conduits of grace, not containers of guilt

                                                                Photo by Yolanda Kauffman, Connections Photography (used by permission)

Shall I drive evil out of my soul by wrestling with my own darkness? This is not what God has planned for me. It is sufficient to turn away from my darkness to God's light. I do not have to run away from myself; it is sufficient that I find myself, not as I have made myself in my own stupidity, but as God has made me in his wisdom and remade me in his infinite mercy. For it is God's will that my body and soul should be the temple of God's Holy Spirit, that my life should reflect the radiance of God's love and my whole being repose in God's peace. Then will I truly know God, since I am in God and God is truly in me.   - Thomas Merton, from Thoughts in Solitude

As children of God we are created to be conduits of grace, not containers of guilt, shame, and fear. 

I feel sadness when I hear stories (and as a pastor I hear them often) from people who have experienced forms of Christianity that place emphasis on guilt, shame, and fear. Their experiences in the church have left them feeling small and unworthy, or sometimes angry and disillusioned. This is not the Good News of Christ.

This is not the message of the one who prayed:  

May they all be one, Abba,
as You and I are one...
As You are in me and I am in You,
may they also be in us. 
                                                                                     - John 17:21

The spiritual path that Jesus called people to was something wholly different than a path of shame; it was a path of blessing, a path that called people in to deeper awareness of their own true blessing as beloved ones of God, and their own true calling as bearers of that same love into the world.  

Yes, according to Jesus' teaching and actions, this path does necessarily involve an honest assessment of my own sin, and my own capacity for evil. This path asks me to consider with painful awareness that I often live a distracted life - distracted from present realities because I am full-up thinking about how I wish things could be or how I think they should be. To deny these realities in myself is the height of human arrogance. Yet, to dwell only on this, as if this brokenness is the defining characteristic of who I am before God, is just another form of self-involvement, and it is folly. It is a denial of what God has created and proclaimed good.

God's love reaches and moves through all that is honest, true, and real. God's love is not able to reach and move through the falsehoods, pretenses, and facades by which we live.We live with profound freedom to choose between what is true and real, and what is false and fake.

Jesus was sharp in his rebuke of fakery, hypocrisy, and those who saw themselves as the righteous, the extra-spiritual, the holier-than-thou. Jesus was direct and honest in his confrontation of those who were choosing to hide behind their attachment to certain identities that obscured their vision of their own inherent goodness: "I'm a victim," "I'm unforgivable," "I'm not worthy." And Jesus was especially compassionate and merciful towards those who were coming to honest terms with their own brokenness and sinful ways.

Jesus did not speak of people needing to "do battle with themselves" to overcome sin, or needing to become "masters" of their own bodies, emotions or thoughts. Jesus did not present spiritual or mental exercises that required some kind of neurotic inner battle between good and evil within one's being.

If you find yourself thinking along these lines, thinking that you need to fix something about yourself, master something within yourself, try asking: Who is fixing whom here? Who is trying to master what? You realize that it is a strange and convoluted mental gymnastic that we get ourselves into when we think this way. And in the end it is a recipe for deeper self-involvement.

Jesus kept it surprisingly simple: choose the path of love. Choose to love this mysterious God whom you will never fully comprehend or understand, with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength. Choose to love your neighbor (also whom you will never fully comprehend or understand!) as you love yourself. Choose love in this moment, whatever it brings to your plate, and now choose love in this next moment. Not namby-pamby-warm-fuzzy love, but fierce, abiding, enduring, resilient, merciful, compassionate, healing, truth-telling, listening, wakeful, fully-present sort of love. 

(This is how God has always loved you, and loves you still.)

Choose this way, and simply choose to release all that inhibits your living in this way. Love in this way because you are worthy of this love! Love in this way because this is what it means to become fully human. You and I are made - flesh, bone, synapse, breath, and soul - to be a living conduit of love.