Tues, Dec. 3
... Scared out of my mind by the demons I've made
A journal entry for Tutorial class, written at Denny's at about 12:30 a.m.:"We don't live like we're forgiven."
Not only do we not live like we're forgiven, we don't live like anyone else is, either. We seem to forget that grace doesn't equal perfection, and we expect everyone around us--especially other Christians--to model the perfect lives that we can't seem to master. Then, when they fail, as we so often do ourselves, we point fingers and talk about how that's "no way for a Christian to live."
It's like we recognize that we've been forgiven, and yet we know our own failings all too well, and we're ashamed of the image that we present to the non-Christian world. Maybe it's because we don't consider ourselves worthy role models; maybe it's because we want to shift the attention from our own inadequacies, but regardless, we expect other Christians to take up the slack where we left off.
Instead of realizing that we can only present a forgiven, yet still imperfect, face to non-Christians, we try to portray a perfect image, and in the process, we end up looking like legalistic, stuck-up hypocrites far too much of the time.
So, what do we do about this? The only thing we can do: Realize that "But for the grace of God, there go I." Kind of quaint language to say the most basic truth of the Christian walk: I didn't do anything to pull myself out of the mud that I was living in, and if God wasn't part of it, I'd be more hopeless than I can even imagine.
A friend of mine has titled his website, "Forgiven Soul Set Free," and I think that's the most beautiful description of the Christian life. It's about being free from the need to live a falsely perfect life, free from the bondage of sin, free from wondering what we do when we slip up, free to seek the holiness that God promises to guide us into, and free from projecting our unrealistic expectations of ourselves onto others.
Unfortunately, I think that it's only a few Christians who have really figured out what it means to live that way, and I can't say that I'm one of them. Not yet, anyways, but I'm getting there. I'm learning.
infinite || abyss
posted at 1:49 a.m.
