Oh Wretched Man That I Am!!

In ANE Eckhart Tolle talks about several authors that he thinks brilliantly convey the dilemma of human existence (Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, TS Eliot and James Joyce)

He thinks that because they they felt it deeply within themselves they were able to brilliantly convey it in their writing. Unfortunately these writers do not offer a solution.  He says:

“Their contribution is to show us a reflection of the human predicament so that we can see it more clearly. “

“To see one’s predicament clearly is a first step toward going beyond it.”

In Weeds Among the Wheat, Thomas H. Green says:

The first step toward becoming free for God is the realization of how unfree we are.

I know another author who expresses the plight of mankind brilliantly. Paul seemed to have a first hand understanding of mankind’s predicament. He talked about it in Romans

But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.

And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

Oh wretched man that I am!! Who will save me from this body of death?

Is that one of the first milestones on the road to Christlikeness? To realize what He is and what we (in our egoic/adamic state)…are not? To cry out……who will save me? And finally to come to realize that we have the Christ living within us. We have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit whose job it is to convict. To convict the world of sin…and to convict of righteousness.

Doesn’t scripture proclaim that we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Isn’t that what we are?

So what is this other force, being, thing, power within us?

On a yahoo 360 blog called Josego, I came across a quote that I liked…and saved:

It was then that I found that the devil is in everyone embodied as their pain-body. The ego is a force to be reckoned with.

Ah-ha! The pain-body and the egoic mind (carnal mind/adamic man/flesh/unregenerated/old man) resides in all of us. Eckhart says that the pain-body is not only our own accumulation of unresolved emotions and pain lying in wait to be set off..…but that there is a sort of corporate pain body we are born with. Sound a bit like original sin?

While many authors down through history may have a handle on mankind’s dilemma, and along with Paul are able to express it and expose it, Paul goes a step farther and boldly proclaims the answer. And the answer is Christ…..