The greatest marvel of the good news of Jesus Christ is that healing and salvation are offered to everyone. Grace is God’s preferred treatment. Love is the core of his nature. Offering mercy is God’s great and indiscriminate desire. And even the most deeply broken and sinful can access everything that God has to offer. We are told over and over in the Bible that God does not have favorites. He shows no partiality. Everything he has to offer, he offers to people regardless of race, tribe, nation, class and caste- to everyone. The book of Revelation gives us a hint of the outcome of his generosity to people from all walks of life from all generations. Murderers like Moses and Paul, adulterers like David and cowards like Peter and Jacob get something much better than they deserve and live victorious, turn-around lives in the end.
With this backdrop in mind, I have a hard time understanding the practical theology and psychology of many Christians who have behaved less poorly. I see and hear many believers over and over again talk about their brokenness and wounding in ways that make them sound unhealable. There is a sort of resignation in their voice- often a relished despair- that carries their wounding or past hurts as almost a badge of honor that cannot or at least should not be healed by God, lest their pain would go away. In fact, they can articulate the what, why, when, where and usually who sources of their reasonably unending pain. For many folks with this bent, it is of little use talking to them about God’s healing power or grace that goes beyond acceptance and forgiveness to actual deliverance and holy living. To think of being delivered and whole is unimaginable. I am convinced that for some it is because they just can’t see the prospects or magnitude of God’s grace and healing for them. For others it is much more sinister. They just can’t see the prospect of losing the comfort they find in despair or reason for their failings. Either way, it is a difficult, but socially accepted norm in the church. It is disheartening to see so many in my own culture struggle while so many in desperate living situations around the world live victorious and triumphant lives, even though the potential for the hurt is exponentially greater.
For many like this, they prefer the title Ragamuffin over Blessed Child of God or Wounded Warrior over Triumphant Servant. Frankly, I don’t get it. It is minimalistic. It seems to limit God. It often (though not always) carries a wallowing and/or resigned air to it. It often seems to put the Christian in the unenviable position of being unenviable to most unbelievers. One can never hear the words of Paul saying, “Follow me as I follow Christ” or even a remotely close sentiment of such through them. In fact, there is often the warning, “don’t follow me, as my life has been treacherously disappointing- an endless struggle.”
The most damaging part of it, for those who align themselves with the holiness tradition of the church, is that holiness can never really, truly be part of their living vocabulary or attainable in this life even though it is a clear New Testament expectation for Christ followers. I fear that by writing this I might cast some into further despair, since that is sometimes a preferred place to live. My hope, however, is the opposite. I hope that somehow those who are focused on loss or locked into hurt or harangued by perpetual failure might discover that God has a much better way. The good news is truly good news. God’s grace can help us become whole. God’s grace can do more than just forgive. God’s love can drive out fear. God’s light can overtake the darkness. Really! He can. Trust me. He has.