I love Onewheel rides, and the weather has just started to warm up, so this weekend I took two long rides around DC and Virginia. On the ride yesterday, I noticed a ton of potholes—especially in bike lanes and sidewalks. Most streets had them, too, of course. I found myself looking several yards ahead to swerve around them, but sometimes I still hit them despite my best efforts. I found it quite paradoxical because that wasn’t the goal, but whenever I focused on not doing it, I ended up doing it more often than not.
That got me thinking about a verse in the Letter from Paul to the Romans:
For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 1
If there’s something we can all agree on, it’s that potholes are evil. And I kept hitting ‘em.
It struck me today, after reading several of Christ’s parables, that this was a deeper metaphor. I was going into the problem with the wrong approach—the Pharisee approach. If you know anything about Second Temple Judaism and the origins of Christianity, the Pharisees were so caught up in not disobeying the Law of Moses that they made up additional laws to go with it. Ironically, this led them to fail in following the originally ordained Law.
Christ urged them to understand the faulty thinking by saying:
“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?” 2
The Pharisees focused so much on not disobeying God that they missed the mark entirely (funny enough, the raw translation of sin is ‘missing the mark’). In other words, they were aiming beyond the target. This was rooted in an arrogant focus on themselves—also known as pride.
Jesus (and therefore, God) calls us, instead, to focus on Him:
“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” 3
I think you see what I’m getting at. If we focus on the wrong thing, we do the wrong thing; if we focus on the right thing, we do the right thing.
I’ve started noticing my faulty thinking because I do this daily. I focus on avoiding my anxiety instead of enjoying the moment. I fear what happens if I do the wrong thing and it comes to fruition. I try not to masturbate, and that makes me think about masturbating, which makes me wanna do it!
My target wasn’t glorifying God Almighty, but in avoiding these vices and issues—like a Pharisee.
But if we focus on Him, the rest will follow. Jesus said it Himself.
Yesterday, on my Onewheel, I started using this tactic on those evil potholes. By locking my vision onto the smooth parts of the trail and dialing in on safer targets. Sure enough, most of the time I succeeded!
So maybe God doesn’t want us to focus on avoiding the bad things; He simply calls us to aim for Him instead.