My dad was a fisheries biologist, with a devotion to life science.  As my sister and I grew up we were included in several studies, collections and hobbies of animals and plants.  Usually there was a shelf life to each new pursuit, but not until some pretty in depth projects were completed.  The studies and collections (all taking place in Northern California and Washington) included the pressing and mounting of wild flowers, a vast insect and butterfly collection, reptiles and and native and tropical fish, the banding of birds, the eating of strange and exotic sea life, and the study of pond life and ocean shore life.  Somehow spiders and algae didn't make it on the list, but pretty much everything else did. 

One of the things that I noticed, even as a boy, was that the collections were especially lethal to the the specimen being acquired (except for the reptiles and fish, and sometimes even they did not escape).  In the study of life, death became a necessary ingredient.  After all, you certainly don't want your insect collections crawling around and eating each other.  Then there was the discipline of dissection.  This process of dissecting an animal so you can see what is going on inside it produced a 100% mortality rate.  Not one of those creatures were ever put back together and re-introduced into their particular environments to crawl, swim or fly around and reproduce the species as they were created for.  No one would expect that to be part of the process.  Dissection is lethal.

Let me say it again, dissection is lethal.  What does that have to with us?  As Christians, we are promised life and that more abundantly, the overflow and infusion of the life of Christ within us.  And we are called to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith so that this life we live in Him can continue to flow through us.  But there are times when, in the course of events, trails and tribulations that we take our eyes off of Jesus and beginning down the road of self-examination, then take a hard left and turn into the quicksand of dissecting and tearing apart our lives to try and figure out where we went wrong, why this is happening to us, and what part of us is causing the problem.  As soon as we do this, contrary to our expectations we gender death, not life.  Just like the creature on the dissecting table, no life will come out of the scattered parts of our self-consuming inward slicing of our soul.  Life comes from the Lord.  He is the only one who can search our hearts without tearing them apart, know our inner most thoughts without cutting our brains in half to do it, and apply life giving changes to us without condemning us to a bloody mess to do it.  

Anytime we begin to think and worry about our problems in a self examination mode, they gender death.  But if we pray, turn our eyes on Jesus, and give Him the cares and worries, He brings life.  It would be good for all of us to remember that when we get self consumed in any way, we need to turn all things back into the hands of the Lord, and let Him deliver us from the loss of life we have gendered into living in the Spirit of the living God. 

Two final examples we are all to familiar with.  We are in church.  The worship is sweet and deep.  We are inspired to bow down with our face on the floor.  But before we move, we move into the dissecting mode.  What would people think?  Do I have enough room?  What will it do to my stiff back?  Is the carpet clean, I don't want to wrinkle my new clothes.  Will it kick off my allergies when I breath all that dust?  By now we are not only dissecting, but we are likely out of the flow of the original inspiration and have lost that moment to simply respond in life to God. Or we are listening to the message of God, and we begin to think about something that someone said to us before the ministry session that was hurtful.  We carefully glance over at them to see if they are at all bothered about what they said (not that you can do one thing about it now).  We review the interaction, dissection begins to take place, and thoughts cascade through our mind about our next conversation with them, or how fast we can get by them without seeing them when you leave church.  By now we are far away from the life giving flow of the message of God, and are consumed by our own self-examination.  We wouldn't be able to tell anyone what was just said, let alone benefit from it ourselves because we were busy dissecting not only ourselves but the other person as well.  We have just gendered death and not life.

In Galatians 3:3 we are asked this question:  "Are you so foolish?   Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?"    The answer to the question is NO!  Let us remember, dissecting is a work of the flesh, not of the Spirit, and it brings death.  Revelation of truth and the conviction it brings is a work of the Spriit and respondong to Him brings life.  Take your eyes off yourself and look to Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith.  Hebrews 12:2