Mulligan Anyone?

          That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:20-24)

 

It's the time of year when “starting over” becomes part of the thought process. Part of this is simply because of the place in the cycle in which we find ourselves. It’s almost autumn. We’re at least getting ready to close things down the summertime things. We’re starting autumn things over. This happens at this time every year. We can be prepared for it and even welcome it.

There’s another kind of starting over that involves turning away from the cycles and patterns we’ve followed. This might be characterized as “I’ve made a mess of my life, and I’m going to turn in a different direction.” Sometimes, our wish is that we could start over in the sense of going back in time or pretending something never happened. It’s the golfer’s Mulligan. The other is to own the mess-making and make a change. Most of us would probably prefer the Mulligan, but it only exists in games.

          Scripture provides a pattern for starting over in today’s passage. We’re to put off our old selves. We’re to start our new selves by changing our attitudes – our habits of thought that have never served us well – and to put on the new self. And what should our goal be for this new self? Paul tells us that it should be true righteousness and holiness.

          That both does and does not fit our wish for a Mulligan. We want to be blameless – through no effort on our part. We want to put off all the bad stuff but forget how comfortable it is. We want to put on the new, good stuff, but that new stuff is armor. It’s not comfortable to us. We don’t really want to go through the process of learning to wear it or work with it. It’s so much nicer to dream of stepping into an old-fashioned phone booth and emerging as a superhero. Have you ever tried to change clothes in a phone booth? I haven’t, but I suspect it’s not convenient. Neither is changing our spiritual clothes within the confines of a moment.

          So, while we may want to start over, and we certainly have the opportunity to make the change that might be considered starting over, it’s not something that is going to be as easy as we want it to be. It takes being an adult and doing the work necessary.