DISAPPOINTMENT

"Guilt was not my problem as I felt it. What I felt most was a glob of unworthiness that I could not tie down to any concrete sins I was guilty of. What I needed more than pardon was a sense that God accepted me, owned me, held me, affirmed me, and would never let go of me even if he was not too much impressed with what he had on his hands."

LEWIS SMEDES, GRACE AND SHAME.

"O momentary grace of mortal men,
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God."

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, RICHARD III.

i feel like i've been forced to take inventory of my spiritual life the last couple of days. and to be honest, i wasn't really happy with what i discovered. i can still remember the first time i really heard the gospel as a Christian. it was amazingly freeing ... an indescribable thing. that was about two years ago. now, having surveyed the landscape of my soul, it was hard for me to find even a trace of that grace that once caused my head to spin, my heart to leap, my soul to dance. instead, i saw in myself a return to the mud-pits of seeking the approval of others, the shackles of trying to earn for myself an acceptance that seemed to make my existence worthwhile. i found myself stepping back under the yoke of performance. that once again, while giving lip service to the gospel of grace, i was mechanically working, laboring, toiling so that i might be able to say "see, i am significant, i am accepted, i am as good as i claim to be."

living life like that, ones worst fear is not that people will be angry with you, or that people will dislike you. because usually the people that are angry or do dislike are those people that you don't really care much for anyways. the greatest fear in living life under that bondage is that someone might be disappointed in you. it's the fear that those whose favor you've earned, those who you've gotten to actually like or respect you, might actually see you for who you are. it's the fear that people might be on to your charade; that they may be beginning to "smell a thief". it's that fear that can be absolutely debilitating. it's that fear that makes you feel like your stomach's going to implode and crumple in on itself. it's that fear that makes you cringe.

so what do we poor, senseless fools do? we work harder. we try to compensate for our lapse. we vow to ourselves that we'll never let that happen again. we try to prove to others (and to ourselves) that that disappointment was really just an anomaly in our character, a kind of moral hiccough. and so we dig deeper into our own slave graves.

meanwhile, the gospel offers to us a place of cosmic rest. it offers to us a freeing presence. it holds out for us the reality of an acceptance and an approval that cannot be reneged based on our inability to perform. it tells us that there is Someone who could never be disappointed in us; not because we could never fail him, but because we can never surprise him. and it tells us that that Someone has proclaimed before all the universe that "This one is righteous." And yet we refuse to remain in the gospel ... and we run back to our chains.