‘My bones made me do it’
It was a wonderful moment in family life. I was asking one of my children why they had done something mildly naughty, and they replied, “My bones made me do it.” It was hard not to laugh! (I hasten to add that they were very young at the time!) As a way of shifting the blame, it certainly was original, and has made us chuckle ever since.
The thing is, most of us still give reasons that are scarcely different. We are asked, “Why did you lose your temper?” And we say, “I was tired.” “Why did you lie about where you were?” And we reply, “I thought you would be angry with me.” “Why did you speak to me like that?” And we respond, “I’d had a hard day.” Do you see the pattern? It’s always something outside ourselves that is the problem; it’s not the real me. It was untypical, even accidental; we’re not really like that.
And Jesus cuts right through all that when he says that, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). Ouch! What is outside of me merely provides the opportunity for what is inside of me, in my heart, to show itself for what it truly is. That’s the reality; that’s the bad news. The good news is that God cares enough about us to expose what the problem really is. And he can afford to do so because he is a ‘heart specialist’ with the skill and power to change us.