CHAPTER 4 INFERIORITY
THE DECEITFULNESS OF SIN
By
Phil Scovell
Copyright (C) 2003/2007
All rights Reserved
CHAPTER 4 INFERIORITY
He glanced at his digital watch as he turned the motor off. It
read exactly 1 o'clock and 00 seconds. Getting out of his car, he
turned to lock it and laughed. "No need to lock it this time," he
literally said aloud. At the sudden sound of his own voice, he turned
quickly around to see if anyone heard. The birds chirped and he could
detect the soft hum of insects. Otherwise, he was alone and he
breathed a sigh of relief. This was his favorite place to come just
to be alone for awhile. Few people ever frequented this area and he
could never understand why. It was only a thirty minute drive from
the city and it was a wonderful peaceful place to come and relax. He
shivered upon thinking that but shook it off and walked to the mouth
of the path and began making his way over the trail.
He had walked for almost an hour, taking his time, when he
arrived at his favorite spot. It was a large bolder directly in the
middle of the path; almost as if it were blocking the way. For some
reason, in all of his walks, he had never gone beyond this bolder; he
had always turned and retraced his steps without continuing beyond the
large stone. He vaguely wondered why now but instead of focusing upon
that mystery, he simply sat down on the bolder.
Letting his mind drift, he considered his life. He was fifty now
and had nothing to show for it. Oh, sure, he had four children, all
grown and with children of their own. He had been employed with a
good job for the past 28 years and he had made good money, too. So
what. That had little meaning to him. He'd been active in his
church all his life and he'd read the bible through once each year
since he was sixteen. What did that come to? 34? Big deal. What
had it gotten him? He had led several people to the Lord as well;
one now even serving as a missionary in South America for the last 10
years. So? If he hadn't led them to Christ, somebody else probably
would have. As much as he wished, winning the lost to Christ still
didn't make him feel any more loved of God. He was the chairman of
the board of elders at his church, too, but where had that gotten
him? He and the pastor played golf twice a month, too, but his
pastor wouldn't miss him if he were gone. He had financed the Sunday
school addition on the back of the church but who cared about that
now? They got what they wanted and he was still left with emptiness
and no body cared about that. Yes, his wife loved him and he knew it
but somehow that didn't change his mood now. If something happened to
him, he knew it would hurt his children but they were young and they
would get over it. He'd lost his father when he was young and he got
over it so he knew they would, too.
He stopped his self examination to listen to the sounds around
him. It was mid day and few birds sang but he heard a couple of them
in the far distance. He took a deep breath and smelled the freshness
of the greenery all around him. He felt the warmth of the rock on
which he sat. He glanced up. He could see a little blue sky but the
foliage was so thick here and the trees so close together, only a
small area allowed light to filter through. He loved this place.
He'd never even brought his wife here but he knew she would have
enjoyed it, too. The tiny little buttercups growing all around were
his favorite but he never knew why. He heard a squirrel somewhere
but couldn't spot him through the thickness of the branches. He
heard a jet fly far overhead but it was so high, he could barely hear
it. It reminded him of reality and he then realized why he liked
this place. He could be alone here, that was true, but the real
reason was the peacefulness it gave him. He had to laugh at that one
but it wasn't a humorous laugh now.
He heard his thoughts again inside. They had taken on
personality years ago and he was weary of them. In fact, he hated
them. He hated himself because he heard them and he hated his own
life without even understanding why. Oh, sure, he had been to
Christian psychologists. Why not? He had the money to pay for it.
Little, if anything, had ever helped. He'd even gone to a
psychiatrist a few times but the prescribed medications only helped a
little. He was tired of life, his life, and he was tired of pain
which he couldn't even identify. He was no one special, he'd
accomplished little of nothing in his life, and he had nothing to
show for it. His father was right; he was a loser and a failure; and
never should have been born. Tears came then but they didn't last
long because he was tired of crying, too. No one understood and some
even ridiculed him. A Christian shouldn't have these feelings; not
if they were a real spiritual Christian. They were right; he wasn't
worth spiritual spit.
Hearing a small sound, he glanced around. A dozen yards away, he
saw a snake curling through the grass in his direction. He knew
these woods had poisonous snakes but he'd never seen one. He'd seen
snakes, of course, but nothing poisonous. He watched as the snake
moved closer but he felt no fear; just curiosity.
Not more than 10 feet away, it stopped and rose. It was a
copperhead. Certainly poisonous. He watched the snake's tongue
flick the air. He was hunting for body heat, he knew, and with a
measure of detachment, he wondered if the snake could sense him.
"Hello Satan," he said casually. "Have you come to kill me yourself?"
He knew snakes also used their tongues to sense vibrations as well
and he wondered if the snake had detected his voice. The snake stayed
motionless, all but his flicking tongue, and somehow he wished the
thing would come over and strike him. A few months ago, that thought
would have terrified him. Now it seemed almost funny. Somehow he
felt no fear of the snake and for a moment, he thought of walking over
and trying to catch the thing. If he got bit in the process? Well,
no harm done, he mused.
Slowly, he reached around behind him and felt a small rock. He
tossed it at the snake but missed. The deadly snake remained
motionless but he could tell the snake knew something had happened.
Long moments passed.
After awhile, apparently the snake found nothing of interest and
dropping to the ground, it slithered silently away. Somehow he felt
disappointed. Being killed by a snake in these woods might have been
a better way to go. When he realized the life insurance company
would easily pay off his coverage to his wife under such
circumstances, he rose to chase after the snake but then sat back
down. Two million dollars in savings was a whole lot more than a
measly fifty grand life insurance policy. He laughed at the whole
scenario. In fact, he laughed until tears flowed down his face but
eventually the tears turned into tears of grief and deep sorrow.
He pulled the plastic prescription bottle from his pocket and
looked at it. He'd been holding back a few pills each month for the
last 6 months and now he had more than enough to do the job. He
silently wished he'd died in that car wreck 15 years ago but it had
only laid him up in the hospital for 6 months instead. What a waste,
he thought.
He shook the plastic bottle and listened to the pills rattle
around inside. There wasn't much movement, he realized, because
there were lots of pills in there. The antidepressants he'd been on
for the last 4 years, that seemed to do little good, consisted of
about a fourth of the contents of the bottle. He had saved the rest
of the tranquilizers and muscle relaxers: figuring they would do the
best work he planned to carry out momentarily. 400 tablets in all,
as he recalled, and it had taken all he could muster just to hoard
that many over the past 6 months. He felt like a drug addict. So?
What did it matter now.
Again his mind drifted. He mentally knew he was trying to find a
reason not to swallow the pills but it was weak and amorphous so he
pushed it away. He let his anger build. That always worked, he knew.
His sex life proved he didn't have what it takes any longer. His own
wife showed no interest in him. He wasn't much of a man any longer so
why not. He could count on one hand the number of times he had made
love with his wife in the last 5 years and most of those were
miserable physical failures. What a waste. His mind recaptured all
his attempts to cope with the pain of rejection his failed sex life
brought him. The internet had provided the safest means of trying to
deal with his brokenness but now he knew it had yielded absolutely no
value or relief. What an idiot he'd been. Those images, however,
simply could not be flushed from his mind and he cursed their
existence in his heart. What he needed so desperately was intimacy
and that he could not achieve. The pornography had become so
commonplace, he literally felt no reaction to it any longer. He'd
even considered a prostitute once and had even driven around downtown
but his Christian heritage blocked him from going any further. He
probably couldn't have done anything even if he had hired a
prostitute in the first place. He was a complete and total loser;
that's for sure. His sexual performance, or the lack thereof, pretty
much proved that point.
He heard his dead mother's voice then, the only person who had
genuinely loved him, calling to him. She was in Heaven, he knew and
he knew that's where he would be soon. To hell with all those self
righteous Christians who said taking your own life was the ultimate
sin. He wasn't going to hell and he knew it. His salvation was as
secure as it could ever be. The voices were louder now but he didn't
care. He was used to their threats and tauntings and accusations.
Where he was going, they couldn't come and he laughed moronically at
their voices out loud. He thought of God, then, and His love for
him. He picture the Lord dying on the cross; His blood dripping from
his body and falling to the ground and all for him. He cried then,
thankful for his salvation, but still his heart was broken. He was
considered mentally ill just because of the antidepressants but he
knew better. He knew what the voices were; he just didn't know why
they were allowed to torment him as a Christian. He couldn't think
of anything he had done that gave them the right to invade his life
and he couldn't tell anybody about it. After all, God forgave all,
didn't he? He wished he could have shared his feelings and thoughts
with his pastor but that was a lost cause if there ever was one.
Besides, his pastor was probably as wounded as he was but like him,
too proud to admit it.
Unslinging the water container from his shoulder, he unscrewed
the cap and took a drink. He looked at the bottle in his hand again
and realized it would take a fair amount of water to wash all those
pills down. He had already made up his mind a long time ago and the
numbness his body took on at that moment helped settle any doubtful
thoughts about reconsidering. He began unscrewing the cap from the
prescription bottle as tears crept into the corners of his eyes.
Suddenly, he realized the entire forest had gone silent. No
birds; no squirrels; no humming of tiny insects. He had never heard
such silence in his life and he dropped the cap he was unscrewing from
the bottle and listened. He couldn't even detect any breeze rustling
through the branches. For a moment, fear gripped him but then a
strange calm settled over him. Still he sat and listened. Time
itself seemed to stop. The strangest thing, however, was the absence
of the voices. He could not recall a time in the last fifteen years
the voices weren't around. Where did they go? The coolness of the
forest touched him and it felt good. He couldn't remember the last
time he felt good.
He heard something but could not locate its source. After
several moments, he realized it was coming from inside of him but it
wasn't the demonic voices to which he was so familiar. He listened.
There were no words and no sound and no voices he could detect but it
was an understanding that surpassed anything he had ever experienced
in his entire life. He remembered, as a little boy of probably no
more than 4 or 5 years of age, standing outside his home and watching
the large coal truck back up to their house. His father had opened
the basement window and the driver of the truck had unfurled a long
drop chute which terminated at the window. Getting back into the cab
of the truck, he did something, and the large load of coal began to
slide down the chute into the basement. It continued until his
father, now outdoors and standing near the truck, whistled for the
man to stop. The sound of all that coal sliding down the metal chute
died away and he had run over and looked into the basement window.
The coal room was completely filled and he had coughed from the coal
dust in the air. That same feeling of complete fullness, like the
coal room, seemed to be coming from somewhere, literally filling his
mind, and as he sat and waited, it stopped when he felt totally
replete. Although he still heard no voice, he knew a solution was
available for him and that he had been given what he needed to reach
that point in his relationship with God. He didn't even bother to
try an analyze the information or how he might reach its conclusion;
somehow he knew it would happen. Now he had something worth living
for.
A strong revulsion surrounded and permeated him. He looked down
at the prescription bottle in his hand and felt sickness in his
stomach. He cocked his arm and threw the opened bottle as far as he
could, and as high as he could, into the dense trees surrounding him.
He heard the tiny pills scatter among the thick foliage as they fell;
sounding like large rain drops striking the leaves of the trees.
Suddenly he heard one lone bird singing and it was his favorite. He'd
never heard a cardinal in this forest ever before but there was one
now. As he got to his feet to make his way back down the trail to his
car, he somehow wondered if it wasn't really an angel singing a
cardinal's song just for him. Retracing his steps down the path, he
smiled on the inside. Though he knew it would take a lot of work on
his behalf, he felt alive for the first time in years.
Arriving at his car, he recalled he had not locked it. Pulling
the door open, he sat behind the wheel and started the engine. He let
it idle as he felt the sweat trickle down his back. He was hot but
soon the wind would be streaming in through his windows and cooling
him. He pulled the door shut and put the car into gear as he glanced
at his watch. It read exactly 1 o'clock and 00 seconds. Had the
batteries died? That couldn't be because the display would be dead;
nothing would be showing. He tapped the face of the watch. Then he
noticed the digital seconds were clicking off. The watch was running
again. It had stopped totally the entire time he had been out of his
car because he clearly remembered checking the time before walking the
trail to the bolder. He stared at the seconds clicking rapidly by.
He stared for a full three minutes at the watch as it continued to
run. He sat back in his seat and listened to the soft purr of his
car's motor. Glancing down, he stared at the digital clock embedded
in the car's dashboard. It now read 3 minutes after 1 o'clock. He
had no idea what had just happened but it was something totally
unexplainable. He knew for an absolute fact he had been gone for over
3 hours. Yet his watch had frozen in time. What did that mean?
Suddenly, the presence of God's holiness filled his car and this time
his tears had meaning.
COMMENTS ON INFERIORITY
Definition.
A persistent sense of inadequacy or a tendency to self
diminishment.
Inferiority can be intricately complex or very simplistic. Some
people know they have it but most never recognize it for what it
really is. I never realized I had it until the Lord revealed it to me
and by then, I was 50 years old. I was even more surprised when I
discovered the origin of my inferiority.
My father, in my eyes, was a great man. He loved the Lord and he
was a hard worker. He always got up at least two hours before work in
order to pray and study God's Word. I watched him lead people to
Christ. I listened to him preach as he took his family to small Iowa
farming communities on Sundays to preach in churches too small to
afford a full time pastor. I love being with my dad and we fished and
camped and flew kites together. I felt proud that my dad, who only
made it to the 8th grade, was the chairman of the deacon board of a
church running over 1,000 members. I never knew my dad to be sad or
fearful or without confidence. I did notice one thing which caused me
to wonder about my dad, however, and I asked my mother about it one
day.
Frequently, my dad would get into the car and just drive;
sometimes for hours. Mom said, when I asked about it, that my dad
just liked getting away and praying and being alone once and awhile.
She said it relaxed him. That sounded spiritual to me so I forgot
about it. I never thought any more about it until my father died
unexpectedly when I was only 11 years old. Two years later I gained
some insight to who my dad really was.
Mom and I were going to see her relatives in Kansas for the
weekend. Mom loved to drive fast and it never seemed to me, as a kid,
that it took us very long to get anywhere when she was driving.
Several times mom would touch 120 miles an hour, just for the thrill
of it, but never for very long. She easily drove far above the speed
limits, however, on the highways most of the time. I had always
dreamed of my mother driving in the Indy 500 some day.
On the way to Kansas that Friday night, I began asking mom about
dad. We all hadn't said a whole lot about him since his death. Mom
told me how he died and how the Lord Jesus Christ Himself had appeared
at his bedside. Mom not only saw Jesus but spoke to Him and said,
"You have come for him?" Mom said He replied that was why He had come.
I asked mom if Jesus looked like a ghost. She said, "Oh, my no. He
looked just like a real human being.
I could have reached across the bed and touched Him if I had wanted,"
she concluded.
During our conversation about dad, I asked her about how he used
to get into the car and drive to be alone. Mom then revealed to me
that my dad was on tranquilizers. When I asked why, she was very
vague and to this day, I cannot recall she actually gave me a direct
answer. Some 37 years later, the Lord Himself would have to reveal
the truth to me.
during an intercessory prayer session with a friend one day, the
Lord took me to my dad's death bed. The Lord revealed to me in prayer
that I had inherited character traits of my father. Some good; some
bad. He showed me that my father felt inferior, incapable, and a
failure. Yet I never noticed any of these things concerning my dad.
When, as I prayed, I asked the Lord why, He began to explain through
impressions in my thoughts.
My father was born two months after the unexpected death of his
own father. In other words, when he was born, he had no father. His
oldest brother, Fred, was in the 8th grade at the time so he quit
school to help run the farm and to raise his brother and sisters. My
uncle Fred was a wonderful man and loved the Lord. He did everything
with my dad and was more a father to him than a brother. Yet, my dad
knew he did not have a father of his own and there was a void in his
life as a result.
During my prayer time, I asked the Lord why my father became
confused about his identity. The Lord revealed to me that during this
time of my father's childhood, a demon took this opportunity to plant
lies into my father's thinking. I do not have time to explain it now
but I have no doubt my father, at 46 years of age, died an early
death. The reason? He gave up. He had not given up preaching or
living for the Lord but when he became suddenly ill, he lost his will
to live due to the lie of inferiority he carried through his entire
life. In other words, he wasn't better than his father. How do I
know my father had this attitude of inferiority? Because I recall
saying the very same thing to myself more than once: I am not better
than my father. Don't feel badly for me or for yourself, if you feel
inferior because we are all in good company. Elijah, one of the
greatest men of God who ever lived, said the same thing right at the
peak of his powerful ministry. (See 1 Kings 19:1-4).
Inferiority can show up disguised in many different ways. A
parent telling one of their children, "Oh, you can never do anything
right." "Can't you get anything right?" "Look at the mess you've
made. You always mess everything up." "You're just like your dad.
He always talked that way." "How many times do I have to tell you to
clean up your room? Don't you listen? Can't you get anything right I
tell you to do?" Some statements are more direct. "You idiot. You
are so stupid. I wish you'd never been born." Further complications
set in when these statements are confirmed by friends, relatives, and
teachers at school.
As I wrote this booklet, the Lord brought a memory to my mind and
as I began praying over it and seeking God's truth about lies which
were planted in that memory event, I couldn't seem to find the root
cause for my emotional discomfort. What I had done was sin but I had
confessed it as sin at that very moment. I turned the memory over;
looking for other possible problems. Finally I asked myself, "How do
you feel?" I heard myself saying, "I failed God again." What? That
wasn't in the memory but it was. I then realized the real source of
that feeling was not in that memory. I am still waiting upon the Lord
to lead me to the real source of that statement I made about myself.
So, in short, I am continuously on my healing journey from
inferiority. Praise God, though, He helps me find each place and then
speaks His truth and the pain is eliminated and another door is
slammed on the devil.
In the fictitious story of Chapter 4, the successful man wanted
to die, kill himself, because he felt inferior. Yet, as the story
describes, he was quite successful. His inferiority opened the door
for demonic influence. He had tried everything, according to the
story, and yet he felt worthless. Fortunately, in this story, the
Holy Spirit revealed truth to him and he sought for it. Do not try
and tell me my story is less than real because I, and many others,
know otherwise. Your inferiority can be healed completely and you can
walk in maintenance free confidence.
End Of Chapter 4
Go To: Chapter 5 - Shame
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