While reading some status updates on Facebook today, I found myself frankly disturbed - AGAIN - by the diatribe launched by a friend against Christians who don't measure up to her invisible yardstick of perfection and who will never suit her needs because they don't intuitively know what they are and rush to meet them.
I am heartsick for her and because of her.
Yes, we live in a troubled world and yes, people do make lots of mistakes in dealing with one another. Some of those mistakes are errors of commission, meaning that a willful act whether mean-spirited or misdirected was committed causing offense. Some of those mistakes are errors of omission, meaning that something good that should have been done was NOT done, leaving the person in need feeling like they are unloved and uncared for within the body of Christ.
I am going to go on record here and say something that will offend. CRAP HAPPENS. Get over yourself because YOU aren't perfect and NEITHER IS ANYONE ELSE!
We mere mortals can hope and pray and strive for perfection, but we will NOT achieve it in our lifetime. We come most near that ideal of perfection when we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us toward Godly and Christlike choices in our interactions with one another.
Even then, having done ALL you can do to make an encounter positive, you have ZERO CONTROL over how your action or lack thereof will be received or ignored or blown up in your face. That is all on the other person and their fullness or lack of grace.
I was so upset, I shared some of my thoughts on the matter and realized after I hit "send" that they were going to be largely ignored because the person in question LOVES TO MARINATE IN MISERY. Doing so means that she is hoping for the sympathy vote that mortal man seeks to create what is demonstrably a flawed mortal construct to replace the pure love of Christ.
This is what I shared:
If
we each spent as much time, effort and energy becoming the people we
desire OTHERS to become, there would be a positive change that would
spread abroad. Asking ourselves honestly if we have ever been guilty of
any of the duplicity and hypocrisy we decry in others is a good starting point.
We
tend to minimize our own faults and flaws protecting ourselves from the
truth of our fallen natures while loudly trumpeting how "we have been
failed by those who should have known better" without giving a moment's
thought to the pain we have inflicted on tender souls who expected far
better from OUR conduct and choices.
We
are ALL works in progress and the process of being sanctified by the
atoning blood of Christ is an eternal pursuit, not one governed by the
construct of man's timing.
Our world is waxing cold in feeling towards one another and hardening of the heart is a real malady that affects our encounters with each other in a most painful way.
Like the prodigals we ALL are, we want to be received and taken care of even in reduced circumstances just so we won't have to truly deal with who WE have become. And like the prodigals we all are who see the fallen in others, we are angry that our supposed righteousness hasn't been shouted from the housetops as an unblemished example of the purity everyone should rightfully aspire to develop.
In both cases, pride has ruled our will and we have forgotten the mercy that has tempered the justice we all so very richly deserve.
I'd love to say that I have always managed to treat everyone around me so tenderly and in such a Christlike manner that their lives have been miraculously altered for the good.
That would be a gross LIE.
I have trampled tender feelings unintentionally - and, truth be told, sometimes very INTENTIONALLY.
I have said unkind things without realizing they were unkind and I have said unkind things that were most certainly not intended in the way in which they were received.
I have not cared for the sheep when they had strayed from the flock and at times through my careless performance as an "under-shepherd", I have made them run further into the wilderness of sin.
But guess what? I've been the recipient of all of those behaviors directed to me or assumed by me to be aimed at me.
In all cases, it isn't what happens that is important. It is how we react to what happens that matters.
Jesus Christ showed us that. Even as he was bleeding and dying on the cross hanging between two thieves, Jesus Christ showed mercy. MERCY - while he was in the act of paying for the very sins that put these men on their crosses of pain.
Jesus Christ never returned railing for railing, never spat back at those who coated Him in their foul and disgusting expectorations, and there was never a time in which He reviled those who mocked, accused and reviled Him.
Yet we - who claim arrogantly to be examples of a Christlike walk - do all of the above literally and figuratively.
The world turns by God's will and pleasure, not ours. And the Atonement of Christ was a gift given to us all even though God and Jesus knew and still know full well that we cannot possibly buy into the gift given to us in any measure but by offering our hearts and spirits unto Him.
Those same broken, trampled, carelessly used, bruised, battered and wounded hearts that we want to attempt to heal on our own are the very hearts we need to offer to Christ.
Our contrite spirit recognizes that for every measure of mortality we would desire to have excused in ourselves, we need The Good Shepherd to not only rescue us from ourselves, but from the world that will only use our failings to further harm us in our efforts to get the very help we so desperately need. We need to be rescued from our selfish desires and actions and the only way is by Christ's Atonement in our behalf.
When we make our life all about "me", we have lost the focus and purpose for why we are here. We are here to do and grow and develop most certainly, but without a Christ-centric focus that sees others before self, we will be only a shell without substance or use.
I am truly sorry for those hurts I have caused and for those times that I have been a poor example, and been a reflection of myself and all that is not of Christ.
But more, I am sorry for those times that my own myopic focus has allowed me to wallow in what was not done for me instead of a broader focus bringing me more to realize what I should and could do to have helped other people.
God forgive us all when we whine for we truly do not understand what we are doing. Help us all to see aright and to make the necessary course corrections to bring us home to Thee.
