MP: Writing What You Don't Know

[nezumiko]

I woke up wondering what it must be like to know, deep down, that you are loved and wanted and deserve the life you have. Now wait, before you go, "OMG Nezu's emo, let's read something else," I'm not, really; I was thinking about this in terms of characters I'm writing. OK, maybe it's a little emo at its roots, but really this isn't about emo so

Comments

OK, I lied, I have more to say

[beachpsalms]

I was still thinking about your post, and remembered another piece of Reformation history (prompted by JB's post). So: Martin Luther was apparently tormented by his conviction that he was not good enough, not deserving of God's love, of salvation. And it was Paul's writings about justification by faith that changed his thinking (and thereafter the shape of the Christian church).

Ephesians 2:8-10
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Try and let go of the teaching that faith=belief (ie in the virgin birth, or what have you); and try and imagine what Paul is telling us

For by the unfolding of good things in the universe, you are released through trust, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of the Divine - not the result of doing the right things, so that no one may boast of deserving. For we are what we are, created with the spark of the Divine in ourselves for spreading good deeds as best we can, which is what we are here in this life to do.

To unpack Paul, we need to let go of all these sedimentary layers of later Christian theology about blood and sin and death and original sin. And instead listen for a message about love, and liberation. And the liberation/salvation is both from systems of (unjust) power in our societies, and from patterns of misery in our lives.

Love is a gift. Gifts are not earned.