Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


1.29.2007  

Blind & Burdened

I was thinking yesterday about being loving. It's hard, it really is, because being loving means dealing in the truth, and truth can be agonizingly painful. Love can get down and dirty, gritty, and vulnerable, and that's just to start.

I was trying to wrap my mind around why I have such a hard time loving people. When I it hit me, I kind of sunk down in my chair and went, "Eeeewwww!" My conclusion, in all its doctrinal glory, goes something like this: I'm selfish.

Let me rewind. Jesus is good to me, far better than I deserve. My indwelling sin causes me to forget God's promises that are mine in Christ. Because I forget about God's promises, I often fail to live with the hope of Christ and His promises in my heart. Even though my sin, hideous and wretched and offensive as it is in God's sight, blinds me, God's gracious promises are still infinitely more beautiful and vast than my sin. After all, isn't the sting of death removed? Yes, it is removed in Christ! Nevertheless, I'm blinded to God's promises by the effects of sin, even though that sin has been stripped of their threatening power by Christ's death. Why is this? It's because sin is right smack dab up against my face, and in my frail faith, I cannot see around it. It's like having my hand covering my eyes so that I cannot see the vast ocean but a few feet away; my hand is relatively small, yet because it is close, it blinds me to the vastness of the ocean.

Got all of that? Ok, good.

Now, back to my selfishness. If I'm enjoying Jesus, it's much easier for me to want others to do the same. It's when I'm away from Him and not enjoying Him that I really feel the blinding effects of sin. And you know what? If others are enjoying Him, I become jealous, wanting to do the same, yet knowing I'm not.

It doesn't end there. Nope, not by a far cry.

I'm proud, too, because I don't want to admit my sin and subsequent blindness. As a result, the blindness continues. If someone asks me how I'm doing, I tend to want to appear as though I were enjoying Jesus as much as a good bible college student ought to enjoy Jesus. So I lie. Last I checked, lying is a sin. Yup, you guessed it: more blindness.

Wait, the real kicker's coming.

Jesus taught us that in Him, we are one. He prayed to His Father, our Father, that we would be united together, would be one, just as He and the Father are one. We are one with Him, so much so that He is our head and we are His body. I don't need to go into extensive anatomical analogies to convey the point that any loving person is going to care for the hurts of his or her own body! If I am hurting and struggling with sin, that means that someone else is hurting and struggling with sin, too. Why? I am united with them, for we are Christ's body.

The implications for this tell me that when I'm blind and do not see the vastness of Christ's goodness, and am therefore not enjoying Him, the rest of the body will suffer for it. When I lie to someone else, that means that I'm lying to the rest of my own body. Selfish? Yes. But you know what? The converse of this is wonderful, because that means that Jesus' promises mean that others will fight just as fiercely for my own salvation as they will for their own. Of course, that also means that I bear the same joyful responsibility for and to others.

I think love just became much less burdensome.

posted by Bolo | 6:37 AM
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