While our brokenness is more complex than our sin, we have to fight against the destructive tendency to avoid responsibility for our sin and shift the blame to others. Join us as we discuss chapter 3 of Dave Harvey’s new book, I Still Do.
Intro
The “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast is a family discipleship resource from Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. It aims to equip you and your family to be on mission with God, to the end of the street and the ends of the earth.
Andy Owens
Welcome back to another episode of “Gospel Shaped Home.” I’m Andy Owens, pastor of family discipleship here at Providence. Thankful that you’ve tuned in for this week’s episode. Bryan, welcome back.
Bryan Nelson
Thanks. Glad to be here.
Andy O
This week we have a special guest couple with us, Cindy and Andy McClure. Cindy, Andy, welcome guys.
Cindy McClure
Hello.
Andy McClure
Thanks. Good to be here.
Andy O
Glad you are here. Why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourselves real quickly for our listeners who may not know you. Tell us about yourselves, your family, involvement at Providence.
Andy M
Sure. Okay. Cindy and I have been married for 31?
Cindy
31 this May.
Andy M
31 years this May. Met in high school in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Way back in the day. We’ve been coming to Providence since 1999. And we have three kids, they are 29, 27, and…
Cindy
24.
Andy M
Yeah. So anyway, they are all grown up. So we’re empty nesters.
Andy O
Cindy, you must be the family record keeper.
Cindy
I keep the records, yes.
Andy O
Okay.
Andy M
Yeah. She keeps it straight that’s for sure. We lead a life group with Kyle and Maggie Brown. And we’re also involved in the Re|Engage ministry here. That’s a marriage ministry we do every Wednesday night for the next eight weeks I think.
Andy O
Okay. Great. Cindy, you also serve on staff here with…
Cindy
I do. I work with the children and the women of the church.
Andy O
Great. Well, thankful for your service. So real quick, do you guys have a favorite ethnic cuisine like Mexican food, Chinese food, Italian food?
Andy M
Yeah. We were at Gonza’s for Valentine’s, so Mexican.
Andy O
Okay.
Cindy
Or somebody cooks for us is fine.
Andy O
Yeah. That’s why it’s the best. And have you been burning up the road more the last year or the air?
Andy M
Yes, Cindy and I, well, I took a little adventure. Went to work in Albany for most of last year and the plans looked good on the spreadsheet to come home every weekend until COVID hit and then travel stopped. And the Lord taught us a lot, which we may get into a little bit here tonight, but glad to be back now. We are here. I am here and it’s good.
Andy O
Well welcome back. Yeah. Well again, thankful that you guys are joining us today. We’re in chapter three of Dave Harvey’s book, “I Still Do,” and the defining moment this time is the moment of blame, the moment of blame. And so before we dive into the chapter, I thought I would just throw out the question: Any other words or phrases that you think helped summarize the big idea in this chapter? Because blame is a good one, but other than blame, any other key ideas you throw out?
Cindy
Passing the buck.
Andy O
There you go.
Andy M
Humility and conflict.
Andy O
Humility and conflict. Yeah. Responsibility, which passing the buck is. Yeah, same idea there. And obviously I think gospel forgiveness come up strong at the end here. So it’s a great chapter. Bryan, how does this chapter relate to the previous one?
Bryan
Yeah. So in the last chapter we really got to see what sets the stage for the rest of the book when Harvey talks about the concentric circles and really that all was birthed out of the reality of the first book that he wrote, which talks about our greatest problem when we step into marriage, being our sin.
What’s cool about this book and we said it in previous episodes, he shifts attention now on to not to say that sin doesn’t matter, but to say that there are other things that we bring to the table in marriage that equally impact our marriage. And he talked last time about that in these ideas of concentric circles with the heart being at center, but the heart is within a physical body, but that physical body is got a social world that’s built around it. But all of that has a spiritual world that is also impacting it, but all of that rest under the providence of God. Right?
And so ultimately now we’re shifting the corner to where we’re stepping in to how some of these other things come into play. And I think what he does here, which is really, really helpful, he never deviates from what he said in his first book.
Harvey still believes, and rightly so, our greatest problem when we step into marriage is our sin problem. And if we forget that, then we run into the possibility of what he lays out at the beginning of this chapter, which is that we, if we lose sight of the reality that our sin is really our biggest problem, then we’ll ignore it. That’s what he says. Our first problem is we’ll just ignore our sin altogether.
And we’ll think that it’s somebody else’s fault or something else’s fault, or even worse than that we’ll make the sin not the sinner problem, but we’ll make any of these other factors, our family of origin or the social environment that we’re in, or anything else for that matter take the place of what is in the middle.
Andy O
Yeah. And they kind of both fall under the rubric of blame, because in the first case, the first temptation we’re saying, “I’m a victim, everything is because of what else happened to me.” In the second case, we’re really focusing in on one specific…
Bryan
They being the source of…
Andy O
Right. A source of our problems. And we’re in both case, we are not accepting the blame when we’re wrong. We’re not acknowledging our own responsibility.
So, okay. So he talks about Genesis three, starting on page 47. He does talk about King Tut and the opening illustration, which is kind of fun, his beard breaking off or not really his beard, I guess, the beard on the mask. But really he dives into Genesis three and he says, it’s more than just an explanation of how sin entered our world at the beginning. It also shows how sin operates in our hearts today. Right.
He talks about, yeah, just our tendency to deflect blame. To reject personal responsibility. So let’s talk about that for just a minute. How does he connect? What happens in Genesis three to us in our marriages today?
Andy M
Nothing. It’s pretty straight out of it. That what happens in Genesis three is not only the disobedience, but it is the blame-shifting that goes on after the disobedience. And it really, it talks about if you acknowledge the reality of sin in your life, that does not give you an escape hatch for avoiding responsibility for your sin. That you still have agency in spite of the fact that you do have sin as a part of who you are. You still are responsible for what you do. You can’t shift the blame to somebody else.
Andy O
Yeah. And it doesn’t, it’s not trying to mitigate the reality of other influences on us. And even that when others have sinned against us, but he’s just trying to make the point no matter what has happened to us, we are still responsible for our own thoughts and words and deeds. Anything you’d add there, Bryan?
Bryan
No, I was just thinking it really is that what you said at the end. It’s that we, no matter what happens in life, we still have responsibility in it and what happened in the garden, what he says in the garden is that that was lost. Immediately the attention was somebody else’s fault. Not just another person’s fault, but I mean, in the garden it was also God’s fault. Right?
Andy O
Which he calls ultimate insanity.
Andy M
Right.
Bryan
Right. You gave this woman to me, and so it’s just this complete inability to own our contribution to the problem.
Andy O
Yeah. He has, there’s one CS Lewis quote on page 48, which is really helpful. Those who do not think about their own sins, make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others.
Andy M
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Bryan
I’ve never done that.
Andy O
Yeah. And on page 49, this one was I thought it’s eminently Tweet-able. It’s just so short and so pithy. But when my sin gets going, my finger starts pointing. I thought I need to write that on my board, in the office, or on my mirror at home in the bathroom just so that, hey, if my finger’s pointing, I need to look back up the source and see is this because I’ve got sin?
Andy M
Right.
Andy O
That I’m trying to shift blame to someone else. So he really gets into how this can have such a detrimental impact on a marriage. So what’s the fallout damage in a marriage if we start to live with this mindset?
Andy M
I think if and when I sin against Cindy and we have a problem, if I back away from it and claim number one, that there was no sin. So one of my favorite questions, why are you angry? Certainly I’ve done nothing to deserve this. Right? And so if I just leave that as a vacuum and expect her to fill it in, then that is the first step in just escalating conflict. Because she says, “Hey, this is why I’m angry.” And I’m thinking, well, that hurts when you say that. So I’m going to come back with something else. It’s much better to deal with it upfront.
Bryan
And even more, I think even more than that, what leads to that is this real thought, “I am God’s gift to this marriage.” Like you are so lucky to be married to me. And so if that’s the frame of reference, because in essence that’s what we’re doing. If nothing is ever our fault, that’s exactly what we’re saying if we’re not saying that I’m never wrong, I’m a gift here. If there’s a problem, it can’t be me.
Andy M
Right.
Bryan
And that’s a slippery slope.
Andy O
Yeah. At the top of page 51, he kind of tongue in cheek describes that mindset. We are these remarkably righteous beings stumbling passively upon our spouses struggles with sin. Right?
Andy M
Right. Yep.
Andy O
Yeah. My role in this relationship is to spread love and mirth, wherever I go, my heart is pure. That’s how we are thinking in our sinful delusion when we aren’t acknowledging our own contribution. So, and ultimately it comes from hiding in the darkness, right?
Andy M
Yeah. There’s this quote on page 50 where it says, “in Adam’s mind the sin was done to him, not by him.” And the best part is personal responsibility was swapped for self part.
Andy O
Yeah, yeah. That’s good. So, and what that leads to is we all of a sudden, because we see ourselves as the victim, we could even take it as far as to start thinking things like, how could God expect me to stay married to this person any longer? How could God require me to be faithful in this circumstance? When we see ourselves as primarily sinned against instead of contributing to the mess with our own sin.
And well kind of like last week conversation with Andy and Cindy McClure went a little long. So it’s going to divide it up into two parts to make it easier for you to listen to on a drive or doing dishes or whenever it is that you listen to it. So thank you for making this a part of your routine. Hope that it’s a blessing to you. Hope that the Lord will specifically use this episode to strengthen your marriage and your resolve to acknowledge your own sin and be in the right position to receive God’s help and grace through Christ.
Outro
Thanks for listening to this episode of the “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast. Produced by Providence Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information and resources from Providence, visit us online at pray.org. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.