Actual footage of me trying to save myself
To add to that, there is also the powerful sense that we are in a "what have you done for me lately" world. Maybe I was valued yesterday because I did great that day, but today, I didn't do so hot, so I am no longer someone worthy.
Exhausting.
Human history is shaped by this constant grasping after feeling "ok" knowing that at any moment we will still mess up, fall short, and be cast out. Even when you observe religion you see a list of tasks that must be perfectly completed or you will be out!
And this religious impulse through history is even put into practice in all our new modes of "religion" today. Think about all the social movements that exist. Whether BLM, Me Too, Political parties, Eco Justice, etc. It doesn't take long for the group that you desperately tried to be accepted by to turn on you because all your previous good work is cast aside when you mess up on one area.
Your best is never going to be good enough.
Our spiritual struggle is the deeply internal acknowledgement that something is wrong. Wrong with the world around us, wrong in our relationships, wrong in ourselves. Even at our best, there are the hidden parts of ourselves(and sometimes not so hidden) that shout out, "This is not ok, this is not right, there is something wrong".
Most of the time we are quite capable of stringing together enough obvious "good" in our lives that we can hold at bay the thoughts of inadequacy. In the West, we are almost experts at this. We can fill our lives with so much entertainment and comfort that we can stave off these feelings almost indefinitely. But it always comes due at some point.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that in an era of the greatest prosperity and material comfort and "ethical" living we have an ever increasing, at record levels, mental health issues of depression, anxiety and hopelessness.
How is this possible? The external world is improving, yet our internal lives are falling apart.
It IS possible because we are a people desperate for absolution. And all our comforts and self-pleasing behaviors offer no such thing as forgiveness and absolution. We intrinsically see that our internal and external realities are at war with the state and condition with reality. The Apostle Paul points out in Romans chapter 2 that even those who claim there is not God, fall short of their own standards. Entertainment and distraction just shoves the problems down deeper where they fester and rot.
And when we fall short of what we hope for and there is no hope for absolution, we are left anxious and depressed.
We pursue an exhausting form of "holiness". The rules are constantly changing, the judges are arbitrary and often capricious in their verdicts.
But why is this so?
In God's Word we see where it started, but are also pointed to where it is going.
Genesis lays out our ultimate issue that started in the garden. Adam and Eve did not just want to disobey God, they wanted to be the ones calling the shots.(to be God ourselves free of consequence-Gen 3:4-5). At that moment in history the heart of all of our issues that we struggle with today are painted in stark fashion.
We are made for God.
We are made with a purpose.
We rebel and break the vertical relationship with our creator and it ricochets to destroy our horizontal relationships with each other and the rest of creation.(Genesis 3:12-19)
And we are incapable of truly fixing it all.
So we get on the hamster wheel and think if we can just run a bit farther, a bit faster, a bit more passionately, then, then we can see and feel our desperately desired absolution. And we are tired as we see as much as we have worked, we are still in the same spot.
But God.
But God, loves us. He created us for Himself, with a purpose, to have a relationship with Him.
When Jesus, God the Son, saw His people tired, beat up, worn down, he looked at them with compassion.(Matthew 9:36)
When Jesus went to the Cross his compassion was an active work of healing and restoring as he declared "It is Finished"(John 19:30)
Not, lets get started, here is all the work to do. It. Is. Finished.
But Adam(this is you talking here)..But Adam, if it is finished, what are we supposed to be doing to make sure we are loved by God??? Are you saying we can do whatever we want??????
So let me double down with what Paul says in Galatians 3
You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? 4 Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? 5 So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? 6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
What Paul is dealing with is that after starting off their relationship with God based on the love of Christ and His finished work, they are now trying to reverse engineer their salvation and absolution of sins through all the works they can do to look good enough.
Stop it.
Jesus said IT IS FINISHED. He meant it.
So what DO we do about sins in our lives and in the lives of the people we love.
This is how John puts it in 1 John 3
2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
What makes us like Christ according to John? What purifies us?
John doesn't say, "you will be like Christ and purified when you start doing the right stuff". He says when you place your hope in Christ and look upon Him and truly see and know him THAT will be what changes us.
So here is the false bill of goods we are often sold that is directly contrasted from what God's Word actually says.
FALSE NARRATIVE:
1- There is a problem in you and the world
2- You better do do do do to fix it or carry around guilt
3- If you do enough good stuff you MIGHT be ok, hopefully
4- And if you want to be right with God in all of this don't forget all of those rules too
GOD'S TRUTH
1- There is a problem in you and the world
2- You can't do better by doing more, God will take away your guilt and shame
3- When you experience that and look to Him in hope you WILL be ok
4- Because you are right with God already, your natural behavior changes because of God in you as your place your hope in Him as you look upon Him in truth
Stop trying to make yourself ok. Lay down your burdens and look on a savior who perfectly did for you what you could never truly accomplish. Give up the exhausting lie that you can absolve yourself and achieve holiness. You will never be holy. But Christ is. And he calls you to enjoy Him forever.
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