Stick with me through the apparent sacrilege....
I’m an evangelical… reader of Harry Potter. If convincing those around me of the awesomeness that is HP equated leading people to Christ, I’d have enough conversions to have achieved super Christian status. From immediate family, to friends, roommates, and even grandparents…all have heard me preach the good news of Harry and subsequently believed.
And it’s something of which I’ve always felt the deepest shame.
Why could I so freely tell the world of my love for a fictional boy wizard and so easily convince others to follow him through 7 lengthy tomes when I have never done that in the name of Jesus?
Well, I’ve thought about this at great length, and the thing with Harry is that it’s no strings attached; it is a no obligation, immediate gratification, escapism that pulls you in and burdens you only with the satisfaction of a story well told as you emerge 1000s of pages later out the back cover of Deathly Hallows.
That’s not how I viewed Jesus. I couldn’t bring myself to tell others the “gospel” because as I understood it, the “gospel” was a thing of strain and weight; an unfathomably lofty goal of attaining perfection that only gave the believer incalculable amounts of guilt when falling short inevitably followed. I think at the end of the day, I didn’t tell others about Jesus because I couldn’t bring myself to impose upon them the giant burden of expectation and the unavoidable reality of constant imperfection under which I existed.
“my yoke is easy and my burden is light…”
Something in this scenario was far from right.
But that’s what happens when you project your feelings about yourself - feelings that tell you that you must be perfect, that you are nothing unless you achieve blank - onto God. And who wants to preach that kind of news?
So now begins the journey of discovering the God I lost among the lies and projections; the voyage of sifting through the layers of misunderstanding and incorrectly perceived messages to find the truth of just who He created me to be. Not defined as disappointment, but rather, wholly and dearly loved. Not forever failure, but weakness made strong. Not ashamed, but adored.
Accio truth, and the freedom it brings.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
accio truth indeed. to belong to God is to belong to His heart. a heart which loves and adores you more than you could ever imagine. just the way you are. none of us are worthy of HIs love. lay hold of your nothingness before Him & be bathed in His grace & mercy.
ReplyDelete"Maybe this is the heart of our hang-up, the root of our dilemma. We fluctuate between castigating ourselves and congratulating ourselves because we are deluded into thinking we save ourselves. We develop a false sense of security from our good works and scrupulous observance of the law. Our halo gets too tight and a carefully-disguised attitude of moral superiority results. Or, we are appalled by our inconsistency, devastated that we haven’t lived up to our lofty expectations of ourselves. The roller coaster ride of elation and depression continues. Why? Because we never lay hold of our nothingness before God, and consequently, we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with Him. But when we accept ownership of our powerlessness and helplessness, when we acknowledge that we are paupers at the door of God’s mercy, then God can make something beautiful out of us." [the ragamuffin gospel p.79]