For those of you who don't know me personally, I am a Christian. I gave my life and heart to Jesus Christ in February of 1985. That's over 25 years ago.
During the first 20-odd years of that walk, I ran the whole show. See, I have always considered myself a liberal who thought as fairly and with as much input from the free world, as was possible. Pride made me believe I could conquer anything, given access to the right information. My mother always used to tell us that knowledge was power and we could easily solve any problem, if we only took the time to understand it properly.
In the Protestant, work-ethic driven society we have developed and maintained in North America, this attitude is expected. One could even go so far as to say it has become our religion.
Then along comes Jesus.
Jesus who reached out to people who were seen as having caused their own problems because of ignorance and stupidity, not to mention laziness, and not only forgave and accepted them, but healed them, and often reinstated their place in community. He, pretty much, behaved without precedent. It's in there. Don't take my word for it. By all means, read it for yourself. The Gospels of the New Testament are full of these accounts.
The most remarkable thing Jesus' approach to human suffering and sinful lifestyles taught me is this:
Deep down inside, we're actually all the same.
Gulp.
It took me over 20 years to learn that. I did so by falling hard on my proverbial backside amidst a major life crisis of heaping grief, shame and tragedy. Translation? I screwed up. Royally. Publicly. To my great chagrin. I came to the end of my own "good" efforts.
And as I was climbing out of that cesspool of human frailty and humiliation, I encountered the person-hood of Jesus, tenderly reaching down a helping hand to pull me up and out. In the aftermath of horrible life circumstances, He made me understand He wasn't looking at my recent past mistakes of colossal proportion, but at the state of my heart when He reached out to me.
See, I was feeling pretty sheepish and that was OK with Him. Wow.
I learned then, without His day to day personal presence in my life, I was always prone to mess things up. It really was and is that simple; even in the presence of genuinely, intensely sincere effort.
As I said, I also realized we are all prone to this downward spiral. Oh yeah, I know, there are millions who say, "I made it on my own - I am essentially a good person." And if we look at outward appearances, it is easy to buy into that illusion. After all, it is counter intuitive to live with a knowledge that our efforts in life are downright toxic. So we create this illusion within. It's called a defense mechanism. Even experts of human psychology will attest to this. The brain simply cannot function without it.
We all believe we are good, kind and right.
Remember that old adage, "You can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can 't fool all the people all the time,"? See, most of us just don't have the ability to see into everyone's hearts all the time and we forget that important detail. So we are fooled. We believe the lie that humans are inherently good because there just seems to be no other viable option available. Let's face it, most of us are too busy just trying to survive to notice anyway.
Which is a shame. Because, guess what? Human goodness is the biggest lie in our pathetic, corporeal human existence. Deep down inside us all, there is something that is going to hurt us and others, given the opportunity.
Ouch.
Bet you are tempted to stop reading now. What an incredibly negative perspective, you are saying, and how can I continue living with this perspective? Doesn't it get me down - make me want to quit?
Nope. Not for a minute. Actually, it's quite the reverse. See, I have tried doing it the world's way with me in charge, doing all the "right" things and it didn't work. Only got me deeper in trouble. Because I did it without His input. And without, most importantly, His merciful healing.
When I first gave my life to Jesus, I told him in spoken words He could have my life. But it took a long time for me to learn exactly what that looked like. I was a passionate, young lady, with all the sincerity of young adulthood and, typically, not much gumption to back it up. I hadn't much life experience and did not dream what "dying to self" looked like in practice. And I had a history of abuse; abuse that had taught me to cling, fiercely, to the little bit of control I had managed to maintain over those first few years.
So I did not really surrender to Him. I was still in charge of my life, even though I read His Word daily, prayed daily, went to church and got involved in musical and drama leadership ministries. I was doing what I thought He wanted me to do for Him. Spinning my wheels, trying to keep the inner turmoil at bay, I was like a tightly wound up ball of rotting string, with many inner layers of "stuff" that still needed unwinding and releasing in order to be free.
During the midst of this, I blamed God every time my own misguided efforts brought me more pain. I did not recognize He was putting me in situations and circumstances so that ball of string would come unwound. Because it was that ball of string that was keeping me from getting true healing.
Then, after all those years of concerted effort, I finally fell - hard.
The pain was mystifying and intense. Not to say it was the first time I had known suffering.
But something was different this time. This time I was able to see how it was my own willfulness that had gotten me in trouble. Duh...
I submitted, only to find Him waiting to hold me close, love me and reveal the lies I had learned, through the abuse, that had been holding me back from understanding who I really was.
And I ate humble pie. That experience, which has had long reaching effects, has taught me to see I always have to stay close to Him and do what He says, no matter what my common sense is telling me.
I tell ya, I have been gaining weight, eating so many pieces of that pie. But it is a fatness, full of the joy of a full life, maintained only through daily encounters with His loving presence. Something words can barely describe.
Bottom line?
I am nothing without Jesus. And, happily, neither is anybody - including you.
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