Being Human
I read something on my friend Rachelle's blog the other day about being kind and loving to people that we encounter. Being the presence of Christ wherever we are at..."being Jesus with skin on" to use a Young Life token phrase.When I was a senior in high school I went on a "random act of kindness" kick. I was doing little things like leaving coins in arcade machines, parking meters, paying for someones meal behind me in the line at McDonalds. Ever since I can remember I loved doing things that made people feel valued, important, and loved. It was something that was of highest value to me...and still is. This is before all of the Christian culture brainwashing I received in the church. Years later I used these things as forms of evangelism. I cringe at the memories.
I remember the girl that I was...so cause oriented. My deepest desire was to see the world be a better place. People to be kinder. Less hungry people. More love. More equality. Less prejudice. More justice. I was a liberal who loved Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood, and any coalition that promoted peace and justice. Yet the ideas of God which I came into contact with all of those years ago, the God of Christian culture and everything that is conservative and republican, is the very ideas of God in which I now resent.
You see, these ideas, this love that I was taught, was a love that was conditional. It was a love which communicated bondage and not freedom into the person I was becoming. It is only now that I am starting to take the broken pieces of my past person and find value. I find value now in these because I see He finds value in those things. In fact, I imagine He wove those desires into me. Before I engaged with Him. While He was engaging with me and I didn't even know it.
Often, I have heard it taught that we as humans are a sinful people. Yeah I get that...kinda. I think it is so drilled into us that we are bad that we forget that what is in us is also good. Not because of the paradoxical good and evil, but because He is good. If He good...I mean come on...the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I think that if we are going to be the people God has truly intended for us to be we need to start to believe that while we have bad in us...we also have something really awe-inspiring in us. He put it there. We are not worms not worthy of His love...we are His children...fully worthy to stand before our Father no matter where we are or what we have done, or what we will do. He loves us in our humaness and I think we need to start loving ourselves that same way.
posted by Kat @ 7:38 PM
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