For many years I thought I was in a bad marriage. “A good marriage wouldn’t be this hard,” I reasoned in the early days. Fast forward a few years, some good books, many conversations, and both sides of marriage therapy, and I soon learned that all marriage is hard marriage.

Among other difficulties, Elaine and I unwittingly traipsed into some deep emotional wounds/problems/issues/etc. that were firmly established well before we met. Doing life together meant that we’d have to deal with it all, and we’d have to do it together.

It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever pursued, but it’s also one of the best. She and I have made so many great memories, overcome much, and, in a way that’s difficult to articulate, become “one.” It’s weird; she’s becoming like me: more disorganized and scattered (just a little), while my level of responsibility and attention to detail are currently unprecedented.

Hard as marriage is, what we’ve managed to build is ultimately a good thing.

I’d say the same for our child-rearing odyssey: super hard and super good in equal proportions.

Add my difficult pursuits in ministry along with some personal experiences of other people doing good things and I’m comfortable forever testifying that nothing good is easy.

Marriage, kids, vocation, generosity, benevolence, humility, intelligence, honesty, leadership, education, or whatever this world requires to function properly; if we pursue it, and it’s good, it’s also going to be difficult.

MLK went after something good, so did Jesus, and they had to walk through hell to get it. Granted, the world was blessed by their pursuit, but what a raw deal, eh?

This arrangement makes me a little angry. Why is the world set up this way? From my religious perspective, God could have ordered things any way he wanted. Why put this particular rule into the cosmos? It makes me want to not pursue good things.

But that would be hard too. It seems that we were created to create, to explore, to build, heal, love. A life without those things might very well be more difficult than a life dedicated to them.

In Hell

Lots of famous people have written about their struggles with adversity and what they found by persevering through them. There’s not much written about the virtues of quitting and all of the blessings that come from it.

If you’re stuck in the middle of a good pursuit, thinking about giving up, convinced that there can be no possible good on the other side of your struggle, and/or that your struggle will never end, following are some thoughts from people who, I’ll argue, had it tougher that we do. I don’t mean to demean your pain, but others have walked through something that’s at least similar in scope, and saw something on the other side.

When hardships come into your life it breaks you for a while, but when it is done with you, you evolve into a new person. ~ Madalsa Sharma

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost

“Hollowness: that I understand. I’m starting to believe that there isn’t anything you can do to fix it. That’s what I’ve taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mold yourself through the gaps” ~ Paula Hawkins

“Your friends will believe in your potential, your enemies will make you live up to it.” ~ Tim Fargo

” …we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” ~ St. Paul

“Life has moments that feel as if the sun has blackened to tar and the entire world turned to ice. It feels as if Hades and his vile demons have risen from the depths of Tartarus solely for the purpose of banding to personally torture you, and that their genuine intent of mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish is tearing you to shreds. Your heart weighs as heavily as leaden legs which you would drag yourself forward with if not for the quicksand that pulls you down inch by inch, paralyzing your will and threatening oblivion. And all the while fire and brimstone pour from the sky, pelting only you.
Truly, that is what it feels like. But that feeling is a trial that won’t last forever.” ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

“We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.” ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.” ~ Lou Reed

Through Hell

These thoughts didn’t come from the minds of young, sexy people who drive the right cars and wear the right clothes and do all the young, cool, sexy things. They came from older, battle-hardened humans who walked across the Devil’s lawn enough times to know that there are so many better things to pursue than sexiness.

There’s something that happens to us in these moments of hardship, something that doesn’t happen when we decide, understandably, to quit. We get something out of the deal that we simply can’t find anywhere else; namely, the strength and courage required for the best pursuits.

But this is another thing about the cosmos that irks me: the only place to buy that kind of strength and courage is in moments that require strength and courage.

I’ve said this a million times I know, but we’re all looking for life, i.e., meaning, fun, intimacy, joy, significance, true pleasure, laughter.

And we’ll find none of it in places that don’t require strength and courage.

It’s interesting to note that Jesus said (my paraphrase), “You want life? Put your life in my hands. Let me have it. Turn it over to me and you’ll find more than you could ever hope to find on your own.”

I’ll boldy testify to anyone who’ll listen: he was right. But 0 of the times that I’ve managed to hand over my life have been easy.

And they have all been, without exception, good.

If you want to quit, I get it. I certainly have, many times. But don’t quit because the associated difficulties have you convinced that you’re on the wrong track. There are no good pursuits that don’t carry with them a mountain of adversity.

If you’re in the middle of something awful and you can’t quit, I’ll cite two promises from scripture.

The first is the idea that adversity will always be with us, regardless of what we pursue. The second is that God will always be just as present, if not more so, as our hardest moments. I don’t simply mean that we can be comforted by his presence.

I mean to say that he has a plan.

The future moves forward at God’s whim, not at the whim of randomness and certainly not at the whim of people. It’s an impossible thing for humanity to reconcile, our minds are too frail: somehow we have the freedom to do whatever we want – barring teleportation, flying, and some other things – while at the same time being part of a future that unravels according to a predetermined plan.

If we decide to persevere, we submit to powers beyond ours, and to a future that is unknown, beyond the fact that we will experience something that lies between utter failure and brilliant success.

If we quit, we become part of a different narrative, but at least we get to be the one in the driver’s seat and experience whatever pleasure that comes from being in control.

I can’t say that I’m unashamed of the times that I’ve quit, and I wonder what I missed out on, what could have been built had I stuck with it. But I wouldn’t trade my current life, or the hell that came with it, for anything. For the people who have been blessed by my perseverance, I would do it a thousand times again.

I get tired of how most religions – mine included, or the cultural expression of it – focus so much on bad behavior. There’s a tendency in Evangelicalism, for example, to talk ad-nauseum about “sin,” where we reference a list of things that God doesn’t want us to do, then ruminate on all the ways that our list gets ignored, disrespected, trodden upon, but not by us, mind you.

Then we move into the topic God’s forgiveness, which is available to everyone, so long as they first admit that they’re hopeless sinners, full of sin, can’t stop sinning, etc.

Sin, sin, sin…

As a Christian who derived his faith from the Old and New Testaments, I’ll admit that I hold a very Evangelical anthropology, i.e., that no human can stop sinning. Our holy writ is not shy or sparing in its references to this. St. Paul went so far as to call us enemies of God. I understand why we so frequently include sin in our pantheon of things to talk about when we talk about God.

But I wonder if we focus on it too much.

To be fair, religious people aren’t the only ones who focus too much on bad behavior. The idea of “sinning” wasn’t invented by religion; morality and her many codes make frequent appearances through human history. In the same vein, judging others for their lack of allegiance to whatever moral code also wasn’t invented by religion. Judging others is just something we do.

Regardless of religious affiliation, adherence, or general posture, everyone has their own personal “10 Commandments” – diverse as they may be – and feels a deep sense of shame when they fail to adhere to them.

Nobody should be surprised that humanity’s obsession with bad behavior has found its way into religion.

The Bible, especially the Old Testament, doesn’t help. God’s alleged list of sins goes far beyond the actual 10 Commandments, deep into the realm of absurdity for many. The way that the OT talks about sinners drives many contemporary Christians to follow suit.

But then something odd happens.

The New Testament shows up and puts a spin on the Old one – and religion in general – that nobody prior had thought of before. It doesn’t nullify the Old Testament, but integrates it into a story of unconditional forgiveness that is so extreme, many Christians can’t handle it, this Christian included.

The first order of business, it seems, is to get sin out of the way, not just for “Christians,” but for the entire world. The New Testament doesn’t say that sin doesn’t exist, or that we should all ignore it. It simply claims that the barriers that exist between humanity and God – and by proxy, humanity and humanity – have been removed. It then begs us to live as close to God and each other as we can manage.

In short, the bad behavior so frequently referenced in the Old Testament is removed from center stage in the New Testament. It is no longer the hub around which everything revolves.

Don’t get me wrong, the Old Testament is fundamental to our understanding of the New. Any religion that doesn’t acknowledge humanity’s fraility with regard to bad behavior is a waste of time in my opinion. But the New Testament does something with that frailty that no other religious document does. Having acknowledged and condemned our sins, it puts them to death, or to put it in the ancient Greek of Paul’s teaching: it buries them, never to be resurrected.

I realize that I’ve just opened a million cans of theological worms, and that there’s a lot to unpack, but imagine for just a moment that God exists and that he no longer holds your sins against you. Your slate is wiped clean regardless of what you believe about God, religion, bible, or whatever 10 commandments you personally hold.

If you could accept that, it would do great violence to both your shame and your compulsion to judge others. If we could all accept that, it would change the world.

But that’s a tall order. Most Christians who confess such a belief struggle mightily to accept it, especially to the degree that we extend it to others. Most of us are so anemic here that we seldom talk about it outside the walls of the church.

When we do manage to talk about it, we end up talking about sin more than anything else.

Sin, sin, sin.

In order to get your slate wiped clean, the argument goes, you first have to accept the fact that you’re sinning all the time. If you can’t admit that, the argument continues, there’s no point in me talking to you about how your sins have been wiped clean.

It’s like going to a homeless person and telling them that a rich guy has built a house for them, but they can’t have the house until they admit that they’re homeless and confess all of the sins a homeless person is guilty of, like homeless people need to be reminded.

If they refuse, they can’t have the house.

If I was the person who built the house, that would make me angry. The house is a gift, unconditionally given, no strings attached, keys under the mat. All you have to do is walk in the door. You already know that you’re homeless, why beat you over the head with it?

But, the argument goes, if you don’t make the homeless person acknowlege, admit, and condemn their sin, won’t they continue in it?

Of course they will.

Nobody stops sinning, even after they’ve acknowledged, admitted, and condemned their sin. On top of that, we sin in ways that we’re not even aware of. How does one repent of sin they can’t/won’t acknowledge?

The bible condemns us all, claiming that we’re all sinning on the same level, regardless of how much we might try to stop. It then peddles the idea that we’re all forgiven, without condition.

“Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord” ~ Romans 7:24-25

The 10 Commandments that you live under, the list that reminds you over and over again how much of a failure you are, has been put to death, regardless of what you believe about God. Sure, there are consequences for breaking whatever rules, but your sin no longer defines you, nor does it place any barriers between you and God, or anyone else.

If the world could rid itself of shame, it would change in a way that the religious world’s “ministry of condemnation” simply hasn’t managed to accomplish.

According to the teachings of Jesus, there is no longer a need for you to ruminate on the things in your past that you’re ashamed of. Sure, they happened, and you might still be suffering consequences for them. But God doesn’t see them. He doesn’t keep them stored in some heavenly vault that he occasionaly visits when he’s got nothing else to do.

Far as the almighty creator of the universe is concerned – the very king of the cosmos according to us Christians – you have been judged and found not guilty.

And so, continuing to feel guilty – keeping your personal sins always close at hand to remind yourself of how much you suck – is one of the most un-Christian things you can do. I’ll assure you that the higher things of love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, generosity, patience, etc., are much more difficult when we fail to (un)see our sin the way God does.

We’ve all been invited into a new space, one where shame, and the unforgiveness that comes with it, is the actual sin. Imagine for a minute what such a life would look like. Best of all, it’s free, a gift, unconditionally given, no strings attached.

Keys under the mat.

That’s the good news, the “Gospel,” τό εὐαγγέλιον, core to the message of Jesus, and the reason for his death and resurrection. It’s not free, and it comes with its conditions, but those were met, paid for – however you want to look at it – by God himself.

“It has been accomplished.” ~ Jesus

All you have to do is walk in the door.

I frequently get chastised for “picking on Christians.” Some have suggested that I might not be a true believer. “Why focus on the bad behavior inside the church while completely ignoring the mountain of sin that happens outside the church?” my friends ask.

You have to cut me some slack here. My social media feed is full of Jesus-followers, not merely critiquing non-Christians but demeaning and vilifying. I’m tired of it.

I don’t see the point in critiquing the non-Christian behavior of non-Christians. And who said we’re not supposed to critique the church, like that’s some kind of sin? Almost every time the New Testament talks about bad behavior, it’s referring to folks inside the church.

Christians.

But there’s one passage that goes into great detail about the evil deeds of those outside the church, people who “don’t know God” as we like to say. It’s frequently referenced when Christians take to social media to belittle non-Christians for their behavior.

What is commonly missed is that this passage is a bait-and-switch for the next passage, one that rarely sees any Sunday AM pulpit time.

It’s in a letter from St. Paul to the church in Rome, typically referred to as the “Book of Romans” in the New Testament. Chapter 1 contains a very long list of sins that the non-Christian world of Paul’s day was allegedly guilty of. To name a few: Godlessness, wickedness, the suppression of truth, foolishness, idolatry, sexual impurity, depravity, evil, greed, envy, murder, deceit, malice, strife, gossip, slander, God-hating, insolence, arrogance, and everyone’s favorite to condemn, same sex relationships:

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. ~ Romans 1:26-27

This is frequently referenced as one of the Bible’s anti-Gay passages, but if you read on, you’ll understand that bashing Queer folk wasn’t Paul’s intent.

Either way, “If we’re not supposed to condemn the non-Chrisitan world’s sins,” I’m asked, “what the hell is Paul doing here?”

First, his very Jewish audience would read this and think, “oh yeah, those godless sinners… God’s going to get ’em. Preach it Paul!!!” That’s why Paul uses “they” over and over again. He’s not teaching his readers something they don’t already know. He’s simply working them into a self-righteous lather so that he can spring his trap in the next chapter.

“Therefore,” he continues:

“…YOU have no excuse, YOU who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point YOU judge another, YOU are condemning yourself, because YOU who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when YOU, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do YOU think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do YOU show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead YOU to repentance?”

“But because of YOUR stubbornness and YOUR unrepentant heart, YOU are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed… For God does not show favoritism.”

Yikes.

Today’s Christian might say that this doesn’t apply to us because we’re not guilty of the activities outlined in Chapter 1. But neither was the church that Paul wrote to. There is no evidence that the fledgling congregation in Rome was regularly perpetrating such. In fact, Paul begins his letter with praise for how amazing and famous this church is.

How can he accuse them of being so guilty?

Remember that the founder of our religion equated hatred with murder, and “lustful thoughts” with adultery, which is an “abomination” according to the Old Testament.

This is where New Testament Christianity gets tricky, and often rejected. The Bible teaches that everyone sins, nobody can stop sinning, and nobody’s sin is better or worse than anyone else’s. It’s brilliant by the way. This puts us all on the same level. If everyone’s guilty, we’re all in need of the unconditional mercy and forgiveness that lay at the core of Jesus’ teaching.

No spiritual caste system can survive here.

Either way, when we, for example, accuse the Transgender movement of threatening our children or demeaning women, while utterly refusing to admit all the threatening and demeaning aspects of our religion, we condemn ourselves, according to St. Paul’s line of thinking.

In many ways, we condemn our religion.

We’re so focused on the non-churchy world’s behavior that we frequently turn a blind eye to the mess that’s making us one of the most clueless, culturally irrelevant organizations on the planet.

People think we’re crazy. Nobody wants to listen to anything we have to say.

But that’s because they’re hopeless sinners, right? They “don’t know God” like we do. We are “indwelt by the Spirit of God” which is why our moral code is so much higher and righteous than theirs. They don’t have anything to guide them. They wouldn’t know righteousness if it bit them in the ass. They don’t know the truth that we know. Their sins are repulsive.

They, they, they.

If God’s spirit has led us to be so repulsed by non-Christian misdeeds, it would lead us into a similar repulsion of the sins that thrive in today’s church. They might look/feel/act/smell different but, according to Paul, they’re just as bad.

You might be tempted to throw all of that back in my face, asking why I’m so repulsed by Christian misdeeds and not equally repulsed by the mountain of sin outside the church.

There are many things about our culture that I find repulsive, some because I’m a 56-year-old male raised in the south who needs to grow up, some because they truly are repulsive, and all points in between. Just because I don’t comment on a certain cultural facet doesn’t mean I’m OK with it.

But I’ll ask again, why rip on the non-Christian behavior of non-Christians? What’s the point? And why does the New Testament – the very “Word of God” – so frequently rip on Christian behavior while almost categorically ignoring everyone else’s shenanigans?

How do we miss this?

Whatever Christianity’s job is in this world, it’s not condemnation. We’re not qualified. We’ve been doing this long enough and it’s gotten us less than nowhere.

Instead, let’s change us, audit us, correct us, work on us. Let’s make us better, an institution unlike any other – as the bible seems to intend – one that’s full of mercy, understanding, grace, and the kind of painful truth that comes part and parcel with waving the Word of God around like it’s intended for someone else.

I’ll argue that Jesus sent his disciples into the world to change it like it’s never been changed before, not by force and certainly not by condemnation, but by something much more peaceful, and full of hope; something that ripples far beyond the bearer into the most broken, “repulsive” parts of our world.

Zero of that happens when we – Christian sinners – decide instead to pick on non-Christian sinners. That makes me mad, so I blog. But in this particular case, I’m not picking on you, or taking swats at you with the Word of God.

St. Paul is. Read it for yourself, as one literary unit, here, and never again use Romans 1 to condemn anyone but us.