In the process of joining a a church several years ago, the pastor wanted to interview me. Since it was a Lutheran church, I assumed he wanted to know just how Lutheran I was or was interested in becoming, so I came in pretty nonchalant.
After exchanging essential pleasantries, he hit me with an obvious, yet completely unexpected question: “Who is Jesus Christ to you?”
I sat there, eyes blinking . . . lump in my throat rising . . . tears welling up. I cried.
“I guess your tears mean Jesus Christ means a lot to you?”
I nodded, inarticulately blubbering through an apology for the awkwardness of it all.
Clearly, Christianity has to have objective qualities to determine the truth or falsity of its claims, yet it’s a highly personal, highly relational, and therefore, a highly subjective belief system as well. Belief system does not do it justice. Christians actually enter into a reconciled relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And as anyone with any relationships knows, a relationship goes quite far beyond mental ascent or creedal acquiescence.
Essential to my relationship with God is the death of Jesus Christ, God-in-flesh, the God-man, Son of God. It seems strange to suggest my relationship with God is dependent upon His sacrificial death, yet if God is God and I am me (which is the case), for the relationship to exist, he must initiate. And he has. And that initiation involved a cost he was willing to pay.
While I fully acknowledge “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19), in this post, I will not so much be addressing the world’s or other people’s reconciliation to God. Instead, I will be focusing on God’s and my reconciliation.
To be reconciled implies that the relationship was previously broken. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been born into a fallen humanity, a humanity estranged from God. For me, that estrangement expressed itself in a distorted identity, wherein I believed accomplishments, achievements, relationships with the right people, having an enviable guy would somehow make me somebody. Of course, it was an identity based on the ever-shifting sands of endless comparisons.
Beyond the distorted identity, justification was another estrangement symptom. My wrongs had to be excused, rationalized, justified, explained away somehow. My hatreds, cruel words, seeing others as means to ends, my negligence and omissions--I had to weave a victimized rationale for it all, even resorting to the standard, “what’s the big deal?” All this so I could still apply the term “good” to myself--a sociological construct reached again only via comparison.
Of course, to some degree I was a victim. Other sinners had hurt me. At times the fear of being the victim encouraged me to be the victimizer or the “go-alonger,” not actively participating in an injustice, yet simply ignoring it. The approval of the identity-bestowers surrounding me carried the day.
I also remember the fear, the fear of the loss of meaning if I failed or lost approval somehow--the symptom of insecure vulnerability--as if the weight of my life was resting on a tenuous point, like an inverted triangle.
Back then, I would not have expressed the above as symptoms of estrangement from God, even though I knew the concept. I just believed it was life. I didn’t link it to anything to do with him. Most Christians in the inherited-belief-system mindset sadly think this way. Their faith is the occasional church thing with no internalization. Yet what is Christianity if its not internalized?
Needless to say, there are more symptoms of estrangement from God than I’ve listed. We live the global, economic, sociological, political, national, natural symptoms. Others live with different individual symptoms. Here, I just wanted to center more on my journey.
God becoming human in Jesus Christ, suffering and dying on the cross is perhaps an unexpected cure--salvation is the word. Yet at multiple levels, his life and death have been and more and more continue to become my salvation. Please note that I’m not particularly focusing on life beyond the grave here. I’m speaking of my now.
In responding affirmingly to God’s initiation of peace and reconciliation, I’ve noticed and continue to experience the following transformations:
I’ve received the gift of identity, the identity of the beloved, the ever-increasing awareness that I’m loved just as I am . . . and not just because a kind, loving family may have said that--their opinion would be clearly biased in my favor. Though that's warm and healthy, for something so vital, I'd prefer something more objective: God’s coming to earth in human form and shedding his blood for our reconciliation establishes my identity as the beloved. “For you know that it was not with perishable things like silver or gold that you were redeemed [...], but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (I Peter 1:17-18). To know that no amount of success or failure, no amount of rejection or approval alters my core identity as someone worth his life is salvation indeed. As a result, it’s freeing to get off the comparison track. I cannot improve on or lessen my identity regardless of how well I compare in any venue. I value the cross as the most concrete, absolute expression of my self-esteem. I’m now free to be me.
My identity is further expressed as I step out from under the weight of my justifications. He has provided for my justification, so I can let go of the rationalizations and face myself frankly in his love: I’m not inherently good, and I’m not putting myself down here. I’m just being honest. If I say I’m good, well that's motivated by comparisons against the broader culture; however, God’s standard for loving motives, words, and deeds is volumes higher than anyone surrounding me. So I can delude myself with my purported "goodness,"but all the designation does is craft my need for rationalizations so I can hang onto the “good” tag. It’s more realistic and honest to be frank about it: I’m not inherently good, but I have inherit worth. I’m a sinner and my rationalizations only distort reality. I need forgiveness. I need genuine justification. I value the cross because it melds the dual realities of my sin and my belovedness. I’m now free to face me.
While yes, the cross does affirm that I am a victimizer--Jesus did die for my sin, it also affirms that I’ve been a victim. In affirming that my sins against others matters, it also demonstrates that others sins against me matters. While we like to downplay our own sins, we tend to “up-play” the sins of others against us. In Christ, both are just as real. Requesting forgiveness never equates to "what's the big deal?" Accepting forgiveness is never saying, “it was no big deal that you hurt me.” Actually, forgiveness is agreeing to absorb the pain of the sin and not exact it from the offender. This is precisely what Christ did: He absorbed the pain of our sin, so not to exact it from us. Christ died for my sins and for the sins of others against me. Therefore, I’m called to forgive. What greater price would I have the offender(s) pay? Is the blood of Christ not good enough? And while salvation lies in my being forgiven, it’s inextricably linked to my forgiveness of others. I value the cross because it represents my forgiveness and my forgiveness of others.
I’ve found it freeing to shift the weight of my life onto Him--it’s peaceful to live without fear, without anxiety. This is not suggest the temptation isn’t there, nor is it to suggest the simplistic notion that placing faith in Christ will eradicate disorders of anxiety, though I’m confident it helps. His presence ensures meaning’s bedrock, even if my intended meaning falters. It’s quite freeing to know I possess something I cannot lose, a foundation that sustains all the vulnerable parts of my world: I’m free to treasure them, yet not insist on needing them. I can affirm and enjoy life’s temporal qualities, knowing there’s an eternal essence behind it all: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him gives me strength” (Philippians 4:12-13).
God has offered me peace with him, reconciliation to him. He has initiated. He has absorbed the cost of forgiveness. The absolute best decision of my life was to accept. Indeed, my brief sojourn in the land of estrangement confirms my never going back to that.
So as the pastor asked me, I ask you: Who is Jesus Christ to you?
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