If the Bible is true then, first, we\u2019re all guilty of inflicting suffering, and, second, we\u2019re all the victims of injustice.\u00a0 If we believe the first, it follows that we would be humble, not eager to judge others.\u00a0 If we believe the second, it follows that everyone is deserving of some sympathy.\u00a0 Obscure either and you\u2019re already within the boundaries of hypocrisy.<\/p>\n
What bothers me is that people seem convinced that humility and sympathy won’t work, that God needs heavy-handed people in order to get anything done, that the way to be more like Jesus is to humiliate sinners.\u00a0 We rail against spiritual struggles as if they are (a) abnormal and (b) the greatest danger we face.\u00a0 But\u00a0our\u00a0treatment may be doing as much damage as the disease.\u00a0 Our failure or inadequacy or faithlessness don\u2019t diminish God\u2019s goodness.\u00a0 All they do is make it more difficult to perceive it.<\/p>\n
Harry Blamires put it like this:<\/p>\n
It is absurd to regard faith as the ticket to an otherworldly region of thought and contemplation which can be withdrawn, cancelled, or lost in a flash.\u00a0 Nevertheless the passport and the gift of faith do have <\/em>one thing is common.\u00a0 If you lose either, you alone are the loser.\u00a0 International airlines continue to operate even though you can no longer travel on them.\u00a0 And neither the history of Israel, nor the gospel revelation, nor the long chronicle of the Church\u2019s life and growth will evaporate when you lose your faith.<\/em><\/p>\n In other words, God is love, He is worthy, He is sufficient, and He has a long track record of it, whether I embrace Him or not.\u00a0 I\u2019d rather embrace Him. \u00a0If I refuse his grace, the loss is mine.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t need me to fight his battles.\u00a0 But I need Him to fight mine.\u00a0 Those are fairly essential realities.\u00a0 And I need people who help me remember them.\u00a0 The world has an overabundance of people who do the opposite.\u00a0 They\u2019re all about fighting God\u2019s battles.\u00a0 And they don’t mind causing collateral damage.<\/p>\n When I am mired in a bog of bitterness God\u2019s goodness hasn\u2019t gone away; my ability to perceive it has.\u00a0 What I desperately need at that point is not someone telling me how bad I should feel.\u00a0 Bad is what I am feeling already.\u00a0 Magnifying the bad is the opposite of what I need.\u00a0 What a bitter person desperately needs is the grace of a Savior\u2014grace to understand, grace to overcome, grace that doesn\u2019t keep poking the bruise, grace that offers an alternative.<\/p>\n Jesus embodied grace.\u00a0 He is image of it.\u00a0 If his way is the way God\u2019s goodness gets spread, I am grateful for people who have noticed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If the Bible is true then, first, we\u2019re all guilty of inflicting suffering, and, second, we\u2019re all the victims of injustice.\u00a0 If we believe the first, it follows that we would be humble, not eager to judge others.\u00a0 If we believe the second, it follows that everyone is deserving of some sympathy.\u00a0 Obscure either and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}