEDY THE WAY CHRIST CHASED AFTER US.