“True.”

H,

There is something simple about being in God. It is easy to be open with a being that knows all about your secret flaws. In theory, at least. We are wired to present the pictures that avoid disappointment. We are usually trying to pull some wool over the eyes of those we want to love us. We say they can’t handle it but the truth is we cannot handle them thinking less of us. We need them to love the bright spots and count it much more than the occasional slips.

The problem is that these things are not occasional slips. They are perpetual states. The Christian worldview says that we are not basically good with occasional lapses but basically sinful with occasional lapses into the light. All we are doing is avoiding being bad and doing enough good not to be ostracised by family, by lovers, by society and by God. We are keeping the horrible thoughts inside and the horrible acts within legal bounds. We are not being true to our real selves.

When you see this then you see everything. What God is proposing by grace is not how to make us better people but how to take us from being fatally flawed to being eternally redeemed. There is a difference. This is why being curt with God is such a bad idea. There is a mother within God that longs to nurture. There is a father in God that longs to embrace all our flaws and unspool them. There is a friend in God that longs to walk beside us. There is a lover in God that longs to be closer than close has ever been.

We have to let that He and Her and Us and Them all in. This is the only true way to change.