The Paths

 

Dear Old Friend

Since my last letter, I’ve thought a lot about who Jesus chose to hang out with when he was on earth, and why.  For much of my life, I’m pretty sure I would not have been one of his first choices, which is ironic, since I worked so hard to be who I thought he wanted me to be.

I wasn’t surprised when you told me that you also remember the chapel speaker from our freshman year in high school; the one who worked us up into an emotional frenzy until most of us felt compelled to publicly confess our sins, and pressure others to do the same.  Since writing to you about that experience, I have concluded that it marked the beginning of my insecurity with God. 

Up to that point, I had never really worried about whether or not God loved me.  As a child, I was told that he loved me, and I simply believed that he did. But that week of chapel services came at a vulnerable point in my life, when I already doubted everyone else’s love for me, and that speaker tore at my exposed emotions by telling me that God wished he could love me, but I had disappointed him with my bad behavior and separated myself from his love.  However, in his mercy, God was waiting for me to give up my wicked ways so that he could open his arms and welcome me back.

There I was, feeling completely abandoned by my family, thinking that God was the only one on whom I could still depend, but what I heard was, “God wants to help you, but you have removed yourself from his care.  You have turned away from him in rebellion. Repent of your sins and he will be with you again.”  I knew how desperately I needed God, so right then I believed I had no other choice than to try to be worthy of his love.

The fact of the matter is, I was at a pivotal moment in my life, and things could have gone either way. I could have chucked it all and turned my back on God because he had turned his back on me. I could have given up and run as hard and fast as I could from him, and my life would have taken a different course.  You shared with me that this was the path you ultimately chose.  But, because I couldn’t face the thought of being without the One who gave my life its only semblance of stability, I didn’t.  Instead, I chose the path of the neurotic rule keeper.  I wanted to appease the deity so that he would not leave me, and it became the pattern of my life.

Because I was also a people pleaser, I set out to be a super sweet, helpful rule keeper.  I was normally too insecure to be blatantly obnoxious about my righteousness, although I can recall some occasions when I managed to be embarrassingly insufferable.  Overall, however, I’m pretty sure that I achieved a rather saintly aura.  I’m not implying that my efforts to be a good person weren't genuine; I was both quite sincere and highly motivated to succeed!

My motivation was two-fold: I had made a vow to myself, when my parents divorced, that I would not fulfill the prediction I read in a magazine article, that I would be badly damaged as a result of being a child of divorce; and now I added to that the belief that I had to be good in order to keep God’s love.

The problem was that, despite my sincerity and motivation, I was operating under a total delusion.  As I mentioned in a previous letter, no matter how hard I tried not to be damaged, I was. We are all damaged by life in this world. Pretending we’re not is exhausting and we eventually run out of steam. The other part of the delusion involved thinking that I had to, and might actually be able to, appease the deity by being good enough to keep him from leaving me. 

In a twisted sort of way, that chapel speaker, and many others like him, was partially correct: sin does separate us from a holy God who demands perfect obedience.  But the speaker got it terribly wrong from that point on!

The truth is, this holy God, who demands perfect obedience, knew that no matter how sincere or motivated any of us might be, we could never fulfill what he required, and he loved us so much that he could not bear the the idea of our separation from him; so for that reason he sent his Son to perfectly obey every rule on our behalf.  As a result, he can now promise, without reservation, that he will never leave us or forsake us, not because of what we do to appease him, but because he, once and for all, appeased himself!

And that finally leads me back to what I was thinking about the kinds of people Jesus liked to hang out with when he was here.  He went straight for the people like you who, at their pivotal moment, ran hard and fast, believing they weren’t good enough; those who had turned their backs on the One they thought had turned his back first.  Jesus sought them out because they weren’t delusional; they knew they didn’t have a shred of righteousness to recommend themselves to God, so he didn’t have to hack his way through their pretenses.  He simply loved them the way they were, and because they knew it was genuine, they gratefully loved him right back.

The toughest nuts to crack were the ones, like me, who were desperately trying to earn God’s love; particularly if they thought they were succeeding in pulling it off.  He had to pound on them until he brought them to a point where they finally realized they couldn’t earn his love, and they weren’t pulling it off, and that it was okay for them to admit it and simply accept his love as an undeserved gift. That is a very hard sell for us people-pleasing, deity-appeasing types; but once we get it, our relief and joy knows no bounds!

We have all headed down one or the other of those paths, at diferent times, for varied reasons. On the surface, one way appears to be the path of rebellion and the other the path of righteousness; but, in reality, both lead away from God and his grace. 

I am so grateful, my friend, that God brought the two of us back, as adults, to the simple faith we had in his love as children!

Love Always,

Bonnie