• Doing a lot of thinking but haven’t had time to write. So here’s a bonus note for this week.
• This takes time, and the gradual erosion of pride, but once you accept the truth that there is no such thing as a morally good human being, the love and grace of God begin to astound you. Listen again to Paul and try to take this into your own heart: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness” (Rom 3:10-14). How can it be that Jesus would die for such people?
• The irony of understanding God’s kindness is that only when you despise yourself does the truth of the Gospel become powerful. Until then, God’s kindness is just the reasonable treatment to which you are entitled. You will never really worship from that place. You will certainly never spend a year’s wages on Jesus and wash his feet with your hair (Luke 7:38).
• This struck me again recently while reading a 20th century German theologian. Much of his Christology is built around answering human suffering, as though the great crisis of history was not the injustice of the Cross, but the injustice of the collective misery of humanity. He has spent his entire life crafting a theology that would make God look better than he does on the pages of the New Testament. It should be apparent to us that if God does not bother to apologize for himself, no apology is necessary.
• As a friend who loves you, I say this with all kindness: get over yourself. You will find that Jesus ministers to your pain once you are able to accept it from his hand; once you see yourself on Paul’s terms: unrighteous, worthless, deceitful. Our outrage over God sending people to hell must be replaced by a quieter, humbler outrage that people like us would be permitted into heaven — only then will we begin to understand Christianity. Our obsessive attachment to our own goodness is our primary obstacle to loving God. This is where the word “hubris” came from in ancient Greece: unjustified self-exaltation before the gods. And as long as we see ourselves as good, God will continue to strike us as harsh and unfair. But if you are able to look in the mirror and see the “chief of sinners,” his love for you will begin to seem as it is: an outpouring of grace upon grace (Jn 1:16).