It's not what you think...

"A man who is eating a meal, lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in thankfulness and humility, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one reading Plato or listening to Bach in a state of pride".  C S Lewis.

"The only way I can know I am loved is to know that I'm forgiven - that I am not the ass that I could so easily conclude I am. I fail everyday (that's me). I hardly pray at all because. well, who cares what I think?"  Don Dickinson.  

Bad theology starts when we loose it - not our calm, exterior demeanor or our feeling good garb, but what, as the above quotes suggest, makes us, defines "us".

There has to be more than living gripped by the choke-hold of human pride.

"We err and hurt on a regular basis, we are intimately acquainted with just how unworthy we are of the gift that’s been given us", notes Mr Dickinson, but because the price for that was paid by someone else's blood (as Chris Pratt recently stated as an MTV award ceremony) - that alone makes the profane sacred.

The problem so often isn't the gracious offer that Christ and the Gospel makes to us - inviting us to take on the rest (peace and mercy) that Christ wishes to place upon us (Matthew 11:28 & 29) - the problem so often is "why should I"? Why should I 'rest' in anything other than my own doing?

Well...
It doesn't take much to beguile me.

A bit of commendation, a good feeling, sunshine, even a look in the mirror, and I can be tripping over my own ego before I've even recognized it (and of course, the trouble is most of the time, I don't!). That's why we find honest and meaningful statements that touch on our weaknesses so hard to take. We don't like to see our supposed 'value' brought into even the possibility of disrepute.

Being wrong, especially when it comes to actually seeing us, is our immediate de-fault position. We prefer to dress ourselves with what we think we are, and easily miss what's really going on.

The good news is that God has done everything necessary anyway - in spite of our stumbling around and totally missing what counts, God has stepped in and says, 'come on home'.

If your religion boils down to "I'm doing" or "I will achieve" then you'll always be trying to get there. God tells us to get over ourselves and put our trust in His making us His.

It isn't "my" (acts, words, attitudes, etc) that changes anything. Will your worrying, asks Jesus, add one moment to your life (actually, it's more likely to shorten it!), so if it cannot do something so small, why do we spend so much time doing it? 

What's true of worry, is equally true of so much of what we do.

We're so strung out because... we're us.

Life needs to be about more - it's hearing the truth that cuts the chains of our slavery to self centeredness to find ourselves in someone who truly knows us and loves us anyway.

The ground won't hold beneath the already fractured image of me only without someone taking away the mask, the incarceration to an illusion and replacing it with a true and better humanity and destination.

Christ - to us, for us, with us - that's how things add up.