As someone suffering from OCD of the Spirit, seeing dirt in every corner of my soul, unable at times to recognize the righteousness with which Christ has covered me, I was wrecked by Ava’s response to Howard when he looked disturbingly at the sink and asked, “Does that look clean to you?”
Her response is poignant.
“Nothing is clean Howard, but we do our best, right?”
Coming from a "conservative" Presbyterian background, I've developed a clear sense of the depravity of humanity. I felt unclean, I knew the importance of acknowledging the dark capabilities of my own soul. Now attending a "progressive" church in the Anabaptist tradition, I am met with the topic of grace so very often. My experience in these congregations has been a hesitancy toward one another. To emphasize grace and love to an extreme would be to lose a sense of God's sovereignty and our dependence on Him. To emphasize depravity is to lose hope in humanity and see God as judgmental and unloving, unaccepting.
I am beginning to see the beauty of where these schools of thought meet. My acceptance of my uncleanliness magnifies God's unfathomable grace, lavished and poured out in love. I am so often getting stuck, caught up in the dirt, and my view of myself becomes hopeless and crippling. But I can't forget it and miss the magnitude of a need met. Grace.
The old Piper quote, "God is most magnified when I am most satisfied in him." His grace satisfies my need.
I'm questing to find the balance of these truths. The battle within is ongoing. And the struggle to acknowledge my connection to the various interpretations of scripture within the brotherhood of Church is a lifelong endeavor. To be associated with God is to be associated with Church in all of its beauty and in all of its ugliness, and in all of its variety. The world will not differentiate us. I cannot either. May it be so in my weak heart.
"Nothing is clean Elisa, but we do our best, right?"
“Nothing is clean Howard, but we do our best, right?”
Coming from a "conservative" Presbyterian background, I've developed a clear sense of the depravity of humanity. I felt unclean, I knew the importance of acknowledging the dark capabilities of my own soul. Now attending a "progressive" church in the Anabaptist tradition, I am met with the topic of grace so very often. My experience in these congregations has been a hesitancy toward one another. To emphasize grace and love to an extreme would be to lose a sense of God's sovereignty and our dependence on Him. To emphasize depravity is to lose hope in humanity and see God as judgmental and unloving, unaccepting.
I am beginning to see the beauty of where these schools of thought meet. My acceptance of my uncleanliness magnifies God's unfathomable grace, lavished and poured out in love. I am so often getting stuck, caught up in the dirt, and my view of myself becomes hopeless and crippling. But I can't forget it and miss the magnitude of a need met. Grace.
The old Piper quote, "God is most magnified when I am most satisfied in him." His grace satisfies my need.
I'm questing to find the balance of these truths. The battle within is ongoing. And the struggle to acknowledge my connection to the various interpretations of scripture within the brotherhood of Church is a lifelong endeavor. To be associated with God is to be associated with Church in all of its beauty and in all of its ugliness, and in all of its variety. The world will not differentiate us. I cannot either. May it be so in my weak heart.
"Nothing is clean Elisa, but we do our best, right?"
Nobody's perfect Elisa. The point isn't perfection, it is learning to love yourself and your neighbor the same way. We don't love even our self if we believe that God is going to punish us if we aren't perfect enough for his standards. God has created us and loves us as we are. God desires us to more fully understand the freedom and beauty of that relationship and will never forsake us until we see him, not through a glass darkly, but face to face. Any view of God that has uncertainty of his love or fear in it is false.
ReplyDeleteWould love to see you guys sometime again, with Friendship Community behind me I lost track of some people, it's disappointing.