Today's Gospel

The Truth About Self-Sabotage

Hi, I'm Matthew Kelly, and welcome back to Radical & Relevant, where each day we explore the genius of the life and teachings of Jesus in the Gospel. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Mark 3:22-30. The scribes came down from Jerusalem, said, "He is possessed by Beelzebub. And by the prince of demons, he casts out the demons." And Jesus called to them and said in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand. But he is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his good unless he first binds the strongman. Then indeed, he may plunder his house. Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven and whatever blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit has not forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin. For they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."

So what's happening here? The Pharisees are accusing Jesus of being the devil. And you can see that throughout the gospels, what happens is, is that they just ramp up their accusations. They start with smaller things, and obviously now it's getting pretty serious because they're accusing Him of being the devil. And of course, Jesus is just using logic and saying, "How come the devil cast out the devil?" But He raises really interesting points about division within a being or in our case, within a person. And how many ways do we work against ourselves? How many ways do we sabotage ourselves? He says that, "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand." So in this, you are the kingdom. In this, you are the house. And if you're divided against yourself, that's not good. And so I think what jumps out at me today is the idea of self-sabotage and the ways we sabotage ourselves. And one of the ways we sabotage ourselves is by turning our back on God or putting obstacles up between ourselves and God.

And of course, we've all got habits that separate us from God. We've all got habits that get in the way of our relationships. We've all got habits that are self-sabotaging. Let's pray on that today. Let's observe ourselves as we go out into the world. Have a great day. And remember, don't just be yourself. Be the very-best-version-of-yourself, all that God created you to be.