I am a Christian.
I believe that two thousand years ago, the Lord of the Universe was born in human form in the Middle East. I believe that He was as human as you and I, with all of our possible faults, but also that because He was the One True God that He had strength to love perfectly, live perfectly, and while completely innocent, to receive the death penalty perfectly.
We humans are so vain to think that we can "rate" good and bad behavior. We say that hurting a child is the worst a person could do and that it's okay to tell little white lies. We all judge a person who has an affair: "He was driven to it" or "He is such a jerk for doing it." And we all think it's okay to lust a little in fun. We steal from the office, we lie when things get tight. The funny thing about all of this is that if you, the reader, and I, the writer of this blog, sat down and rated a hundred bad actions from worst to least worst, and even if a hundred other people did the same activity, we'd be hard pressed to find two lists that were exactly the same.
My point in this is that none of us is perfect, and none of us has a perfect eye on what's good. Not even our Supreme Court Judges are perfect judge-ers.
It's really hilarious from the Christians' point of view because we know that from God's view, none of us are perfect. And we've all seen that the harder any of us tries to be perfect, the more likely they are to hide any faults, give in to vanity, or just break down with exhaustion at how hard it is to run on that treadmill and wear that mask of perfection.
And true to our human natures, the longer someone tried to be perfect the more trouble they are likely in when they give up. Then all the rest of us, content and sleepy in our amnesia, stand in judgement at how awful society is these days.
Christians have the luxury of getting off that treadmill, lying aside that mask... giving up the notion completely of being perfect. IT'S EXHAUSTING! I know that I'm not perfect, boy, do I know it! Yet I also know that I have a supernatural force that will rescue me when I call.
Every Christian that ever lived finally got to this place: "I'm a mess, I give up all hopes that I have any intention of being otherwise--I've lied, stolen, lusted, deceived, betrayed and looked out for number one. I've snapped at the wrong person with a venemous anger and I killed someone's dream. I'm a failure and always will be." But, we never, ever stay in that place.
As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, even the symbol of our faith--two opposing lines--is a paradox. The very essence of Christianity is a paradox. The very microsecond that our heart breaks because we realize that we've failed so many times, Jesus bursts in and gives us a brand new heart. Seuss almost had it right: The Grinch's heart didn't "grow three sizes that day." Georgie's nasty, old, scum filled heart ceased to exist and she was given a brand new one.
God inspired Paul to explain it to us so well:
"We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him."
That's from Paul's letter to the Romans, paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message.
If I had to try to explain my faith in just a few words, I couldn't do as well as Paul. Here's my feeble effort....
True Christianity is this:
A Christian is someone who lets Jesus show them
how to live, love and forgive perfectly
because they watched Him do it in their life first.
how to live, love and forgive perfectly
because they watched Him do it in their life first.
--Tomorrow, I'm getting into some hard stuff: what Christianity isn't, and how Christians go about messing all of this wonderfulness up so badly.
1 comment:
GREAT post, G. I look forward to reading some of the "hard stuff" you're going to write about being a Christian when you post it.
Love and Hugs,
E
Post a Comment