Love makes me feel like a good person

Beautiful. I’m thankful you “use words” and that I recently discovered your blog.

Elizabeth{{{}}}}

I don’t mean to be argumentative but I struggle with letting God’s flow into my heart. I have led a very sinful life and have two very difficult (and long) confessions trying to “get right” with God. However, I came away from both confessions feeling as if I didn’t make a good enough confession and that I wasn’t truly forgiven. The cathechism says that if you hold back one sin in the confessional then none of your sins are forgiven. I feel like I didn’t give enough details about my sins so that I’m not forgiven. So, if one is separated from God by sin, how can His love flow into your heart? And what if letting His love flow into your heart is just my belief that He loves me then I could be wrong. I would still be separated from God because of my sins but be incorrectly believing that He loves me and all is ok. In the Catholic church if you have unconfessed mortal sins you will go to Hell or maybe Purgatory- not sure if you can get to Purgatory with mortal sins. So, does one keep making the same lengthy confession over and over again until they feel like they got it right? Or could this be the devil playing with one’s insecurities?

Elizabeth, I think your fundamentalist background colors how you see Scripture, especially Romans 3:9. That verse isn’t taken out of context for if you read the whole book, and even the chapters preceding it, Paul says the world is evil (ch 1), the Jews are evil (ch 2), and we are all evil (ch 3). And then the glorious news in Romans 3:21 and following is that we have a Savior who has redeemed us! Yes, we are evil and we don’t do good because we have inherited Adam’s sin nature (ch 4), but for those of us who believe, we now have Christ’s nature! The gift of salvation is so sweet and so overwhelming when we realize just how evil we are and how much we don’t deserve any of it.

From what I have read, it seems that you grew up in a very legalistic church (which is what I consider fundamentalism) that says you have to do a, b, c, etc., to be right with God. What Scripture teaches is that you have to trust in the righteousness of Christ (life, death, resurrection) to be right with God. Reading my bible, sharing the Gospel, going to church, etc., does not make me right with God, only the blood of Jesus does. Yes, I seek to do those things out of obedience and love for Christ.

Jesus even called us evil in Matt 7:11, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Romans 5:20 is wonderful news for all sinners, “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin INCREASED, grace ABOUNDED all the more.” Praise God!

Actually, that verse sets me free! I don’t have to try to be perfectly GOOD, because I’m flawed by that flesh from Adam & Eve. So I seek the perfect Goodness of Christ and stop trying to be ‘good’. Christ replaces the ‘good’ with Himself and I’m able to live by His Spirit. No longer is about me and doing good, but about Him who did all the goodness for me. Love this post, by the way. Glimpses into the bondage and condemnation of religion is eye-opening and educating. Thank you for sharing it.

I forgot to say that I cried a good cry when I read that Valentine. That is IT. Love it.

What’s so funny is that I was really trying *NOT* to open a can of worms. LOL! The point was not that I’m sinless. It was, as Terry and Heather pointed out, that now I’m acknowledging and living in the reality that I am accepted in the beloved. Free. Loved. I think Terry and Heather said it much better than I did! Mostly, core of this post was Jude’s Valentine and how that little truth: “Love makes me feel like a good person” is true for me now as well.

*phew* I feel like I’m gonna need to write disclaimers at the end of every post!

While I can understand what you’re saying about the amazing beauty of God’s love for us, and His adoption of us as children, about Christ’s redemptive way of pointing out our sinful state (woman at the well, woman caught in adultery; I am confused that your son quoted a verse that comes from a context that every one of us is helpless, ungodly, an enemy of God apart from His work, and you say “that verse isn’t talking about you sweetheart.”
In what sense is it not talking about him, and me and all of us?
The distinction of what we need to focus on I understand, but I had to see my total depravity before I could even begin to appreciate His gift and His love.

So Elizabeth should have said “Yes, honey, you are an evil, depraved, no good sinner, but aren’t you glad you have Jesus?”

In case I needed a reminder of why I’m in therapy…..

LOL, KAT! Oh, man. Perfect! “Yes, sweetheart, you are an evil, depraved, completely wicked human being!” LOL! *wiping tears*

I believe the verse you’re talking about refers to the absence of goodness in ourselves without God. Without God, we are empty of goodness completely. Any nice thought or gesture that comes from the human heart is God-given, God-inspired.

Your sweet sensitive son could have been feeling his need for God in light of that verse. I know you reacted to feeling “inherently evil” when you were young, but it’s simply a fact that could inspire gratitude to God for His amazing intervention in our lives instead of guilt that we’re so tragically bereft of goodness at all on our own.

Hmmm. I read the post and found in sweet and uncontroversial. If not for your tweet, I would never have come back to read the comments. Wish I hadn’t now.

The comments do make me appreciate the forcefulness with which the Orthodox responded to total depravity in particular and Calvinism in general when they were presented with it. It’s a pretty polemic conciliar decision and normally I tend to twinge at such language. But it captures well my reaction when I first understood that people actually believe that about the eikon of God. Moreover, as I’ve said from the moment I understood his doctrine, if Jean Cauvin (John Calvin) was right, not only am I not a Christian, but I will never willingly worship (much less love) that God. Calvin described an evil God. I really couldn’t care less what sort of argument one can make defending his hypotheses about God. One can make rational, logical arguments defending just about anything. The pluralist in me looks at the end result and decides if that’s a God I would ever worship. If the answer is no, then there’s no point in wasting my time worrying about the rest.

Nor, like most Christians for the first thousand years of Christianity, do I believe that people inherit anyone else’s guilt. We are born into a fallen world and as we grow are subject not just to those forces, but our own passions. But we’re guilty for our own choices and actions and not that of any ancestor. I almost laughed the first time I heard someone seriously discuss the transmission of guilt through physical conception and birth until I realized they were serious. (That particular discussion held that the guilt was transmitted through the semen of the father, which is basically the ancient neoplatonic idea called ‘seminal reasons’.)

For a decade I thought I was one of the only Christians in the present world who didn’t believe in inherited guilt. (I knew it wasn’t in most of the ancient writings.) It was a huge relief for me to finally discover the modern Orthodox don’t believe in inherited guilt either. Not that it changed what I believed. I just didn’t feel so alone anymore.

Whew, the cavalry showed finally showed up (otherwise known as Scott Morizot)! Even though the previous comments were phrased gently, EE’s response to her little son and God’s response to his children were in sore need of some defense, in my opinion.

(Thanks also to Holly for that word picture.)

I would tend to say you’re a little confused about what Orthodox believe, mary ann. However, I’m not Orthodox, so I’m not really one to speak in broad terms about them. I mentioned them because of the couple of specific reasons I gave. No more and no less.

But no matter. You are, of course, welcome to stand with John Calvin or the others in the last few hundred years who taught similar things. I’ve believed and practiced a host of things over the course of my life, most of them decidedly other than Christian. Calvinism, though? Not so much. I had been something like a Christian for five years or so before I encountered it and I was almost immediately repelled by it. I’ve always said that if Calvin was right, then I am not and never will be a Christian. Nor do I have the slightest desire to be one in the reality he describes.

Obviously, I don’t believe he was even vaguely or generally right since I do consider myself someone who is at least trying to be Christian. But I could be wrong. That possibility doesn’t bother. Ya makes yer bets and ya takes yer chances. I had to come to grips with the realization that some spiritualities or religions had to more accurately describe reality than others when I was a child. I’ve tried lots of things over the years. I have a pretty good idea of at least some of what I’m ruling out when I say that my identity is associated with the label Christian and a particular sort of Christian at that.

Me? I’m comfortable with St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Athanasius the Great, St. John Climacus, St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Maximos the Confessor, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa and many others. I was more comfortable with them even when I wondered if there were any modern Christian groups who still believed as they did. I explored Christianity largely because of the love displayed by other Christians. I still don’t love as well as they did. However, I stayed Christian (and for a wandering pluralist, that was quite a feat) because I found I wanted to love the Jesus described by those I listed above. If I had not read them, I don’t know if I would have stayed Christian for more than a few years. But then, I wouldn’t be who I am if I had not searched them out and read them.

I’m also not entirely sure what you mean by “show some respect” for beliefs. I respected people I knew who held such beliefs enough to explore them in depth so that I would not react to a caricature of the belief, but to the belief itself. And there are plenty of people who hold Calvinist-leaning beliefs whom I do respect and even love. (And yes, they know my opinion of Calvinism.)

Calvin describes a wholly different God from the one in whom I’ve placed my confidence. I would sooner turn to Taoism and strive to live by the Tao Te Ching than bend a knee to Calvin’s God.

But that’s me and my personal opinion and belief. I have no desire at all to force it on another. Though my heart breaks for children told they were born inherently “sinful” and for the parents who feel they must tell their children such things. What was it that Jesus had to say about children and those of us responsible for them? Or the will of his Father toward them?

I’ve thought more about it and realized that it was the focus in the comments less on the theology and more on how it plays out with small children that led to the particular way I reacted. As such, I thought I would explore that aspect of it.

Once you accept the idea of inherited guilt (which has nothing to do with suffering the consequences in this life of the decisions our parents and sometimes ancestors have made — something we all do), that immediately raises the question about the status of all the infants and small children who die unbaptized or, if you’re in a group that places the emphasis on rational, cognitive thinking and verbal ability, then “unsaved”. Now for me, shaped the way I was, when I encountered the idea, quickly saw that particular problem, my reaction was, “That can’t be right,” and I set it aside for further exploration. And I eventually discovered that it was not only not right, but it’s hardly present at all in the first thousand years of writings in the church.

(None of the ancient — or more modern, for that matter — Fathers of the Church were perfect. They all made mistakes at times. The historical setting and conditions that allowed a relatively small mistake by St. Augustine, rooted mostly in his reaction to Pelagius, his deep and pious awareness of his own sinfulness, the neoplatonic roots of his formal education, and a poor translation of a couple of verses into Latin from Greek, to blossom eventually into a dominant theological underpinning in most of Western theology is fascinating. Spend the time to trace it out sometime.)

The vast majority of people have the same instinctual reaction to that question. (It’s hardly the only problem with the idea, but it’s the one relevant to this discussion.) However, instead of simply rejecting the theological idea of inherited guilt itself, which was my reaction, they accept the framework and then struggle to find a way deal with the problem of infants who die.

The first such attempt in Roman Catholicism eventually led to the development of the teaching of “limbo”, which was that unbaptized deceased infants experienced a natural sort of well-being and life, but did not participate in the beatific vision. (I probably stated that poorly, so forgive me.) Although the teaching of limbo was recently formally dropped by the Church, I have to confess I’m not positive how they now answer that question.

In my own SBC denomination, they invented an “age of accountability”. Basically, for those unfamiliar with it, it’s a teaching that although everyone has inherited the guilt of the ancestral or “original” sin, God doesn’t hold anyone accountable for that guilt until they reach a certain level of rational, cognitive ability and can understand their inherited sinful state. There is no such teaching anywhere in historical tradition or scripture, of course. And it’s not without its ramifications as well. Notably, it requires a certain level of rational and expressive ability before a person is fully human and limits membership and full participation in the people of God to those who achieve those minimum levels. Personally, I’m with Bishop Tom Wright on this one. I don’t believe an infant is any less human than I am, is any less able to relate to his or her creator (or for that matter another human being), or is any less able to be filled with the love of God.

It’s really only the hard core Calvinist who believes either that God saves or “elects” some of the deceased infants and damns the rest or even (as I encountered in a few places) that the fact that they died as infants demonstrates that they were not among the “elect” and thus are damned. Pretty much all the rest of us reject the idea of a God who would condemn an infant or small child merely for the inherited guilt of that child’s ancestors and not for anything the child has actually done.

From my perspective, I’ve never understood why people hang on to the idea of inherited guilt so strongly. But then, it’s probably because I wasn’t raised or shaped within that framework. When I encountered that problem (and the other ones the idea raises) it seemed obvious to me that there had to be something wrong with the idea itself. Drop that from the framework and the problems vanish. Scripture itself becomes easier and more natural to read.

Gracious. I marked this in my Reader to come back to and comment later. Why? Because it was beautiful and true.

I’m reading through most of the comments with absolute disbelief.

Talk about missing the point.

I understand what you mean, Elizabeth. For years after I got married, I reacted when my husband would kiss me and say, “You’re such a good person!” Because of course NOBODY was a good person, least of all me. Now I better understand that I’m a loved person, and I am a good person despite my sin and because of Christ.

It’s a lovely Valentine.

– SaraJ

Awww , that is so nice !