Good News and Fear

I read an account this morning of a guy who became a believer in Jesus when he suddenly realized that for nearly forty years he had been fooling himself into thinking that he was good. He saw in a moment of realization that he wasn't actually good and that he couldn't do anything about it. He remembered what he had heard about Jesus, whom he had previously scoffed at. Only Jesus could make any change in his situation. He believed.

The Gospel is so simple you have to be taught not to believe it.

My two favorite Malcolm Muggeridge quotes:

"We have educated ourselves into imbecility."

and

"The depravity of man is at once the most unpopular of the Christian doctrines and yet the most empirically verifiable."

One of the comments on the conversion account I mentioned above was that a God who threatens people and forces conversion through fear should not be followed. I have found no relief from fear but in the loving invitation of Jesus to be freed from a dependence on myself and the world around me for salvation. As long as my hope lies in anything other than Jesus, all I know is devastating uncertainty. I know better than to trust myself.

My only hope is the payment for sin Jesus made to His Father on my behalf, the ongoing work of recovery from the damage of ruin that the Holy Spirit upholds, and the Home that waits for me.

Without Jesus, my trajectory is fixed on meaningless decay and the desperate dismal fear of helplessness to change anything.

With Jesus, all things are made new and his perfect love casts out all fear.

One of the deepest fears is that, if we really look into it, we'll find that love isn't real. Haven't we seen enough pain to make us doubt that love is possible? We do our best to keep distracted or tangled in intellect. It's too dangerous to look love in the face: what if we find empty sockets and a mocking lifeless skeletal grin? It is frightening. "I'll follow any destructive fancy if I can only protect myself from my deepest fear- the discovery that even God cannot be trusted for his love is a lie!"

I have no magic words, no unstoppable clever turn of phrase. I do believe that the love of God is alive, it's true. The beauty of it will break your heart, the strength of it will carry you to your deathbed, the purity of it will wash away the dark dream of fear. When the morning comes your own face shall shed light enough to lend brilliance to the dew.