Today I picked up a book about dealing with the challenges in life. I did not finish it. Oh, not that there was nothing of value, but it missed what I believe is the essential part.
The author was speaking to our vulnerability when we are dealing with disaster, chaos, fear and the end of life as we expected it to be. His point, and a valid one, is that we are very vulnerable to bad decisions at such a point and often to those bad decisions make our situation infinitely worse than they had been 24 hours earlier. All that is true and I have demonstrated the sad truth of that in bad decisions I have made.
But we WILL make mistakes...small ones, large ones. With practice we will be better at avoiding mistakes but we will never on this side of heaven ever get everything exactly right. So the bigger truth is not how we might sin, bur rather that WHEN we sin, what then? The negative little liar that lives in your head will tell you it is proof positive that you are worthless, bad, and many other things we are all too willing to wear as a cloak of unworthiness. And wrapping the lie of unworthiness around us leads to more unwise choices and more shame and more despair. It feeds the fear that nothing can change (absolutely not true...everything about us changes one way or another) and It also leads to self-medication, obesity, stress, poor health, over-spending...all the stuff we try to stuff in the hollow place inside us.
So I would say to this author, get off your high horse because if you have no compassion for mistakes driven by another's imperfect relationship with God then I am very concerned with your well-being! It sounded all too much like you thought other people's sins were much worse than your own and that leaves you vulnerable to "small sins" unshriven that lead to bigger trouble later on... I'm putting you on my pray list, brother!
So what Do I wish he had included? How about this? All "sin" comes due to a lack in my relationship with God. Read the old testament. Read the new testament. We get in trouble when we (1) don't seek God, (2) think we should be able to understand the mind of God, (3) buy the lie that we are too unworthy to be loved by God AKA God is a liar when God says "I love you always, just as you are, and have plans for a good life and eternal life for you, but you have to trust me." We are ALWAYS wanting God to "prove it is true" before we will even try to trust God. But that is backwards. Think about a baby: they trust us to feed them, tend them, cloth them, love them and every time we do right by them them, they are learning trust. As long as that baby clamps its mouth down, refuses to suckle, refuses to be comforted life is miserable and frightening and dangerous. But we bounce, we rock, we tend, we sing in the midst of that child's terrors and bad choices until we wear them down to sleep and nuzzle against our breast exhausted by their lack of understanding and stubbornness. We pray for them. We stroke them. We whisper our love to them in the hope their small bodies will begin to participate in the essential activities of living. This is God.
God loves. God woos, God persists. God offers comfort. God loves us. God wraps us in such tenderness. But, unlike we frightened human Mamas, God is not guessing about what needs to happen and God is not fearful. So we can stop crying and fighting and struggling in fear and we can give up all that and before we even get the thoughts formed or the words out of our mouths, God is moving heaven and earth to respond in perfect love.
Does that mean God will wave a magic wand and make everything as we think it out to be? No (and I have learned to thank God for that) but we will be new, renewed, safe in the most essential sense of that.
The author was speaking to our vulnerability when we are dealing with disaster, chaos, fear and the end of life as we expected it to be. His point, and a valid one, is that we are very vulnerable to bad decisions at such a point and often to those bad decisions make our situation infinitely worse than they had been 24 hours earlier. All that is true and I have demonstrated the sad truth of that in bad decisions I have made.
But we WILL make mistakes...small ones, large ones. With practice we will be better at avoiding mistakes but we will never on this side of heaven ever get everything exactly right. So the bigger truth is not how we might sin, bur rather that WHEN we sin, what then? The negative little liar that lives in your head will tell you it is proof positive that you are worthless, bad, and many other things we are all too willing to wear as a cloak of unworthiness. And wrapping the lie of unworthiness around us leads to more unwise choices and more shame and more despair. It feeds the fear that nothing can change (absolutely not true...everything about us changes one way or another) and It also leads to self-medication, obesity, stress, poor health, over-spending...all the stuff we try to stuff in the hollow place inside us.
So I would say to this author, get off your high horse because if you have no compassion for mistakes driven by another's imperfect relationship with God then I am very concerned with your well-being! It sounded all too much like you thought other people's sins were much worse than your own and that leaves you vulnerable to "small sins" unshriven that lead to bigger trouble later on... I'm putting you on my pray list, brother!
So what Do I wish he had included? How about this? All "sin" comes due to a lack in my relationship with God. Read the old testament. Read the new testament. We get in trouble when we (1) don't seek God, (2) think we should be able to understand the mind of God, (3) buy the lie that we are too unworthy to be loved by God AKA God is a liar when God says "I love you always, just as you are, and have plans for a good life and eternal life for you, but you have to trust me." We are ALWAYS wanting God to "prove it is true" before we will even try to trust God. But that is backwards. Think about a baby: they trust us to feed them, tend them, cloth them, love them and every time we do right by them them, they are learning trust. As long as that baby clamps its mouth down, refuses to suckle, refuses to be comforted life is miserable and frightening and dangerous. But we bounce, we rock, we tend, we sing in the midst of that child's terrors and bad choices until we wear them down to sleep and nuzzle against our breast exhausted by their lack of understanding and stubbornness. We pray for them. We stroke them. We whisper our love to them in the hope their small bodies will begin to participate in the essential activities of living. This is God.
God loves. God woos, God persists. God offers comfort. God loves us. God wraps us in such tenderness. But, unlike we frightened human Mamas, God is not guessing about what needs to happen and God is not fearful. So we can stop crying and fighting and struggling in fear and we can give up all that and before we even get the thoughts formed or the words out of our mouths, God is moving heaven and earth to respond in perfect love.
Does that mean God will wave a magic wand and make everything as we think it out to be? No (and I have learned to thank God for that) but we will be new, renewed, safe in the most essential sense of that.
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