Amen.♥
Less of Self and More of Thee
The purpose of Christianity is to find God. In this, we find the truth about our world and, worst of all, ourselves. The truth being this: we are sinners before a righteous God. In more scary terms: guilty criminals who have not only made a mess of their surroundings, but stand, clothed in their own filth, before a judge with the power to utterly destroy them. I apologize for my lack of talent in the art of words because I cannot relay what I think about our situation before God as sinners more adequately. Moving on. In Christianity, we find this terrifying truth, but almost as soon as we realize it, we see another truth: God loves us still. We find his grace in his son, who died to break sins bond on us and bring us to the father in sweet communion. I don’t mean to appear to support substitutionary atonement (I don’t believe it), but the point is, we were unworthy, but God acted for us anyway! These two bring us to obvious conclusions: we should remove as much sin from our lives as possible to live a life worthy of the call, we should seek to be as close to God as possible, we should worship him for his love, faithfulness, providence, etc. There is one conclusion, however, that I would like to draw out that I have problems remembering: we are on a lower tribunal than God. Meaning, that we should not hold our sins against ourselves. If God has forgiven us, then we should forgive ourselves. Often I think about how awful I am, and shame and guilt have its purposes. They are very good for our souls, but they all say the same thing: I am scum. I am nothing, and then bring me crawling back to life: the Father. Dwelling on them more than necessary and not forgiving yourself and accepting what the father has done or given you isn’t good. It’s preventing joy. If you’re thinking about what you deserve and don’t deserve all the time or even most of the time (I might even say half the time) then you’re thinking too much about yourself. That is not the purpose of shame. It should make me want to say: “Do I feel bad? Not in the sense of what the world thinks; I don’t think of myself at all. I can’t after what I’ve done. I only think of Christ.”
