Wasting What is Wasted
Loneliness is a wretched beast of a thing. Perhaps that sounds a bit extreme, but I don’t think so. I think it is perhaps one of the worst feelings in the world. It is one of the few feelings I can think of that makes every other feeling worse.
I feel it tonight. It’s the only emotion I have ever experienced that causes an actual ache in my chest.
I’ve been wrestling with so much self-doubt lately. I feel unworthy and unprepared to be a “good” Christian. I feel as if I am an obligation instead of a joy to my friends. I feel like I’m not good enough or pretty enough to ever be a wife. I know these feelings are not from God; I know these doubts of mine are lies. But they feel so true.
The loneliness that plagues me tonight is probably my own fault. I have friends. I have family. I have people who care about me and I know it. I am shown love every day. But when I feel the doubts that I mentioned above, I tend to draw away from people. I over-analyze my relationships. I find the tiny flaws and blow them up into bigger ones.
My heart just feels heavy tonight. I am now out of words.
Song of the Moment: “Ruins,” George is Jones
If You Love Me…
I don’t believe I am alone in admitting that oftentimes Christianity makes little sense. I think human beings want answers, want solid evidence, so that there is no need for faith. Faith demands trust and somewhere along the line, trust demands love. And love is such a difficult thing to grasp.
I often marvel at who God is, or at least who I believe God to be. I’ve been in church all of my life and have been a Christian since I was around the age of five. You’d think that since I have been in church most every Sunday since I was a week old I would understand God a bit more than I do, that going to church would help with that process. And it has, in some ways, but looking at the Church is often a poor representation of who Christ is.
The Church is a beautiful concept, created by God so that His people would have community, so that they would have a place that is made up of love and truth and worship. The purpose of the Church is to love one another, and for that love to leave the church building and percolate out into the world. How will the world be able to identify the followers of Christ? Through their love for one another.
As I was thinking about my own church and about the ones I have attended in the past, I saw many flaws. A Church is made up of people, and people are rarely good. Parents much teach their children to do good things. That means that our natural instinct is not goodness, but something else entirely, something Jesus came to this world to free us from.
In looking at my church and its own issues, I began to feel discouraged. It is very easy for me to see the flaws in other people. I knew that if certain people would change, the church would be better as a whole. If this person did that and if this person stopped doing that, we’d be on our way to holiness. And then I remembered the love thing. I remembered that Christianity is all about love. I remembered that commandments and traditions and offering plates and worship mean nothing unless there is love behind those things. And then I realized the faults in my church could be solved with love. If people loved more, they wouldn’t argue. If people loved more, they wouldn’t complain. If people loved more, they would be more like Jesus.
As I pondered those ideas of how love changes things, I realized I am not very good at loving people. I knew at that moment the problems I saw were my own fault. I had no right pointing out the lack of love in someone else when I myself had little love to offer.
There is nothing that screams of love more than Christ being born into a world that would hate Him, a world that despised what He treasured and tore apart what He knew as holy. The world He came to save killed Him, a plot which He knew before He ever stepped out of heaven. This is what I mean when I say Christianity makes little sense, at least to my small, fragile human mind. I do not understand the type of love that would sacrifice everything for people who don’t want that love. I cannot comprehend the grace of God, how is covers those who have in no way earned it, who in no way ever could.
I have been blessed with love by family and friends, and most of all by God. I know love. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like. I know how vital it is in the life of the Church, that the Church has no purpose without love. And still I struggle with ideas of love, with the consequences love brings. Every action bears consequence, but the consequences love brings with it demand the most, I think.
When a person loves, they are at their most vulnerable. Love demands an emptying of oneself to make room for the feelings of benevolence towards another. Love requires goodness, and as I said, humans are not automatically good. In order to love, we all must be loved ourselves. And to be loved, we must accept it.
I truly do believe that if the body of Christ really loved one another that the world would be changed. If the world saw the people of God loving the way they should, the way Christ did, the effects would be huge. If I loved people even 5% as much as God does, even that could change the world. If God, a Being who is perfect and holy, can love the fallen people of the world, the fallen people of my own church, then I have no excuse not to love them myself. I do not have to agree with their ideas or opinions, I do not have to always take their side, but I must love.
I think Derek Webb sums it up nicely:
I have come with one purpose
To capture for myself a bride
By my life she is lovely
By my death she’s justified
I have always been her husband
Though many lovers she has known
So with water I will wash her
And by my word alone
So when you hear the sound of the water
You will know you’re not alone
‘Cause I haven’t come for only you
But for my people to pursue
You cannot care for me with no regard for her
If you love me you will love the church
I have long pursued her
As a harlot and a whore
But she will feast upon me
She will drink and thirst no more
So when you taste my flesh and my blood
You will know you’re not alone
‘Cause I haven’t come for only you
But for my people to pursue
You cannot care for me with no regard for her
If you love me you will love the church
There is none that can replace her
Though there are many who will try
And though some may be her bridesmaids
They can never be my bride
‘Cause I haven’t come for only you
But for my people to pursue
You cannot care for me with no regard for her
If you love me you will love the church
If I love Him, I will love His people. That also means that if I hate His people, I will hate Him. The things I say about the Church I say about Him, all the selfish, ignorant things. The truth of such thoughts stings far more than I wish they would.
