Always Happy to Reconcile with the Repentant

Work has presented a number of interesting opportunities to consider the relationship I have with other people, and to contemplate from this the relationship God has with us. People in a fast food establishment are typically not your smartest, most responsible, kindest, most mature, most easygoing or for that matter the most Christian people you're going to meet in life. And yet, because you can't run away, you can't scream in agony while on shift, you can't quit and you can't fire them, you're forced, as a co-worker, to just take it, whatever they dish out, whether good or bad.

And it is good and bad. Because no matter how well behaved they might be compared to others, they are still evil. And they are all made in the image of God, and able to do good, and are therefore likable, but even despite this, they may not know God and therefore they don't have His sustaining joy inside and sooner or later show you just how bafflingly unpleasant they can be. Because you don't have the opportunity to end it all, either by walking off, or by forcing them to behave, or by eliminating them from employment, your day-to-day life becomes a prolonged exercise in implementing forgiveness. You can't hold grudges, because you are forced to interact, and are therefore unable to cut them off completely and ignore them, much as you may like. And that also means that no matter how cruelly they may have treated you, no matter how disrespectfully, or ignorantly, or hatefully, in a few days' time they might laugh and be jocular in your presence, and you might tire of your hurt feelings and even chuckle, yourself. 

It's a strange thing. But it doesn't mean they were less wrong. It doesn't mean they are good people because you have to treat them as if they are. It doesn't mean anything like that. It's just easier to let things go than to hold on to them, because the sheer amount of insanity you experience at a workplace like that is too much to remember, frankly. It only hurts you to recall it all. Letting it go--forgiving it--is better for your heart.

Feeling Bad in A Good Way

I recently fell into some sin that I'd avoided for a while; the details aren't important, so I won't go into them. But the point to stress here is the disappointment over falling down when you had seen positive indications that you'd finally moved past it, for many months. 

I have to confess, I love the feeling of ending a bout with sin and walking away from it. Getting away from whatever it was, and taking some alone time to pray to God and get back to living for Him instead of running away -- it's such a relief. I wrote about this in an earlier blog post.

Most people feel bad after doing something they know is wrong. But there's two different ways to feel bad about something. As a general rule, you can either pity yourself or you can be filled with sorrow over how what you did affected the person you did it against. There are such things as "victimless crimes," where something you do doesn't necessarily hurt another person. But there's no such thing as a "victimless sin," because all sin is ultimately against God. So the appropriate response to your feelings of guilt after doing something wrong is to be anguished over hurting your relationship with your Heavenly Father. The wrong way to react is to run away from God in shame, refusing to deal with Him. The wrong way to react is to make it all about you. 

Think about it: "I should be better than this." Really? You should be better than you are? You must think highly of yourself. Stop and realize--this sort of thought is actually PRIDE at its core. You suppose that you have it in yourself to be good. That is why you fail to reconcile with God; you run from Him because in your mind you truly think you can fix your mistakes without His help. It's monumentally arrogant! When you no longer say to yourself, "that's not who I really am--that's not me," and instead admit that you are as rotten as the things you do, then you're ready to accept the fact that only God can help you get out of the hole you've dug for yourself. That's why when you've done something wrong, the right thing to do is not to run away from God, but to run toward Him. He's not our enemy. We're our own worst enemy. He's our friend. 

So as soon as you've admitted to yourself that you have sinned, run to God. Find Him in prayer and have the assurance of your salvation restored to you; thank Him for His forgiveness and ask for His help to strengthen you to avoid sin in the future.

That's what I did. And I was really excited when I found this video of R W Glenn saying essentially the same thing that I'd come to recognize on my own:



His illustration with Peter and Judas explains the difference between 'feeling bad in a good way,' and 'feeling bad in a bad way,' as I referenced in the title.

It seems counter-intuitive at first, but I hope you learn to make the habit of running back to God when you stumble into sin, instead of hiding in shame like Adam and Eve did. Forgiveness is a great thing, and it's freely given. You can't earn it, and thanks to God, we don't need to. 

~ Rak Chazak