"When we accept Christ and enter into his covenant, the demands of justice, which are demands for a perfection we do not have, are met by the grace of God, and we are saved. Thus, the saving principles of the gospel covenant are offered to us as a favor, as an act of grace or goodwill. But we can still refuse grace. We can resist God's love and reject his covenant. Christ stands at the door and knocks, but he never kicks it in. We must open the door."
"The good news of the gospel is good news to me not because it promises that other people who are better than I am can be saved, but because it promises that I can be saved - wretched, inadequate, and imperfect (and confused and befuddled and angsty-gay) me. And until I accept that possibility, I have not really accepted the good news of the gospel."
-- Stephen E. Robinson: Believing Christ.
I love this book. I'm re-reading it in preparation for some things I'm doing for Easter. I sometimes wish that He would just "kick in the door" with a spinning karate-chop smooth move, surprising the crap out of me to get my attention that He's there waiting to help fill in the voids, and make me completely solid. I mean, He's done everything else, why can't He do just this one simple final act of kicking in the freakin' knobless door?! Why do I have to get up off my butt, walk across the room and open the stupid door for Him? I don't get it...
Buona Pasqua!
3 comments:
You crack me up. :-)
Maybe it's like when my toddler wants me to carry him, but I'm pretty sure he'll manage to walk on his own two feet.
I know my attempts at humor are often feeble or weak at best. Thanks for enduring me... at least it got you to post and to crack up! :)
Your comments on parenthood made me think how much we do learn the nature of God as we try to be good parents to our children, and allow them to fall on their own, in order to learn to pick themselves up.
My son and I watched the movie "The Island" again recently and there was a conversation that went like this:
Human guy mentions "God".
Clone guy: "What is God?"
Human guy: "You don't know?" Okay... you know when you really, really wish hard for something to happen?"
Clone guy: "Yeah..."
Human guy: "Well, God is the guy that makes sure that what you wished for doesn't happen..." scoffing cynically.
That really jumped out at me. Again, it has a lot to do with being willing to open the door! Sometimes, there's not always someone at the door... and that's when it gets confusing.
As long as someone gets a video of Jesus' spinning karate kick and posts in on YouTube, I can support this imagery. ;)
Sometimes it's definitely annoying that we're supposed to learn to do things on our own and independent of direct divine help, but I guess it's in our best interest, and probably part of what we agreed to endure before we came here. It doesn't make it any easier, but it makes it more understandable.
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