Experiments in Honesty by Steve Daugherty

Author:Steve Daugherty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worthy Publishing
Published: 2018-03-12T04:00:00+00:00

When God called Moses from the burning bush to go free the Israelite slaves, Moses complained that he talked badly and was not good enough at words for speaking.

When God called Gideon to lead, Gideon objected on the grounds that he was a wimp from a family of wusses.

When God called Jeremiah, he explained to God that he couldn’t do what was asked because he was just a wittle boy.

Paul was sometimes accused of being a first-century version of the Wizard of Oz: pretty eloquent in his letters, but embarrassingly underwhelming in person. Add to this that he had been complicit in the arrest, murder, and orphaning of Christians before he became one himself.

Over and over, people who self-assess as subpar are told it won’t count against them or their efforts. Over and over, people are told that God won’t be using our self-measurement to determine our fitness for participating in good things. But this takes away something our egos cherish: outperforming others, earning what others cannot, obtaining relative advantage. So we ignore Jesus’s words and assume the city on the hill is for those of us best suited to build it and be it. The leaders. The loved ones. The lovable ones.

There’s a quote on preachers’ lips and bumpers and on the internet that represents a certain kind of thinking fairly well. It’s a pretty good quote.

God loves you the way you are,

but God loves you too much to leave you that way.

It presents to me an inviting God who approves of the hymn “Just as I Am” but who also has in mind to address my desperate need for overhaul. There’s enough warmth and truth in this for me to respect it. But there’s another angle in it to consider as I learn Compassion is antithetical to control.

Christ summarized faith as Love of other. It all hangs on Compassion for the other just as we want Compassion for ourselves. On this hang every law and every tradition, according to whom we hold as the Author of it. But many of us have come to believe subtly that the goal is to get right. To change. To surrender to God so that we can be what we were made to be. To make sure we’re not just on the hillside, but in the right group in all the groups on the hillside.

How many churches proudly display mission statements that speak more to the transformation of people than Compassion for them as they are? For some of us, it inspires us forward. Especially around January: Yes, please, make me a better version of myself than the guy I was stuck with last year.

For others of us, it’s the reason we don’t go to church at all. We simply cannot put up with others prodding us to be something they’re more comfortable with.

You and I could make a long list of families and friendships that have broken down because faith was understood as the thing that makes you tell people to change.

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