Worthy of God's Love

Rant time.

Today, I ran into a comment on an old Rachel Held Evans post where someone talking about their unique band of church misfits said "But the one thread that holds us together is the fact that we all recognize and accept the fact that we are unworthy of the love of God and His Magnificent Son but HE LOVES US ALL THE SAME."  The comment may be 7 years old, but the sentiment is one I hear all the time, and it angers me so much, I felt compelled to write about it immediately.

As someone who struggles with depression, who grew up in a conservative tradition and attended an evangelical church as a young adult, I am incredibly familiar with the emphasis on how unworthy I am.  I'm a wretch.  I'm a worm.  I'm a no-good sinner.  I'm fundamentally broken.  These types of phrases are prevalent throughout worship music, and they are frequent staples of sermons.  I have a voice in me telling me what an awful failure I am already.  I don't need an entire church emphasizing and reinforcing that perspective.  It's fundamentally abusive, and I'm glad I no longer attend those churches because of it.  This whole concept that we are unworthy of God's love is an insidious way of demeaning our very nature.

So God created humankind in his image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.
 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.

- Genesis 1:27,31 

We are created in the image of God.  God called his creation good.  Beyond that, God is clearly worthy of love.  Since we bear His image, we are worthy of God's love.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
- John 3:16 

When Jesus heard this, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” 

- Mark 2:17

Again, we have God loving us so much that he gave us Christ.  He wants us to know and understand how much he loves us.  And Jesus doesn't seem to think that sinners don't deserve his love.  Indeed, just as those that are sick are worthy of care, those in need of grace are worthy of Christ's love.  We are worthy of God's love.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God;
- 1 John 3:1a

I have a young son.  I love him with all of my heart.  Does he do things that drive me up the wall?  Yes.  Do I need to discipline him frequently?  Yes.  Do I put a lot more into our relationship than he does?  I would say so.  Is he unworthy of my love?  By no means!  The idea that parents only love their children out of some benevolence that children don't deserve is an awfully bleak way to view the world.  Children are worthy of love, and cannot thrive without it.  We are God's children.  We are worthy of God's love.



Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church
- Ephesians 5:25

The church as the bride of Christ is a metaphor that permeates the entire New Testament.  If I ever hear a husband say that his wife was unworthy of his love, but he loves her anyway, or hear a wife say that she is unworthy of her husband's love, that's a clear sign to me of an emotionally abusive relationship, and the wife needs to get far away from her husband.  Rather, husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church.  Christ loves us in the fullness of who we are, and he declares us his bride.  We are worthy of God's love.
 

There is so much more exposition that could be done here.  However, I think I'll end the rant with this: the idea that we should be groveling before God about how unworthy we are or that we need to continually reiterate that God's just doing us a favor by loving us is a message that carries intense harm and suffering, and I think it's flat wrong.  We are worthy of God's love because we are His bride.  We are His children.  To argue against our worthiness is to deny our very nature as image bearers of Christ.  We are worthy of God's love.

In case I haven't been abundantly clear on this: You are worthy of God's love.  I am worthy of God's love.  We are worthy of God's love.



 

The Law on our Hearts

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NRSV) 

 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,

“This is the covenant that I will make with them
    after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts,
    and I will write them on their minds,”

 he also adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

 Hebrews 10:14-17 (NRSV)

The Church of Christ, which was my tradition for most of my first 25 years, has a significant portion of its conservative constituency that believe that the Holy Spirit is not active today, but was instead the guiding force behind the Bible, meaning that the Bible is essentially the embodiment of the Holy Spirit.  I will admit that there is something endearing about the concept that we are completely free of the necessity of listening to the Spirit today, and instead have all we need in the Bible.

As such, I am very well aware of how to use the Bible to determine right and wrong, looking at it as a rule book of sorts.  Further, I am very well aware of the tension when I feel one thing is right while the Bible appears to say something different.  Historically, I've had to side with the Bible because my conscience was part of my sinful flesh.  I just had to submit to the Bible.  My conscience had no standing to protest.  This is still a common refrain from conservative traditions.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this passage from Jeremiah above.  I am reluctant to put a New Testament meaning to the verses of the Hebrew Bible, as I'm sure Jewish scholars can give me another interpretation of this passage that may indicate more of its original intent.  However, I make a rare exception for this passage, because it is quoted twice in the book of Hebrews (8:10-12, 10:16-17), and in the Hebrews 10 passage, the author specifically attributes its words to the Holy Spirit (or at least that's my interpretation).  So given that the book treats these as the words of the Holy Spirit, I will approach that in the same manner.

What does the Spirit mean by putting the laws in their hearts and writing them on their minds?  Frankly that sounds like reason and conscience to me.  But what if our conscience seems to conflict with the Bible?

N. T. Wright has an old lecture where he discusses how a story can be authoritative.  Though I'm sure I'm mangling is ideas somewhat, I really love when he starts discussing existence as a 5 act play, and we are living in the second half of act 5.  In a 5 act play, by Act 5, you know the characters.  You know what they're like, and you would know if they suddenly did something out of character.  The history of the Bible and the stories therein serve as those opening acts.  We get an idea of the character of God through the story we are told.

In light of this, we can look at the epistles as examples of those filled with God's spirit exhorting others.  We can learn a lot about what it means to be a follower of Christ by reading the stories of those who started the movement.  However, it is relevant to recognize the epistles as part of a story rather than looking at them as a rulebook written for us today.  Where did these authors get their words and understanding of God's will?  Through the Holy Spirit, who put God's law on their hearts.  How did they know how to live out God's will without a New Testament to guide them?  Through the Holy Spirit, who wrote God's law in their minds.  The Epistles in the Bible show a demonstration of the Spirit through what he put on the hearts of the authors, as an example of this.

Indeed, all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, because it is useful to understand what it looks like to be a disciple of the living God.  It is useful to know the stories of God working in the world.  It is instructive to see how the early church used the wisdom of the Spirit to deal with unique circumstances.  It's a valuable template for how it looks to live as a follower of Christ.  And it allows us to be discerning when we want to know whether an action or posture is consistent with the will of God.  It gives the setting for our part of Act 5.

Now we get to figure out what that looks to live out today, and it can look different than it did in Biblical times.  We have our model to understand what concepts can be of God and what cannot be of God.  We have the law on our hearts.  So what do we do when our Spirit-filled conscience conflicts with something we read from the Bible?  If we go against our conscience, we violate the very passage I quoted above.  If we act with our conscience in seeming contradiction of what we see in a Biblical passage, then we've violated the passage in question.  One way or another, we're going against scripture.  So we have to make a decision as to which portion to violate.  How do we make that decision?  With the law on our hearts.

On Blogging

I have been blogging about various things over my first few posts.  I don't really know what I want this to become.  I started it when Rachel Held Evans passed away, and I felt like I needed to find a voice for myself, since I no longer had her voice to just say "ditto" to.  However, I also feel like my blog to this point has been fairly guarded, throwing out random theological ideas without really giving a basis for where I'm coming from.

Depression is a major part of this.  I struggle with chronic depression.  I have for most of my life.  The negativity and sadness that results from this tends to push people away.  Who wants to hang out with someone who is always a downer?  Because of that, in an effort to prevent rejection, I put on a happy face, or at least one that makes it seem like I have it together.  That's part of how I became "Generic Guy #2".

I enjoy posting online or talking via email because I can curate what I say so carefully.  I can analyze it over and over to make sure that what I'm trying to say is communicated the way I want it to, and to try to minimize offense or revealing too much of myself.  I can present myself in a positive, measured, and thoughtful manner.  I can filter out my emotions.  That tendency is what makes this blog seem so sterile, which is not really what I'm going for.

In an ideal world, I'd have people on the blog commenting and reading and I'd get an idea of the kind of content that people wanted to read.  In an ideal world, my theological posts generate discussion and debate, which is something I desperately crave.  In an ideal world,  I could actually approach the blog in a full "this is me" manner rather than "this is the way I wish to present myself".  I'm going to try to make this a thing, as much as it depends on me.

Part of these first posts, though, are me just trying to find my voice and throw my thoughts out into cyberspace.  I don't know what to focus on, and so I just pick whatever topics come to mind.  Hopefully, I'll be willing to be more open in future posts.  But for now, I'm just trying to figure out what I want to write about and why.  Hopefully someday, people will visit and we can converse.

So that's the answer to what I'm blogging about and why.  I don't know, and I don't know.  I'm just going to keep trucking on until I figure it out, or I fizzle out.  We'll just have to wait and see where this goes.

Thank You for Saying Nothing.

I hate driving.  My wife is fine with it, so she is usually the driver of our family.  When were off on our anniversary last year, she was having trouble parking our minivan nicely.  I kept making jokes about it, thinking we were having fun, but it really started to weigh on her.  The last day of the anniversary she let me know how much it was upsetting her and making her not want to drive.  I didn't realize it was affecting her like that.  I apologized and said I'd try to avoid making comments in the future.

Several months later, we went out for dinner, and she parked the car at a fairly crooked angle.  When we were getting back into the car, she commented at how crooked it was, and I made some comment to the effect of "You didn't hear it from me" or something to indicate that I wasn't saying it.  She thought about it for a moment and recognized that I hadn't said anything to her about her parking since that conversation.  I've noticed it a few times, but decided it wasn't worth saying.  It was nice to get affirmation that my silence was appreciated.

One thing I know from raising children and dogs is the importance of positive reinforcement.  Children will often act out because it's the only way they get attention.  Dogs can be unpredictable when they are punished when doing something wrong, but don't know what the right thing to do is.  For both, they are often given praise when they obey a command, or exhibit an appropriate immediate action.  However, rarely do they get praise for just behaving in general.  One thing I've learned over the years is to praise them when they are just minding their own business or simply not misbehaving.  It's important for them to understand when their lack of action is the appropriate behavior rather than just assuming it's good because they aren't getting reprimanded.  They need to know their silence is appreciated.

I deal with this often as it relates to ally dynamics.  As someone who fits almost every privileged demographic, I am typically relegated to the role of ally.  However, as an ally, one thing that is important to learn is when to speak up and when to shut up and let the oppressed speak for themselves.  I don't have a great concept of when to do which thing.  I tend to err towards silence.  If I do that when I should speak up, I can get called out for it, and it serves as a learning experience.  However, I often feel that my silence shows that I don't care, which is not true.  If I stay silent appropriately, though, I get no reinforcement.  It would be useful to know when my silence is appreciated.

I have a pinned tweet on my Twitter profile: I find that the character limit on Twitter can make me a more thoughtful person.  I start to write, try to edit it to get my point across as clearly as possible within those limits, and by the time I get everything polished, I come to my senses and delete the whole thing.

I have written a lot of tweets that I never published.  I have a lot of questions that I've never asked.  I have a lot of thoughts that I've never shared.  For the most part, that's a good thing.  However, I never get feedback on the things I don't say.


If I post something that gets a negative reaction, I learn from it, likely never to post something like that again, but also to listen to why it got a negative reaction.  If I post something that gets a positive reaction, I learn from it, and I try to post more like it or learn what people liked about it.  On the other hand, I don't know what reaction the post I didn't publish would have received.  I get no feedback on if I should have posted it, and I get no feedback on if I was wise to delete it.


Sometimes it would be nice to just be told "thank you for saying nothing."

The Moment after Death

The night after the Rachel Held Evans funeral, my wife, who was only familiar with Rachel through my interests broke down in tears.  She had just finished putting our 2-year-old to bed, and it broke her.  I came over to comfort her, as I knew she was heartbroken over Rachel's children having to grow up without their mother, but she surprised me.

She told me instead her heart was breaking for Rachel.  She couldn't understand how anyone could be happy with not getting to raise their kids.  How could she be in heaven rejoicing knowing that she doesn't get to raise her two little children?

That perspective took me off guard, and after spending some time crying with her, I started to grasp for things I remember having heard in the past in some context.  I remember somewhere once hearing the concept of Soul Sleep, which is essentially as I understand it the idea that after someone dies, they remain asleep and unconscious until the second coming.  If that concept is true, Rachel isn't trying to somehow rejoice while knowing she can't be there for her children.  Instead, she is just peacefully sleeping until she wakes up and immediately gets to see Dan and her kids again.  That seems like a comforting thought in some respects and one that takes that paradox away.

I had never before considered the relevance in this life of Soul Sleep vs instant appearance in Paradise (both of which have some Biblical support - I'll not make a case for either here).  It seemed like a random theological talking point.  But after this conversation, I can see how each one offers a different type of hope.  It's true that we talk about rejoicing forever in Heaven, but if we are aware of the people we left on the earth, it does seem difficult to imagine having no negative emotions relating to that.  I don't know which one is true (or if either are), but it did get me considering the benefits of each perspective and why it might matter to us today.

I'd love to hear others thoughts or perspectives about this.  What do you think about what happens the moment after death?

I'll believe on your behalf

On Saturday, I watched the funeral service for Rachel Held Evans.  So many powerful words were spoken throughout the service.  Rachel's sister, Amanda Held Opelt, with more courage than I can imagine mustering, gave an amazing Eulogy for Rachel.  In one part of it, she was discussing how family lifts each other up, and in her words and in her song, I heard the words (I may not have them exactly correct here) "When you can't believe, I'll believe on your behalf."  It was such an amazing thought, and perfectly in line with the way Rachel taught us.

I went to church the next day, and as part of the lectionary, we read this passage where something stood out to me:

When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

Acts 16:27-34 (NRSV)

Right in the middle of that we see "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household."  In the past, I might have interpreted this passage that the "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" was a condition for each member of his household rather than a condition only for the jailer for the sake of his household.  I don't know that it makes sense to read it like that anymore (though I admittedly don't know the underlying Greek).  Look at the rest of the passage:

“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house...then he and his entire family were baptized without delay...and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.



It says that his family rejoiced that he had become a believer in God, not that they had become believers in God.  Yes, Paul and Silas did preach to the entire household, but there is nothing to indicate that any other member of his household believed (unless we infer that from the fact that they were baptized).  However, that last line seems to indicates to me that he was the convert, and his whole family was saved and baptized because he had become a believer in God.  He believed on their behalf.

Granted the context there is different than the one Amanda was offering, but still, after reading that passage, I couldn't help hearing those lines again "I'll believe on your behalf."  As someone who is almost reliant on others believing on his behalf right now, I found some modicum of comfort seeing an example in the Bible of someone who saved his entire family by believing on their behalf.