Reconciliation It's personal.

Amos 9/Obadiah

            I don’t see God tearing people or countries down without a reconciliation plan. The times in the Bible God says, “Go wreck house and level them, leave no survivors” are relatively few. If you do a cursory study of the history of those people you can usually see why God said that and most people often agree. If God’s desire for mankind were total annihilation then He would've done it in Eden. If God’s desire were to let us do whatever and have to relationship with Him or to destroy us while He watched. He wouldn't have sent/come as Jesus.

            We don’t view our thinking as flawed yet we are okay to point out how God’s is all messed up. If we can justify how we’d do it that way, why we’d do it way, then we act like we’re better then God. The issue is that God can see the entire Universe and eternity at the same time and we can only see our little microcosm. I've met a lot of arrogant people in my time but I haven’t met anybody who said they know everything that’s going on in the Universe and eternity all the time.

            It’s because of His knowledge and love that God has been in the business of reconciliation since the second we started the business of sin. It was automatic. Adam and Eve sinned and in that first conversation afterwards God gave them a hint to His plan.            It is never God that bucks reconciliation. It is never God who pushes away. I understand getting pissed at God for when bad stuff happens. It’s a gut reaction. But if we sit back, take inventory, we can see that this was not His original plan. We can’t let that keep us from seeking his aid. We have a tendency to think we’re going to show God what’s up by not listening to Him when it was not listening to Him (or somebody else not listening to Him) that got us in this mess in the first place.

            Yes, God will tear down our sin. He has to destroy it because it separates us from Him and us from what He made us to be. Yes, that will hurt. But let’s be fair, shall we? God’s final answer to sin was letting Himself get torn down in the place of it all. That’s what makes God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit different from other religions. That’s what makes God’s plan so much better: It’s personal. 

Love, Grace, Wrath

Amos 3+4/Matthew 17+18

            Why do I continually get amazed when the World acts like the World? Uh, duh, right? They gossip, they lie, they cheat, they blame, they run after success, they are bitter, they do drugs, they have sex, they think I’m crazy. They are exactly how I am apart from Christ.

            Again, uh, duh? I wouldn't be upset if a guy in a wheelchair didn't stand to pray, so why do I get upset when the people who haven’t been redeemed by Jesus don’t act like people who have been redeemed by Jesus? Apart from Him I can do nothing and neither can they. The only difference is I know that. That pisses them off even more.

           Most of my frustrations (and probably most of a lot of Christian's frustrations) come from forgetting where we've been. After being submersed in Christian culture for so long we forget that at one point none of this God, Jesus, Spirit stuff made any sense to use either. That's when we become condescending religious nuts. That's when we start acting outside of God's love, grace, and wrath. That's when we, ironically, start acting a lot like what God saved us out of. 

         The whole foundation of Christianity is Jesus' redeeming work on the Cross. The whole foundation for that is God's love for us and our inability to fix the problem of our sin. That realization should allow us to show Grace, and only Grace to those who are no different than us. 

            Lord, help me show Grace to those who don’t know You and act accordingly.

                                                                                                            -Amen

I Hate Me.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do and what I hate I do.

-Romans 7:15

When a London newspaper posed the question “What is wrong with the world?” writer, philosopher, and theologian G.K. Chesterton sent this simple letter:

“Dear Sirs,

I am.

Sincerely Yours,

G.K. Chesterton”

I hate me the way an author hates a rough draft. I hate me the way a painter hates his piece in a gallery. I hate me the way a musician hates hearing his song on the radio. I hate me the way a retired boxer can’t take a hit any more. I hate me the way a former Miss America hates her post pregnancy body.

Don’t worry friends, I’m not sitting here with a shotgun in my mouth waiting to post then splatter my attic. I’m not eating myself into an early grave or getting high and watching Sponge Bob. I’m not depressed.

I have found freedom in self loathing.
I think a lot of depression comes from being taught that we can do anything that we put our mind to, that we’re all special, and deep down we are really, truly, good. For years we never heard a teacher tell us “no.” We had parents that made our happiness top priority. We had a government that made sure we had all the food and medication we needed.

Now the dust has settled and we’re all a bunch of middle aged adolescents wondering why everybody was so wrong. If we’re all so special and all so perfect and if we can all do anything why is nothing getting done?

And the self loathing, self medicating, midlife-crisising, self destruction, begins.

I think Kurt Cobain splattered his attic because he proved he could do anything he put his mind to and felt unfulfilled. I think the reason we can have news stories dedicated to celebrity mugshots is for the same reason. Do your best. Try real hard. The world is yours. Then what?

I think we’re all hardwired the same. The operating system might be different but the hardware is similar. Deep, deep down we all know that no matter what we do, no matter how hard we work, no matter how much we accomplish we’re not built right. We have a ton of desire to succeed, do well, make a difference, but we don’t. We all know that somewhere a wire got crossed, a step was missed, a lightbulb went out, and we can’t fix it.

See I hate myself because I see all that I should be, all I was created for, and I get frustrated because I am me and that means I am inherently imperfect. Don’t believe me? When you mess up and you run out of excuses what do you fall back on?

“Well, I’m only human.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

“We all screw up.”

Why do we say it? We say it because not only do we know that we’re not perfect but that nobody else is either. Here in lies the problem. If we aren’t perfect, which we know we’re not, then we will never know complete fulfillment.

I remember a kid in a college class going so far as to say that imperfection is perfection. As an English guy I couldn’t deal with that kind of oxymoron. That was just his way of dealing with the fact that he was messed up and since he couldn’t fix the problem then there was no problem.

But look at us. Look at the world. All the issues, all the crap, all the hate, violence, poverty, it all stems from people just doing what they think is the best thing. It all stems from people meeting their full potential. A dictator feels like he’s the best at what he does so he takes over. The people let him. Another politician feels as though his ideas are the best because he made it to the top, dammit, and then he sends his country down the crapper. The greatest villains are not the one who are unabashedly evil, but the ones who think they are doing good.

Once we see that we can’t be all that we want to be, once we hang up our desire to be that brain surgeon, we settle for good enough. The worst part about “good enough” is that it’s not an appreciating value. We know very well that we aren’t supposed to live this way but, who cares? We’re getting by. Let the good people be good, the bad people be bad, let the smart people be smart and me, I’ll crack open another Coors and call it a day.

Yah, we were made to be perfect. That’s how God made us. Then we messed it up with sin and the whole world has felt the pangs since. You’re right, you’re not perfect, you’re only human, and you’ll never be good enough. Now let’s take these excuses, burn them in a hole, and keep going. There is no picking yourself up by the bootstraps. There’s no fixing the problem.

There’s only healthy self loathing.

I don’t blame God for the world going to crap. I blame me. I blame the human race. We’ve tried Theocracies, Monarchies, Democracies, Anti-Theocracies, Republics, Dictatorships, Anarchy, and Communal living. It all turns out the same way: failure. What is the common factor when things go south? Is it God? Nope.

It’s me.