If you have not read the Harry Potter books, or seen the movies, let me introduce you to Dobby, the house elf:
Dobby shook his head. Then, without warning, he leapt up and started banging his head furiously on the window, shouting, “Bad Dobby! Bad Dobby!”
“Don’t — what are you doing?” Harry hissed, springing up and pulling Dobby back onto the bed….
“Dobby had to punish himself, sir,” said the elf, who had gone slightly cross-eyed. “Dobby almost spoke ill of his family, sir….”
“…Dobby is always having to punish himself for something, sir.”
Got anything to say to Dobby? Want to preach the gospel to him? Want to tell him that there is an alternative to self-punishment?
I hope so. Because once you learn to speak the gospel to Dobby you will have learned something of what it means to speak the gospel to yourself.
Dobby mirrors the guilt-driven behavior to which we are so prone. There are times when we cannot imagine that God would forgive us and accept us with the full measure of his love until we subject ourselves to some ill-defined period of self-inflicted misery.
Take Isabel for example. Isabel is a committed mother of three, a stay-at-home mom who, occasionally, is driven to distraction by the creative rambunctiousness of her children. One day she screams at them all, grabs one and shakes him mercilessly, sends them to their bedroom, and, for good measure, grounds them all for life.
Then sets in her misery, a very necessary misery. God speaks of a sorrow that leads to repentance. What she has done is not good, and so she should feel sorrow for what she has done, a sorrow that should lead her to several actions. First, she should ask God for forgiveness. Secondly, she should go to the children, and ask them for their forgiveness. (Their behavior is no longer the key issue; hers is!) Thirdly, she should breathe deeply the gospel and know that her outburst has not caused God to love her less. Fourthly, she should in the light of that truth of God’s love pray that God would enable her to rest in him and not lose her temper again.
The problem is, of course, that she has done this dozens of times. And so, though she takes the above steps, she does not believe it as much as before. In fact, the third step particularly is seeming more and more remote and unbelievable. How could God still love her?
Cue Dobby.
She spends all of that day and a good portion of the next simply rehearsing in her head what an awful mother she is and how ungodly she has become. No one can persuade her otherwise. She is internally driven to make herself feel misery for her failings. She must punish herself. “Isabel is always having to punish herself for something, sir.”
Once she has caused herself sufficient unhappy misery, she relents a bit and is able to put the incident behind her. But not one moment before.
The truth is that the more we sin, the more difficult it does become to believe the gospel. That is, of course, because we really do not understand how amazing grace is. We can believe that God loves a pretty good person like we are today. But we don’t believe he can love the awful person we sometimes find ourselves to be. But that IS the person he loves. THAT is the person for whom the gospel is for. His love is for us in our repeated failure, as well as in our celebrated goodness.
You may not be a young temper-prone mother. Perhaps you are an internet tempted single guy who has slipped and failed more times than you can imagine. Your Dobby tendencies are well honed. But it makes no difference. The same principle applies.
The gospel is for the worst of us. So don’t do it, Dobby. Lift up your eyes and see that the gospel applies to even you.
