Knee Jerk Reaction
By Grant Gaines
Have you ever wondered why your doctor will take out that little rubber hammer during a physical and whack your knee cap? No, it’s not just because he’s had a bad day and needs to take out some frustration. Rather, as you could probably guess, the doctor is testing your reflexes. A healthy body has a quick, subconscious response to certain stimuli…such as getting whacked with a rubber hammer.
From this test, the idiom “knee jerk reaction” was born to describe any action we do that is subconscious and immediate. We see these knee jerk reactions in so many areas of life such as salivating when we think about food, pulling our hand away from a hot stove, or pulling for the Dallas Cowboys any time they’re on the TV. It’s just the natural response we have when we’re put in certain situations.
These knee jerk reactions are also prevalent in our spiritual lives as well. I would love to sit here and tell you that these knee jerk spiritual reactions are all good, however, that’s often not the case. In fact, the very first time we see a subconscious spiritual reaction in the Bible was all the way in the beginning in Genesis 3.
You’ve likely heard this story before – God created Adam and Eve, gave them one commandment – “…[Don’t] eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…” (Genesis 2:17, NIV) – and after just a few verses into Genesis 3, the couple did the very thing they were not supposed to do by eating from that tree.
That was the action – sin. Now let’s take a moment to look at the knee jerk reaction the couple undertook just moments after falling into sin:
“At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees” (Genesis 3:7-8, NLT).
The action was sin, and the reaction was to cover their sin and to hide from the Lord.
But if that was the only time this pattern occurred in the Bible, we really wouldn’t need to concern ourselves with this story, would we? Unfortunately, it doesn’t take too long for us to find this same reactive pattern following an act of sin.
Take, for example, the very next chapter – Genesis 4, where once again we see this pattern pop up its ugly head. This of course is the story of Adam and Eve’s eldest two sons, Cain and Abel. Scripture records that the two brothers brought an offering to the Lord, but the offerings weren’t equally received by God. The Lord accepted Abel’s offering because he brought the best of the best to the Lord (Genesis 4:4) but rejected Cain’s because he offered the leftovers of his crops (Genesis 4:3).
Because his offering wasn’t accepted, Cain stormed off in a fury and took out his anger (which was originally caused because he didn’t do what was right) by killing his brother Abel. That was the action – sin. And as we did before, let’s take a moment to look at the knee jerk reaction Cain undertook just moments after falling into sin:
“Then the LORD said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ ‘I don’t know,’ [Cain] replied, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” (Genesis 4:9, NIV).
Just as we saw with the previous story, moments after falling into sin, Cain tried to hide his fault by dodging the question the Lord had asked him.
We could look at example after example after example of this pattern throughout the Bible where people fall into sin and then try to hide their sin from God only to be rightfully exposed for what they wrongfully did. But rather than spending all our time looking at impersonal examples of what happened thousands of years ago, why don’t we take a moment to examine our own lives.
Just as we saw with Adam and Eve and then later with Cain, it’s human nature to run and hide from God when we sin. We’re embarrassed, ashamed, and feel condemnation from what we did and therefore we run and hide from God.
What’s so cool about both of these stories though, is that although Adam, Eve, and Cain all fell into sin and tried to run from God and cover up their sin, we see God being the One who was actually pursuing the fallen sinners! So often we think that God is disgusted by our sins and wants nothing to do with us when we fall into temptation. But according to these stories, that’s not the case!
Now obviously, God doesn’t want us to sin and clearly HATES sin as could be seen from His willingness to crucify His own Son on a cross just to eradicate sin’s power in His children’s lives (that’s you and me!). However, God is not a far off Deity who needs us to clean up our act before we can come back to Him, He actually chases us down when we are in sin so that He can meet us, save us, and sanctify us (or “clean us”) right where we’re at!
With that truth in mind, whenever we fall into temptation, we need to be aware that our knee jerk reaction is going to be to run AWAY from God rather than running TO the only One who can actually cleanse us from our sins and heal our wounds. This means that we must purpose in our hearts and minds to run TO God, confess our sins, and accept the healing that He longs to offer His children.
It’s certainly not the natural thing to do, but when we ignore our subconscious reactions to run FROM and begin to run TO the Lord, we will find true healing and victory over our sins.
Are there any areas of your life that you need to bring to God?
Comments? Questions? Suggestions?
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©Grant Gaines 2016
