Thread by @kennethtanner

The law could never make us moral people. It could only interact with fallen human nature, revealing the places in us where we were no longer participating in love. /a sermon in miniature, a thread

Like a crimson dye that saturates the parts of us participating in death, the murderous parts, the law can only expose the cancers of hate, envy, pride & greed that motivate us, make plain our addiction to bearing false witness, perhaps the besetting sin of present-day Americans.

The law, reacting with fallen human nature, is like those little pink tablets they made us chew as children that reveal where we have not brushed our teeth very well.

The law cannot cleanse us. And neither can all the rules we create as a substitute for the divine law. And nearly every club, group, church, or movement you want to be or are part of has a little list.

Did you keep your quiet time today? Read the Bible? Tell others about Jesus?

Did you say a rosary or go to confession or get to mass?

Did you post the right memes on social media or protest for the right causes?

Did you eat the right foods and workout? Do you have the right BMI? Did you meditate?

Are you wearing the right clothes? Are you avoiding the wrong people? Do you have a tattoo or a nose ring?

Did you stay away from cigarettes and alcohol and dancing and movies and girls that love them?

Did you say the pledge of allegiance? Burn a pinch of patriotic incense for America? Are you ready to die for your country? Did you remain standing during the Anthem? Or did you kneel?

Did you read the right books & listen to the right podcasts and do you own the right opinions?

Do you listen to the right music and consume the right culture and do you like what the right people like, whoever the right people are?

Are you focused on your family? Did you do all the right mom things? Dad things? Wife things? Husband things? *All* the right things? Today?!

Are you a good Republican? Democrat? A good social conservative? A by-the-book progressive?

Do you say the right things. Always? Is it time to cancel you?

Do you believe the right God things?

Do you speak in tongues? Do you have the gift of prophecy? Are you able to discern all mysteries?

Some of us carry the burden of more than one of these lists, constantly judging ourselves and others by them.

For most of us it’s so subconscious that we don’t even know we are keeping rules anymore, not even conscious that what we really hope is that all this rule-keeping will justify our existence. Somehow. Even though in our deepest selves we know these rules cannot.

This obsession with ourselves and with others and with these expectations will never make what’s wrong with us right.

There’s only one human that got it all right and it’s this one person’s life, limited like ours, a life of constant communion with God even while tempted in every way that we are—in all the myriad ways humans are tempted—that is our life as a gift, without cost and without rules.

Jesus has a human will quite separate from the divine will he shares forever with the Father and the Spirit, that divine will where everything the Son says and does is also what the Father and Spirit says and does, one God.

Yet Jesus as a person participating in our fallen human condition could have chosen other than cooperation and participation with the divine will, chosen for himself as a human.

Instead he focused on the life of the Spirit of God that dwelt in him, and his human will always chose alignment with the divine will, even when it cost him his life, and his selfless regard for God & others, his singular focus on God, kept him in life. And this is our salvation.

And now his life is our life. The same Spirit that raised Christ from the death of fallen human existence—this walking-around-dead life where rule-keeping is helpless to save us—really and truly dwells in us. Really. Truly.

When we pay attention to the Spirit’s presence at the center of ourselves, we too will become forces for good in the world & will do & say all the things we most deeply want to do & say, discover & live our true identity, created as bearers of the divine image, the image of Love.

Abandon yourself to God and find yourself.

Stop judging yourself by these lists, stop measuring others by them, and look for where God is already at work in you and in the world, and yield yourself to the divine life.

You may find yourself feeding the poor, visiting prisoners, dwelling in Scripture, living simply, marching for justice, going to jail for the oppressed, caring for the earth, & losing your life, but it will no longer be you who lives. It is and it will be Christ who lives in you.

@threadreaderapp unroll