"You deserve to end up with a good guy."
"At least I didn't do something THAT bad."
We desperately and wastefully spend hours of lives defining people and actions into goods and bads.
I remember being a little girl and every year around Christmas time I would wonder, did Santa Claus really split all the little boys and girls into good and bad? I remember going over and over in my head all the things I had done wrong that year. When I did end up with presents on Christmas Day, I would sometimes feel guilty, thinking, but what about when I hit my sister, yelled at my mom, lied? Then I would triumphantly think, no I really was good, I deserve this!
I have grown up with labels and stereotypes, surrounded by teachers and parents who use phrases like the good and bad kids.
It makes sense that as a parent you would want your child to learn to "be a good little boy or girl".
You leave your child with the babysitter saying, "Be good."
I have used many of these phrases myself.
I have also spent years of my life trying to "be a good person". I am definitely a striver. Even as a school age child, I wanted to "be the good little girl". I wanted to impress, to succeed, to be better, to earn, earn, earn, earn, earn.
I have spent most of my life believing that if I work hard enough, I can get whatever I want.
I recently had an eye opening conversation with a wise and wonderfully kind hearted friend who was sharing that she has a parent who has bought into the "I work hard enough = I can get anything" mentality. The conversation got to the point that I actually had to ask her, "What is wrong with that thought? I believe that too." She kindly explained that no matter how hard we work, if God doesn't want us to have something or it's not part of his plan, we won't get it.
Our desire as humans is to want to earn. To feel we deserve good things if we work hard enough or do all the right things.
Most of the religions in the world are based off the system of the goods and bads. You live your life, trying to do good deeds and be kind and loving to all, and if you do enough good things, you get to go to heaven.
What I am finding is that we simply can't be good enough. Even if there was a scale, we could never achieve the good. Understanding you are a sinner and desperately evil is the first step in recognizing our need for God and ultimately a savior.
"The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time." Genesis 6:5
The truth is that at the end of our life, we don't go to heaven based on whether we are good or bad people. We're all "bad". We don't have to earn God's approval, but that it has already been earned for us through the blood of Jesus Christ. Our favor has already been earned. Our favor has already been earned. Our favor has already been earned. I can't say or share it or think it enough. DAILY, SECOND BY SECOND I have to remind myself of that truth.
No one can earn it. That's what makes is such a gift. That's why the word "GRACE" is the name of every other church, plastered on every shirt, blogged about and written about and talked about. And I don't care, because I need that reminder a bajillion times over and over again. I don't get to earn it. I don't. So I have to stop trying.
If I could pick one thing to be remembered for at the end of my life, at my funeral, it would be this: that I am a very bad person who believed in the very free and unmerited gift of eternal life with Christ. I, through no action or deed or even desire of my own, was chosen to be a daughter of God. And my hope is that the life I live here on Earth points to the great God who gave me that gift.
"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." 2 Corinthians 12:9
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." Ephesians 2:8-9
Let's all stop trying to be good enough people. And let's walk in the truth that we really aren't that good after all. And let's fall on our knees, thanking God that we don't have to earn it, but that has already been done through Christ.
