Hello friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in dogs.
Welcome to another instalment of our slightly different series,
Look Again,
And today I'm going to throw out a dangerous thought,
And one that might rattle your cage a bit,
So stay with it if you can.
Here it is.
God doesn't need you to be good.
All right,
Now,
Before you have a panic attack,
I'm not saying goodness doesn't matter.
It matters enormously.
I'm saying something that's a little bit deeper than that,
That your goodness isn't what makes God love you.
And the difference there could change the entire way you understand the Christian life.
Because somewhere along the way,
A lot of us.
.
.
Absorbed.
I guess you could call it an equation,
A simple equation.
God'll be happy.
God will be disappointed.
Do the right things,
God comes closer.
Do the wrong things,
God moves away.
Out of that we spend an amazing.
.
.
Amount of our spiritual lives.
Basically managing God's opinion of us.
Pray harder when we're ashamed,
We avoid God when we mess up.
Feel particularly close to God when we've been disciplined.
Running underneath all that is this river of an assumption that God's love responds to our performance.
Behave well and God rewards us with love.
But friend,
That's not grace.
It's transaction.
And the gospel is much more outrageous and radical and audacious than that.
Think about Jesus.
What does Jesus keep moving towards when we see Jesus in the Gospels?
Is it the people who have their lives all sorted out?
The people who are spiritually and religiously impressive?
The people who've mastered the rules and got it all right?
No.
Jesus keeps moving towards the people who are a mess.
The tax collectors,
The sinners,
The outcasts,
People whose lives are gone sideways.
Not people who are ashamed.
Jesus approaches them,
And some of them are even ashamed that he would approach them.
People who know they've stuffed up.
And one of the most amazing things about Jesus is that he doesn't seem interested really.
In making people earn their way back into God's affection.
He starts with love.
And transformation comes from that,
Which is backwards.
To how we often imagine it.
We think,
Get better,
Then God loves you.
Jesus seems to say,
You're loved.
Now.
Become who you really are.
Can you see the difference here?
One.
Produces a heck of a lot of spiritual anxiety,
But the other one produces freedom.
If I have to become good enough for God to love me,
I'll never know whether I've done enough.
And this was the problem with a lot of the ancient religions that humans have been involved in for eons.
Have I prayed enough?
Have I been kind enough?
Have I given enough?
Is my offering enough?
Have I resisted temptation enough?
Am I patient enough?
Am I holy enough?
And so spiritually,
We become.
.
.
Well,
It's like spirituality becomes a performance review.
We sit down with the boss,
God,
And see if we've got it right.
But if God's love comes first,
The entire game.
.
.
Changes.
I'm not having to try anymore to become good so that God will love me.
Rather,
I'm learning to become good.
Because I've already discovered.
That I am loved.
And that's Grice.
And here's where I think we need to be really careful.
Because sometimes Christianity particularly has been presented as though grace means God doesn't care how we live either.
And it's not it at all.
Grace doesn't make goodness irrelevant,
But grace makes goodness possible.
As an illustration,
Just think about a child.
Now,
A healthy parent doesn't say,
Once you become an excellent human being,
Then I'll love you.
At the child's love before the child has achieved anything.
And precisely because the child is secure in that love,
The child can grow.
They know they can fail and try again and apologize and learn.
They can become generous.
They can become courageous.
They can become.
.
.
Themselves.
Love isn't some prize at the end of the process.
But rather loves the soil in which that process can happen.
And so I think that that's where we've missed something about holiness.
We,
Again,
Imagine holiness as becoming impressive.
But what if holiness is becoming free enough to love,
Free enough not to be obsessed with yourself,
Free enough to tell the truth,
Free enough to apologize,
Free enough to forgive,
Free enough to stop pretending and performing?
That's why grace can be so confronting,
Because if God already loves you,
Then you do not have to construct a version of yourself.
That deserves to be loved.
You can be honest.
You can say,
This is where I'm broken,
Or this is where I'm selfish,
Or this is where I'm afraid,
Or this is where I've hurt someone,
Or this is where I keep failing.
And so,
Instead of hiding these things,
From God,
Ourselves,
And others,
We can bring them out into the light,
Because God already knows,
And God's love isn't waiting on the other side.
For you to fix yourself up.
God's love is what makes that transformation possible.
And this is why the story of the prodigal son.
Is so,
What's the word,
Devastating,
That the son comes home with a speech prepared.
He actually rehearsed it.
He's worked out exactly what he needs to say.
He's going to negotiate his way back into the family.
I've sinned.
I'm no longer worthy.
Make me one of your hired servants.
He's thinking transactionally.
I'll offer you something,
You give me something.
But the father doesn't negotiate.
What does the father do?
He runs.
He embraces him.
At this point,
The son hasn't cleaned himself up.
He hasn't shown that he's living a new way.
He hasn't done some sort of process of rehabilitation.
He hasn't even said I'm sorry.
He's just come home and the father's already running.
That's the picture.
Come home and discover that you were never unloved.
That's something that somebody listening to this needs to hear today.
So let me say it again.
Friend,
Come home and discover.
That you were never unloved.
You've spent years trying to become someone God could love.
You don't need to.
You already are.
Sure,
You might need to change.
You might need to apologize.
You might need to ask forgiveness of someone.
You might need to stop doing something that's destroying yourself or someone else.
Absolutely.
But you don't do those things to purchase God's love.
You do them from within God's love.
And that's the difference between religion as performance.
And spirituality is transaction.
And here's the really uncomfortable question.
What if some of your attempts to be good aren't actually making you more loving?
What if they're making you more anxious,
Or more judgmental,
Or more concerned with appearances,
Or more obsessed with whether you're getting it right?
And if you're becoming very good at being religious,
But not particularly good at love.
Well,
What's that?
1 Corinthians 13,
Especially the beginning of it,
Is so good on this.
But Jesus has a really simple way of measuring spiritual maturity.
Love God.
Love your neighbour.
Love your enemy.
Forgive.
Give.
Serve.
Don't make yourself the centre of things.
Become like a child.
Stay awake.
That's a different spirituality or Christianity 101 than most of us have heard before.
And maybe today.
You could try something a little bit radical.
Do one thing.
Without using it as evidence that you're a good person.
Don't score it.
Don't tell God about it.
Don't congratulate yourself.
Just love someone.
Because she can.
And then notice what happens inside you.
I think sometimes deep transformation.
Isn't moving from,
I must be good so God will love me,
To God loves me even though I'm good.
It's moving one step further than that,
To God loves me,
And that love is teaching me how to love.
And that,
My friend,
Is grace.
And here's the truth bomb.
That you can carry with you in your day to day.
You're not becoming good so that God will love you.
You're learning to love because God already.
Loves you.
And all you need to do.
Is look again.
And may grace,
Peace and love hold you in that love today and always.
Amen.
Till tomorrow.
Bye for now.
