CHRISTIANITY 101: CAN A LEOPARD CHANGE ITS SPOTS?
My wife and I were recently driving home after taking our daughter out to dinner in Pittsburgh. We were travelling north on Interstate 279, right where it merges into Interstate 79. We were in the right lane behind a very small car that appeared to contain a very large man. As the lanes came together, the man in the small car in front of us quickly moved from the right lane into the center lane. It just so happened that there was a Ford pickup truck moving at a very high rate of speed in that center lane, and the small car cut him off. The man in the pickup truck slammed on his brakes and laid on his horn. Then he cut in front of me in the right lane, raced around the small car, then jerked his wheel back to the left, cutting off the man in the small car. He nearly caused about a ten-car pileup.
The man in the pickup truck soon got back into the right lane and got off of the interstate at the Wexford exit. As he proceeded down the exit ramp, he suddenly slowed his vehicle, rolled down his window, stuck out his arm…and extended his index finger. I believe that’s what is euphemistically referred to as a Pittsburgh wave! In any case, as we moved past the large man in the small car, I noticed that he was wearing a black shirt with a little white collar. The man in the small car was a priest! Thus, the man in the pickup truck cut off – and flipped off – a man of the cloth. It all happened because one man had cost another man about a quarter of a second from his day. Some people are just so angry these days.
A man named Scott Rothstein graduated from law school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in May of 1988. For 14 years, his law career was relatively inauspicious. Then in February of 2002, he began a law firm of his own. In his own words, he was bound and determined to make it the biggest and the best in the state. But Rothstein needed capital to feed his appetite for success. The question thus became: Where was he going to get it?
Rothstein came up with an investment plan that involved purchasing fabricated structured settlements, where people sell their monthly payments from legal cases for lump sums of cash. The ruse attracted hundreds of investors who paid millions of dollars for settlements that did not exist. Rothstein promised a return of 15% or more on his investors’ investments. It all sounded too good to be true…which, of course, it was.
Rothstein himself owned a fleet of luxury cars. He had a yacht named after his wife. He lived in an opulent house where even the toilets were overlaid in gold. He became a local celebrity. He was the go-to guy for politicians in need of money, and he was a source of enormous donations for local charities, as well. Rothstein spent money like it would never run out…but when it did, the devastating truth was revealed. Rothstein had run a 1.2 billion dollar Ponzi scheme. In the end, forty-eight-year-old Scott Rothstein was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Some people are just so greedy these days.
Now try this story on for size. A woman writes, “My husband got tangled up in a text-messaging fling with one of my friends. I caught on to it after a couple of weeks, but had no actual proof until I could get my hands on one of our cell phone bills. There were over 4000 texts and several phone calls between them over the course of a single month! I confronted him about it, and he admitted to everything. He says it was nothing more than a phone thing, but I’m not 100% sure. Still, I’ve done everything possible to make his life absolutely miserable for the last few months.
“I got a little revenge on my so-called friend as well. She has very long hair, and takes such pride in it, that I knew I had to do something to ruin it. So I went to a local bath and body shop and purchased a gift basket of shampoo, conditioner, lotion and perfume. Then I left the basket on her front porch with a note that said that it had come from a secret admirer…but not until I’d had a little fun with the shampoo and conditioner. I poured the contents out in a bowl, and replaced them with Nair hair remover. Then I placed some of the original product back in the bottles, just to make sure they smelled like they should.
“She fell for it. She used the products and most of her hair fell out. It thrills me to death every time I see her now! I still have a little more revenge to get, but I haven’t got all the details worked out just yet. In time, I’m sure I will.” Some people are just so vengeful these days. Okay, that’s a good one. But still, some people are just so vengeful these days.
Truth be told, the protagonists in the scenes I have just described could conceivably describe any one of us. We all have a tendency to be angry, we all have a tendency to be greedy, and we all have a tendency to be just a little bit vengeful. We all have a tendency to – as the Apostle Paul puts it in his letter to the Galatians – “gratify the desires of the flesh.” What are the desires of the flesh? The Apostle Paul says, “The works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity and licentiousness; strife, greed and anger; dissention, envy and vengefulness.” The list goes on and on. Paul later adds, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Thus, perhaps we could say that doing those things is not a good thing. To gratify the desires of the flesh is to keep oneself from encountering the peace of God.
Paul’s antidote to the desires of the flesh is to live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit. Yet the two are so mutually opposed to one another that one cannot possibly give allegiance to both simultaneously. “The fruit of the Spirit,” Paul says, “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Talk about a contrast of opposites! The question thus becomes: How do we live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, as opposed to the desires of the flesh? After all, it’s human nature to want to gratify the desires of the flesh. Can a leopard change its spots? Can a person really change who and what they are on the inside?
What people generally do when they want to change something about themselves is to muster up their willpower. When is the most common time for people to muster up their willpower? It happens every New Year’s Day. We call it our New Year’s resolutions. Of course, research reveals that about 95% of all New Year’s resolutions are broken by the end of January. And most people assume that the reason they failed to keep their resolutions is because they didn’t have enough willpower. That’s unfortunate, because willpower – in and of itself – doesn’t really have the capacity to change much of anything.
You see, the will actually has no power at all. The will is the human capacity to choose. “Should I wear my black shoes or my brown shoes today?” we ask ourselves. If we choose the black shoes, our will is the hinge upon which the decision was made. But the will did not actually do anything. The will is not an organ or a muscle that can contract or expand.
The will is more like a horse that responds to the impulse of its rider. For example, a horse does not choose where to go. It goes whatever direction the rider tells it to go. The will works a lot like that. Yet instead of one rider, human will has several. The three primary influences on the will are the mind, the body and the social context. First, what we think in our minds will in turn create emotions, which lead to decisions or actions. Second, the body is a complex inner working of impulses that influence the will. Most of our bodily systems function without our help, but when the body has a need – food or water, for example – it expresses itself to the mind through sensations like hunger or thirst…saying, “Get food or water now!” And finally, the will is also influenced by social context. We are highly influenced by the people around us. Some might call it peer pressure.
The will itself, however, is neither strong nor weak. It only has one task: to do what the mind – influenced by the body and the social context – tells it to do. Therefore, change – or a lack thereof – is not an issue of the will at all. Change happens when something else is modified. The question now is: What? What must be modified in order for this leopard to change its spots? What must be modified in order for us to change?
We human beings are creatures who live by stories – our stories. From our earliest days we are told stories by our parents that help us interpret how life is or how it ought to be. As we grow, we form stories of our own on how life is or how it ought to be. Yet sometimes the stories we form are not as healthy as they should be.
John was a young man who was born into a house of privilege. His father owned a thriving insurance firm, and his mother was a social butterfly. From the time he was an infant, John had everything he wanted, except the one thing he wanted most: the love and affection of his parents. Thus, he proceeded to come up with ways to get his parents’ attention. If he could not get it in positive ways, perhaps he could get it in negative ways.
It all began in kindergarten. He was accustomed to getting his way at home, and became quite frustrated when he could not get his way at school. He discovered that at the base of his desk chair leg, there was a stem that enabled the chair to slide. If you put your feet on either side of it, you could pull the stem off. The stem was held in place by a long narrow brad that made it resemble a very large tack. John came up with the idea of putting that tack on the chairs of unsuspecting fellow students. It amused him to no end when they sprang back out of their chairs far more quickly than they had sat down. Discipline was handled internally, until the day John placed a tack on the substitute teacher’s chair. His father was called down to the school, and after considerable negotiation, his father got him off the hook.
When John was in the sixth grade, the local newspaper ran a front page story about an elementary school break-in. Televisions and video equipment were stolen. A few days later, John’s father was startled to discover that all the missing equipment was in his back yard shed. John swore up and down that he had not broken into the school; that he was only holding the stuff for someone else. John’s father returned the equipment, and again utilizing his considerable negotiation skills, got his son off the hook. Are you starting to see a pattern forming here? John acts out, and then his father bails him out…only John keeps raising the stakes.
This pattern went on for a number of years. Finally, when John was in college, after a wild night on the town, John and a few of his friends decided they wanted some railroad ties to decorate their apartment. They removed a number of railroad ties from an active railway line, causing a train to derail. Fortunately, no one was hurt…but this time, John’s father could not get him off. He ended up spending a year in jail.
Like I said before, we human beings are creatures who live by stories. John’s story was that he did not believe he was worthy of love and attention, so he concocted various schemes in order to get it. What John probably needed was a good psychologist to help him develop a measure of self-worth. He needed to discover that he was a person of value, even when he was not the center of attention. In order to change his behavior, what he needed was a new narrative.
We were speaking a moment ago about overcoming our human nature. We were speaking of being guided by the Holy Spirit of God as opposed to the desires of the flesh. We noted how the will is incapable of securing such change within us. We noted how change happens when something else is modified within us. The question was, “What?” What must be modified in order for this leopard to change its spots? What must be modified in order for us to change?
Maybe what we need is a new narrative as well. Maybe what needs to change is our narrative about who and what God is. Do we see God as vengeful and vindictive, or do we see God as loving and compassionate? Do we see the providence of God as something to be feared, or do we see the providence of God as something to be cherished? Did God send his Son to be tortured and killed, or did God himself come to earth to suffer in our stead? Maybe we need to examine our own narratives as to who and what God is. And that is exactly what we’re going to be doing over the course of the next few weeks. Amen.
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