Grasping With Evil

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. 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. Romans 7:18-19

Many nights.... nights like this, I find myself haunted by these verses. Nights like this when all the sinful nature within me surfaces to the ground. I do the things I don't want to do. And I don't do the things I want to do. And I find myself helpless, powerless, defenseless, against my own thoughts, against my own will. It's as if I am a mere spectator in my own body. It moves of its own accord. It does as it pleases. It goes where it wants. And while somewhere at the back of my mind, a voice screams out for me to stop, the body continues on its journey, easily ignoring the desperate but faint sounds of conscience.

Many days I'm completely ridden in guilt. I find myself utterly disgusted with myself. I am unable to like myself for who I am, and the things I've done. I find myself obsessed about bringing my secrets to the grave, lest the people around me find out, and I die of shame anyway. The world classifies people into two categories. The pure and righteous, and the tainted and dirty. One is love and respected by all, the other is spat on in disgust. But there is a third kind. It is the kind that is pure and righteous in the eyes of others, but  are tainted and dirty underneath. And among the three, this is the worst. The tainted and dirty make no pretenses about who they are. You could almost admire them on how frank they are about it. The third kind is covered in cloaks of pure white, but underneath it mask a soul that is rotten and foul. William Shakespeare wrote that 'lilies that fester stink worse than weeds'. I am such a kind. I am such a festering lily.

I try. I remind myself that the grace of God is not for the righteous, but for the sinful. Salvation is not for the upright, but the fallen. I prayed to God, asking for the strength to turn away. I knew I could never have the strength to defeat my own self. I prayed to God, asking for the will to turn away. It's so hard to stop doing the things you don't want to, when in truth, you really want to. It was the most difficult of all. It still is.

With all of this, I try telling myself to drop the act of being such a nice guy. At least being outright bad and messed up was better than being a hypocrite. The nicer people's impression of me, the more people liked me, the stronger these feelings would come. I would feel like a fallen man, trying to pretend he's something better than what he really is. Like a person living a realy good lie.


How does you cure the sickness that grow from within? How do you rid a man of a shadow that tails him wherever he goes? How does a man conquer the darkness that lurks from within? Like an object that is laid before my eyes, but just out of my reach, the answer is out of my grasp.