(Romans 7:15-25a)
Some people you just don’t want to run into. But it happens, inadvertently of course! Maybe it’s the pompous neighbor down the street, an old “friend” from college, or your nemesis in the lunchroom. You dodge, duck, turn around and walk away faster than a scalded cat. You’ll get something from the vending machine instead.
You might see him across the street while you’re rolling your trash can to the curb or waiting in line at the coffee shop. Then, regrettably, he sees you, and you avert your eyes and make a beeline in the opposite direction. Why? Because you know him. He is narcissistic and a master manipulator. He uses passive-aggressive behavior to get what he wants. He’s abusive and threatening. He withholds information or spreads rumors. He is dishonest. He thinks he’s charming and flirtatious, and not above suggesting that if you’re nice to him, he’ll be nice to you.
You’ve met people like this. You may be struggling with a co-worker, family member or a so-called friend who is not above blaming you or even blackmailing you. If something sours in the relationship, you are to blame. The truth is repackaged, and you are made to think that you are the one who is going crazy!
What’s shocking is that you encounter one of these people every day, and it begins in the morning when you first arise and look in the mirror.
That person is you.
This is what the apostle Paul is saying in this morning’s text. He suggests a strategy that some psychologists call gray rocking: pretending that we’re a gray rock in our interactions with this manipulative, narcissistic, attention-grabbing bore. Everything they do affects us no more than it might affect a rock or boulder in the room. It bounces off us. Like a cold stone, we have no reaction. Like a rock, we show no emotion. Like an immoveable and immutable boulder, we just sit there, totally ignoring the bore until they walk away.
This is not the only scheme one might use to deal with people who exaggerate their own importance, but many practitioners of gray rocking say it works rather well.
Holly Richmond is a licensed marriage and family therapist. “The first step,” she says, “is to visualize yourself as a gray rock. You’re this immovable, impenetrable force who is disinterested. If they ask you a question, say yes or no and don’t give details about your life or admit you’re practicing this gray rock method.”
Also known as gray walling, gray rocking is a strategy that involves being as disengaged and unresponsive as a corpse in a cemetery. Be as tight-lipped, terse, and taciturn as possible. You want to be as invisible as sleeves on a vest. This person could talk the ears off a mule, but you limit your responses so that your unwanted conversational partner gets the message: Go away.
Other techniques include avoiding eye contact, pretending that you’re bored out of your mind, and making sure that the tone of your voice varies no more than one step on the musical scale. A flat tone will best convey to this person with a 10-gallon mouth that you’re not interested.
It’s important to protect ourselves from obnoxious people. But what is surprising is that the toxic person in Romans 7 is, in fact, ourselves, or what the apostle calls the “old nature,” or what the King James Version of the Bible calls the “old man.” The text depicts a conversation within ourselves between the “law of the mind” and the “law of sin” (v. 23). What this bifurcated person wants to do is “obey the law of God.”
But there is a problem: a war between these factions is raging inside the soul. “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it,” writes the apostle. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So, I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. … Wretched man that I am!” (vv. 18-21, 24).
It’s the war between the good wolf and the bad one, the responsible older brother and the reckless younger brother, between Cain and Abel, between the flesh and the spirit, between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s the temptation that pulsates between sin and sanctity, the battle between good and evil.
So, are you tired of fighting this battle? Tired of making New Year’s resolutions about losing weight, quitting a habit, spending more time on your Peloton, knowing that noble aspirations are like pushing a wheelbarrow with rope handles: zero chance of success. Tired? Then try these gray rocking strategies recommended by therapists Holly Richmond and Saint Paul for dealing with obnoxious people, especially when that person is yourself.
One caveat: When dealing with real people in real life, we must remember that we are servants of Jesus Christ, and that most moments have the possibility of being redeeming moments — opportunities to share the love of Christ.
But not when dealing with what Paul calls our old self. So, to the strategies:
Don’t Defend. No need to apologize for what some might regard as rude behavior. Sometimes, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. The Bible says that we cannot play nice with the ugly side of our human nature. It must be mastered, or it will master us:
- “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).
- “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).
- “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:6-7).
Notice the severe and bloody imagery associated with the Bible’s call to be done with our dominating and cruel master. Deny ourselves! Put to death! Crucify!
So, we do not need to defend our hardline policy when it comes to deciding what behaviors are in our best interests. And if that means gray rocking a bad habit or a bad place – then so be it.
Don’t Engage. When cornered by a bore we wish we could avoid, it is absolutely the wrong tactic to engage this person in any way. If we do, we prolong the time he or she will spend with us. The result is that we’re trapped in a conversation or experience from which it might be agonizing minutes or hours before we’re set free.
So, we do not engage. We cannot have any dalliance whatsoever with the habit or the temptation we think we can handle. We can never win the battle in a conflict with someone who can suck the life out of us. They will win every time. We cannot think we are impervious to temptation and sidle up to it as if it is a long-lost friend. We won’t walk away unscathed.
We must turn around, cross the street, duck into a corner – but under no circumstance do we engage. We are like a gray pebble in the roadway. That’s how much we care about our former way of life.
Don’t Explain. One of the things you don’t do when dealing with an unwelcome person is explain your strategy. You don’t explain to the hapless fellow that you’re totally ignoring them and that this is an avoidance tactic known as “gray rocking” or “gray walling.” You don’t share this information because they don’t need to know and probably wouldn’t even care if they did.
Nor do we explain or rationalize (to ourselves) the reason we’re being so ruthless against the enemy within. In the television series NCIS, Special Agent Gibbs’ Rule Number 16 is, “If someone thinks they have the upper hand, break it.” You don’t explain; you just do it. You leave. You walk away. You ignore. But you don’t explain. You do not need to beat yourself up before you decide to flee temptation, resist the devil, and gain the upper hand in your spiritual life.
Dealing with Mr. Hyde. According to Wikipedia, “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [by Robert Louis Stevenson] is one of the most famous pieces of English literature and is considered to be a defining book of the gothic horror genre. The novella has had a sizable impact on popular culture, with the phrase ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ being used in vernacular to refer to people with an outwardly good but sometimes shockingly evil nature.” It is a very Biblical gothic horror novel.
In the story, Jekyll drinks a serum that allows him to indulge his vices without fear of detection. Jekyll transforms into a wholly different person – someone who looks younger, but somehow decrepit, smaller, and malevolent. Whereas Jekyll is a good man, kind-hearted and conscientious, Hyde is evil, self-indulgent, and uncaring. Initially, Jekyll controls the metamorphosis with the potion, but increasingly it becomes difficult for the wicked Hyde to return to the beneficent Jekyll. One reason for this is that Hyde enjoys being Hyde.
If we’re honest, we must admit that there’s more than a grain of truth to this notion. Although we might lament and wail, as does the apostle Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (v. 24), a part of us doesn’t want to let go of the vices we serve. We have developed a sort of perverse Stockholm syndrome in which we have a vague sympathy for and attachment to our taskmaster, our captor, our jailer.
Saint Augustine echoed a similar sentiment when contemplating a future of living a chaste and holy life. He said, in effect, “I am willing, O Lord, but not right now.”
Dr. Jekyll expressed the Pauline Dilemma in words that sound eerily familiar: “I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness … I was radically both. … It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous [logs] were thus bound together – that in the agonized womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then, were they dissociated?”
For his part, Dr. Jekyll resolves to cease becoming Hyde as we, too, often resolve to stop obeying our sinful natures. Yet, despite all his best intentions, one night he has a moment of weakness and once again drinks the tincture. Whereupon, Hyde, his desires having been caged for so long, kills a man.
After using the serum to revert to his original self, Jekyll is horrified and tries earnestly to stop the transformations, but they come involuntarily. Eventually, one of the chemicals used in the serum runs low, and subsequent batches prepared from new stocks fail to work. Jekyll speculates that one of the original ingredients must have had some unknown impurity that made it work. Realizing that he would stay transformed as Hyde, Jekyll wrote out a full account of the events and locked himself in his laboratory with the intent to keep Hyde imprisoned and, as friends and household staff are about to apprehend him, he commits suicide by swallowing a poison.
This scenario seems to be one with which the ancient apostle wrestled, as do we. Do any of these thoughts resonate with our own experiences?
- “I do not understand my own actions.”
- “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
- “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”
- “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”
- “When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.”
- “[I am] captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”
- “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me?”
Do you recognize these words? They are cited verbatim from today’s reading in Romans 7, and they’re from the pen of the apostle Paul.
If Paul – revered theologian, evangelist, apostle, and martyr of the Christian faith – had such sentiments, perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us if we do, too. It might even come as a relief.
But Paul had a gray rock so powerful it turned sin away before it got in the door. Unlike the poor Dr. Jekyll, Paul had a potion so powerful it not only transformed him permanently into his better self but destroyed Mr. Hyde forever. Paul had help being the person he truly wanted to be.
That help comes from Jesus Christ Himself. Just look at what he writes: “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (vv. 24-25).
It’s all about Jesus. We are Jesus people.
