By his great mercy he has given us a new
birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and
unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of
God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
“By his great mercy…” This is the reason for all God has done for
humanity. It has been done out of
mercy. If not for mercy, there is
condemnation. This is the black and
white (to use an outdated metaphor), good and bad, the absolutes of God’s
perfection. Obey or die. It is that absolutist mentality that has led
many to despair that God doesn’t care.
It is that same mentality that has led many others to believe they can
kill in God’s name in some warped sense of God’s justice.
The experience of life is an
experience of shades of gray, between good and evil. For we, the broken sinners who make up
humanity, we are coming from the evil side and seeking justification that all
our bad behavior has shades of goodness within.
Systems of sacrifice, codes of behavior, obligations, these are all
means by which we, as humans, seek to reach levels of goodness, higher levels
of acceptance, trying to achieve ever lighter shades of grey.
God’s mercy flips that on its
ear. God comes to us from the good side,
mercy reaching down into the broken, sinful lives of people. We act from desperation, God acts without
expectation. There is not a code to follow,
there is simply acceptance of His mercy.
He reaches down, will we take His hand?
He shines a light into the darkness and the darkness does not overcome
it.
Sidebar: Are we really so bad and
broken? Well, we’ve tied the metaphor of
“white and black as good and evil” to our racial profiles. Slavery, murder, and genocide have all
resulted from it. We cannot even talk
about ‘shades of grey’ without snickering comments about there being 50 of
them (I rewrote this section three times to overcome my own amusement at the word play).
Thank you Lord for reaching to us
because we are never going to reach You.
No comments:
Post a Comment