If You Were the Last Person On Earth

-
Earlier this year, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a Minister for Loneliness to address what she has referred to as “the sad reality of modern life” for many people.

 Recently, I read an article online about how there are more people walking around with anxiety and depression than at any other time in history. 

 The percentage of teens and pre-teens that struggle with body image and self-esteem issues continues to rise--up 6% from last year and nearly 10% from two years ago. 

 As I was pondering all of this today, I started reflecting on how Christians often struggle to respond to these kinds of issues, and the negative effect our struggles to respond have had on our overall witness as Jesus followers. 

 What I've come to believe is that far too many Christians have defined their understanding of God's redeeming story in negative terms.  They can't get beyond the belief that God is inherently angry, and people are inherently awful, and their responses to the real problems of our day are shaped by that understanding.  

 We can do better.  The Gospel is bigger than that.   God's love expressed through Jesus Christ is expansive, radical and all-encompassing. And this Good News should fill those of us who are among the lonely, broken and depressed with a defiant hope. 

 Theologian Paul Tillich was fond of saying: 
Faith is the courage to accept acceptance, to accept that God loves me as I am and not as I should be because I'm never going to be as I should be. 
There's no need to qualify God's love by preceding our proclamation of it with words that tear down, demean, diminish or reinforce negative self-talk.  No one who is struggling with loneliness, depression or self-image issues needs to have their noses rubbed in it.  

 Instead, we should employ words like those used by the late Brennan Manning, who wrote: 
The mystery of our faith is this:  God loves us and Jesus Christ would have died for us, even if we had been the only person on earth. 
May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment! If you comment Anonymously, your comment will summarily be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

Rapha & Yada - "Be Still & Know": Reimagined

-
Image
One of the most well-used verses in the Bible comes to us from Psalm 46:10, which reads like this:  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth.” That one line---"Be still, and know that I am God"---finds its way into greeting cards, wall art, church signs and the like.  And it sounds so nice, doesn't it?  But what does it actually mean ? What does it mean to be still  and know  that God is God?  Well, to dig deeper into that phrase to see what it's really saying, I'm going to have to bust out some Hebrew--so, don't hold it against me. The Hebrew word that's used here for the phrase "be still" is the word  rapha. And get this... It means "to hang limp, sink down, be feeble."  That's a heckuva lot different than what we usually take the phrase "be still" to mean, right? I don't know about you, but whenever I have heard that verse
Read more

Wuv... True Wuv...

-
Image
Go ahead. Ask me what my favorite "chick flick" is. The Princess Bride , that's what.  The pic at the top of this entry gave it away, I know. There are three reasons why it is my favorite "chick flick." 1. It's not a chick flick.  2. The only kissing is at the end of the movie... where it's supposed to be. 3. It has Andre the Giant in it. Any of these reasons could stand alone in their own right as pretty dang valid reasons why The Princess Bride is atop my list of romantic films.  But when the aforementioned reasons are lumped together, I don't see how anyone could argue against it. There is a scene in The Princess Bride that makes me giggle a whole lot...the wedding scene where Peter Cook, playing a priest with a speech impediment presides over Princess Buttercup's almost wedding to the evil Chris Sarandon (and I hear he's still pretty evil).   Here it is. Wuv...  true wuv...  gotta love that. I've been reading and re-re
Read more

The Lord Needs It: Lessons From A Donkey

-
Image
This Sunday is Palm Sunday---the beginning of Holy Week. It's also one of those Sundays when you can't ignore the church calendar and just preach whatever you want.  I am sure that some people do just that, but they probably aren't Presbyterian, and I am sure that the liturgical rhythm of the Church is not first and foremost in their mind. And they probably have had no trouble at all working on their sermon this week. I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore  the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.   But this leads to a bit of a quandary...  In the short time I have been doing this whole preaching thing I have gone through the Palm Sunday story a few times.  After a while you sort of wonder if your congregation has heard your Palm Sunday riff a few too many times. That sermon needs to get preached, though.  While we celebrate the cheers and pal
Read more