Nicky Gumbel, in his ‘Bible In One Year‘ commentary, talks about how the Titanic, that flagship of cruise liners, sank in 1912 despite its compartmentalised infrastructure:
Its builders boasted that it had 16 watertight compartments and that up to four of these could be damaged or even flooded and still the ship would float; it was, in their words, ‘unsinkable.’ However, sink it did (on 15th April 1912), after hitting an iceberg, and when the wreck was found, it was discovered that damage to just one compartment had affected all the rest.
When we divide our lives into different compartments, we run the risk of sinking, just as the Titanic did. Psychiatrists talk of the dangers of fractured lives, how our attempts to deal with pain and trauma by boxing off our feelings or emotions, forcing them out of our consciousness, lead to problems in the long run. Repression and denial leave us looking good on the surface, but the pressure within these locked compartments of our psyche causes untold damage to our souls, like water flooding in to the Titanic’s compartments. Eventually, the force of those things comes crashing out, leading to depression, anger, breakdowns, as we cannot cope with holding all the separate pieces together. In extreme cases, schizophrenia results as our personality fragments.
In order to live lives of integrity, we have to root out sin, being aware that its pervasive influence seeps into every area of our lives. Attitudes to money, relationships, work, leisure and God are critical. Prov 23:7 reminds us that as we think, so we are.
We need to allow God’s ways of handling life to become our ways. Most of all, we need to receive God’s help, allowing His Spirit free reign, allowing Him access to every compartment, every room, in our lives. As He does this, He guides us day by day. Life is too daunting, too painful, too stressful to be lived on our own. Wholeness and healing are found in God; an undivided heart is the key to successful living. David’s success in life wasn’t because he was sin-free or his life trouble-free, but because he was a man after God’s heart who shepherded his people with integrity of heart. (Ps 78:72)