When the feel-good factor creeps in

In today’s do what feels right culture, it is becoming increasingly uncomfortable and unpopular to talk about sin.

I am thinking particularly about how we have found so many ways to explain our conflicts, intractable situations and lack of spiritual vitality. We have come up with style, personality, tradition, experience as explanations – which make it acceptable for people to part ways, divide, or worse, outrightly fight ugly.

The world has given us a solid picture of how awry we can get when we believe God to be our side – suicide bombers are so totally out of their mind we decry.

Yet, can it be that underneath many of the real and ‘explainable’ differences, issues and struggles lurk something deeper: sin. It’s not unthinkable that pride, self-righeousness, insecurity and fear, unbridled anger and unforgiveness are the energies behind many of our issues and malaise.

If so, we have a wonderful recourse for God’s Grace and glory to manifest – if we are willing to admit one to another, confess our sins.. even as leaders…to each other because God’s glory and His love constraints us. Rather than hide behind all the respectable reasons we can summon, would not a raw contemplation and bold acknowledgement of sin be a far better conduit? What if God’s glory shows up at precisely those moments of truth-speaking-in-love? What if revival breaks out?

At what price have we maintained our personal, corporate and tradition’s ‘dignity’?

What has happened to the powerful Grace of God, the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, and the strength and mission of Christ? At the heart, have we survived, strategised and striven according to our human ability? What of the power that breaks forth through earthern vessels?

If feels good that we are okay with each other. But that is not the same as loving each other, staying the distance, praying and humbling ourselves for growth that only God gives because the hearts can carry it and the lives can speak it.