What a Double Amputee Taught Me about My Sin

June 17, 2022

Our kids are basically like most other kids (when they’re not being overly weird): They like to build things; to create, engineer, construct, design.

One thing I’ve noticed is this: For everything they set out to build, whether it’s a Lincoln Log cabin or a Lego parking garage or a Thomas the Train railway system, they set out to make the perfect log cabin, or parking garage, or railroad. Their goal is always the building project to end all building projects.

Inevitably a younger sibling comes along and either steals a crucial piece to the master creation, or steps on it, or otherwise brings some total natural (or unnatural) disaster resulting in tears, harsh words, a destroyed masterpiece, and probably someone in a corner.

Perhaps that shows us something about God─not the tears or the harsh words part, but the experience of having the perfect creation marred.

Perfectly Damaged

No other creature is like us image-bearers. God made us to be “special,” as Larry the Cucumber famously taught us. Therefore, our plunge into sin, although fully expected, must have been a powerful moment for our Maker. His image-bearers, the ones He created without flaw, were now broken and morally dysfunctional. The Lego cornerstone had been swiped.

This fall into moral dysfunction affects the total self. No part of us remains untouched. Theologians call this Total Depravity. That doesn’t mean we’re as sinful as we can possibly be. Rather, it means that no part of us remains unaffected by the fall into sin.

Sin placed no boundaries. It rolled roughshod over every part of our humanity, taking no prisoners and leaving nothing off-limits.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked… -Ephesians 2:1-2

Dead people are affected by their death in their entire self. Death tends to leave a person completely dead. That’s the way death rolls, and that’s why Paul used that word-picture.

You Have a Broken Wanter

Perhaps the most heavily-impacted area of our humanity is the area of our desires. It is said that the most broken part of us is our broken desires, and that saying is worthy of full acceptance.

In seminary, I had a professor that liked to put it this way: You have a broken wanter.

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other… - Galatians 5:17

Our disordered desires have a disproportionate effect on the rest of our humanity. What we most desire becomes the focus of our life. We all find a way to get what we really want, and if sin is what you really want, sin is what you’ll really get. So the root of the sin problem is desire. The heart of the matter really is a matter of the heart. Your desires are the inescapable driving force of your entire life.

Paul wrestles with this in Romans 7:

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ─Romans 7:19

Or the half-brother of our Lord:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?… -James 4:1-2

The first step is realizing deep in your heart that the problem is your desires, and that’s a bigger deal than you might think. Wrapping your heart around the truth that the most broken part of you is that you desire what you shouldn’t while failing to desire what you should cuts to the quick. It’s personal, very personal. And it’s a Holy Spirit thing.

You should want Jesus more than you do. Infinitely more than you do.

The second step is: What do we do to join together with the Holy Spirit to change our broken desires? That’s what a double amputee once helped me to see.

Garrett’s Story

Garrett is a US Marine who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan as a Rifleman. On the first day of the first mission of his second tour, he stepped on an IED, severing both legs. Garrett is a double amputee.

Garrett’s life was forever changed in a moment, in ways that people with four limbs cannot imagine. The everyday difficulties of missing limbs and the issues that can be caused by prosthetics are unfathomable for most of us.

Unfathomable, yet insightful. Getting to know someone who has lost two legs taught me a great deal about the nature of my own sin, and how to battle it more effectively.

Scratching an Itch

Most of us have heard of the phenomenon known as “phantom itches.” This is the terribly unfortunate experience of “feeling” an itch on a limb that our body no longer has; an itch on the big toe of an amputated foot, or on the back of the hand that was attached to a now missing arm.

Since the “itch” is neurological sensation and not a physical one, the old fashioned remedy has no effect. There’s no relief, simply because there’s no big toe to scratch. They might sound far-fetched, but my friend assures me they are real. And they are maddening.

But as maddening as an itch is that cannot be scratched, it can be worse. Much worse.

When a limb is lost suddenly and violently, the sensations that the brain is receiving from that limb at the moment of separation can become “stuck” in the brain. And being “stuck,” they get replayed over and over, something akin to what happens when you have the terrible misfortune of accidentally hearing the chorus of “We Built This City on Rock and Roll.”

Now your brain is stuck on repeat mode. Imagine that chorus going on and on, with no ability to load another song into your brain’s music player. You’re getting the picture.

These phantom signals can be replayed for years, sometimes for life.

A cold, wet foot that steps on a land mine can feel cold and wet for many years. And since there is no foot to dry off and warm up, the amputee faces a problem with no solution, or at least, not an easy one.

The Worst Sensation

The worst feeling by far a foot can experience is─you guessed it, an athlete’s foot flare-up; that tortuous combination of searing fire and neurotic itching that makes you want to take a belt sander to your toes and then moments later want to blast it with a fire extinguisher. It’s the Jefferson Starship of foot sensations, and you further guessed it: Garrett was experiencing an athlete’s foot flare up on the day he lost his legs.

Garrett has for years “felt” a flare up of athlete’s foot on feet that he cannot scratch, wash, or even spray with that high school locker room staple─good-ole “fast actin’ Tinactin.” He can’t even cut them off with a chain saw.

The Perfect Illustration of Remaining Sin

When Garrett first described his situation, my first thought was, “This would make a great Stephen King novel.” My second (and more mature) thought was:

This is the perfect illustration to describe the Christian’s ongoing battle with remaining sin.

Garrett has had limbs removed. Those limbs, though they are no longer part of his body, still “produce” sensations. If Garrett reacted to those “sensations” in the same way he did prior to losing the limbs, not only would we think him crazy, his reaction would in no way give the relief he craves.

What do we do for an itch? Simple, scratch it. If it persists, apply some type of lotion or ointment.

If Garrett did either of those to his prosthetic feet, we’d think him crazy. Scratching a prosthetic foot provides no relief. Ointment just creates a mess.

There is a response that is natural and effective when there is a physical itch─scratching. That same response now becomes irrational when the limb no longer exists. The sensation may feel the same, but the reaction will not give the same result, because the offending limb is gone.

That’s the point to see. That’s what’s missing in the thinking of many Christians as they battle remaining sin.

The sensation may feel the same, but the sensation is coming from the past─a past that no longer exists.

It’s not being generated by the saliva of the mosquito that bit you at your neighbor’s cookout. It’s coming from a memory, a past condition, a part of you that you no longer have. That is why reaching down and scratching a prosthetic foot is irrational for an amputee, and that is why choosing sin is irrational for the Christian.

Set Free

That’s a picture of the Christian who’s been set free from sin. Christ has set us free from our bondage to sin (Romans 8:1), but here’s the important part; we have a learned response to temptation: Respond to temptation with sin, and the result is pleasure.

Are you making a connection?

Respond to an itch with a scratch, feel relief. Respond to a temptation with sin, feel pleasure. The predicament is that Christ has performed an amputation.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ─Ezekiel 36:26

He’s removed our old nature and given us a new nature, a nature that can no longer take pleasure in sin. We can (and do) still sin, but the pleasure is gone. Scratching the phantom itch of temptation will never again produce the same pleasure. It only produces frustration, but it is a frustration we can be blind to.

Imagine Garrett continuing to scratch and scratch on a piece of hard rubber strapped to his knee.

That’s the Christian who knowingly yields to temptation. They are giving an old, learned response to temptation that will not produce the relief that is desired, because the old heart that was enslaved to sin has been removed.

No one who abides in him keeps on sinning… ─1 John 3:6

The Problem is Still the Wanter

Our fallen desire still craves the old pleasures of sin, but those pleasures no longer deliver what they promise. Christ has amputated our heart, and our new heart is dead to the pleasure of sin, but not the temptation.

Our broken wanter still “wants” the pleasure from scratching the itch on the foot that no longer exists. Our redeemed heart still retains a memory of the pleasures of sin, but that memory is a phantom one.

So, how do we extricate ourselves from this dilemma? How do we “unlearn” our old response to the temptation of sin?

That’s what some ugly roots taught me.

Jason Wilkerson serves Disciples Fellowship as Elder-Pastor. Jason has been married to Meredith for more than 20 years, and together they have six children. Pastor Jason holds degrees from NC State (BA), and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (MDiv, ThM). Jason has followed Christ for more than 40 years, and has a passion for expository preaching.