It's love, not logic or law

People are awful, terrible, and stupid.  

I am. You are. Probably your mom is. Trump, Biden, and Harris are. Definitely some of the people from my past are. Likely some I'll meet in the future are. We just are.

From someone's point of view, from someone's way of doing things, or from someone's ideas about the way things ought to be, you are completely and totally terrible and awful. We all are.

In Romans, Paul says it like this, "We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". And we fall way short of each other's glory too, all the time.  It's only when we see that we can understand love and grace.

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It's not logic or law that compels us to follow God.  Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but it's not what keeps us going when we're writhing in pain, worry, and despair.  It's just the beginning, not the whole path. It gets our attention so we'll hear that fear isn't the end of things, certainly not with God.

Logic and law is what convicts us because we know at some point a lot of what we do doesn't make sense and can't be defended.  We know at a deep level that self interest drives our decision making, even our good, religious decisions.  We want to do what's best or good and in doing so we still fail someone.

At the end of the day, it's either God's grace or it's nothing.  Either he says, "I choose to forgive all your sin and make you right with me, it's my choice - will you believe that?" or we all are lost - even the very best of us who have done our best to keep all the commandments of God, church, and the people around us.

We can know this to be true, cognitively, but to have it knock you out of your shoes and completely bowl you over as a known and felt reality - now that's a gift from God.  We like to peek at it like a person trying to read a text without opening it, but when you actually see it, that's something else.

People like to pretend they've got it together and that they're trying to be good people - and maybe they are trying, but the shadow of the law darkens any good we do or try to do   We know deep down, on our own, we're not as good as we'd like to be and that people 100% are not as good as they pretend they are.

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One of the reasons church fails a lot of people is because church, historically, in my time and experience, has led with law, fear, and condemnation - Who's going to heaven?  Who's going to hell?  What sins are terrible?  Which rules do you have to follow to make us accept and like you until we think you break one?

And it doesn't have to be a "mean", conservative Christian church, it can be a progressive, all-inclusive, everyone-is-affirmed-and-welcomed kind of church.  They all condemn someone - some condemn others for condemning what they feel is the wrong thing to condemn - and it's all the same.

We're always gonna mess it up.  Paul, the apostle, as he was traveling through some of the groups he'd helped start, one last time before heading to Rome, told them he knew that it wouldn't be long till some of them would make it all about themselves and not about the good news of God.  It's just how we do things.

But, regardless of how often or how mind-numbingly creative churches can be in jacking up the gospel and turning it into an anti-gospel, the good news of God is still true - God's love is true and way bigger than any of us can imagine and it's not conditional like we make our love conditional.

God's love isn't measured by the abundance of blessings or the lack of pain or what feels like curses on our life; never has been - that's a twisted message religion added to manipulate people. God isn't impressed with our trying to impress each other with how good we are - he sees right through us... and still loves us.

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Jesus came to wrap up or complete or fulfill the Old Law by dying as the last and only sacrifice for sins that counts - and it counts completely and eternally.

He came back to life to show us that it's not over and, that after this life, there's more but that we don't have to wait till then to know and walk with God, nor go to a temple and do a bunch of stuff for him.

The good news is that God loves us so much and wants us to know him directly and personally and to live that way - much more like a Buddhist lives a way of life and not so much like a modern, rule-following church goer who "goes to church" and tries to be good.  In a deep way, they are different things.

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To someone out there, we are awful, terrible, and stupid.  

And you may think they are awful, terrible, and stupid for thinking that about you, but it is true.

But God doesn't think about you that way.  He knows how jacked up we are or can be on our own and he has bridged any gap that needed to be bridged.  

He is the open door and no person alive is the screen door who gets to tell you whether or not you can have access to him.

That's the thing I lean into going forward.  And you can too.

You'll be fine.

Grace and peace.

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