Fear to Guilt

Fear to Guilt:
I've noticed it in you lately. I've noticed it in myself too. It’s deeply interwoven into your persona, into your thought process, into your decisions, and into your reactions. I watch people's reactions after I tell then good newsand they react in fear and skepticism. Your visions of wonderful things quickly get a sepia tone wash-out. You’ve become cynical because you feel guilty and scared. You’ve discounted joy and adventure in this life and traded it in for mediocrity and security. It's boring and monotonous.

You're all paralyzed by fear. Somewhere, somehow something terrible happened to you. That's right, me too. If you're alive you've been hurt, and it is terrible. You've had someone near to you die, you've had someone you trust violate you physically or emotionally, or you’ve turned into the person you hated the most. It’s left a scar you can't hide- no matter how much you try to forget, try to change, or try to run away.

If you’re in this boat, and you are if you're honest with yourself, then you’re probably driven by fear or paralyzed by guilt. It just depends on if you were the perpetrator or the victim. If you're driven by either of these emotions then you probably see your life unfolding in one of two ways and for most of us it’s a little of both.

1. You dominate. You see this mostly in men. They don't want to be hurt. They don't want be rejected, they don't want to be let down, they don't want whatever happened when they were younger to happen again, so they dominate all situations. They aim to control the situation, as an attempt to control the outcome. They don’t want to be rejected, used, or hurt. They don’t want to fail or harm- So they attempt to dominate the situation, thus controlling the outcome- which you have either found out or you will soon find out that you can’t. Then you move towards the next stage:

2. You're disengaged. I see this in most everyone I know and I struggle mightily in this arena, too. The old, younger self turned to domination, but when I learned that I can't control the world I turned to this medium to cope. You probably do too. It’s why everyone drinks or smokes so much, or becomes workaholics or runs away or sleeps around. It’s a way…to just get away. Life is easier this way –I agree. It’s easier to be non-confrontational and distant. It’s easier to pretend you don’t care and remove yourself from any emotion. Overtime you become numb, but numb is better than feeling. But, soon you realize you’re not even living. You’ve become a zombie, just going through the motions. You’re slowly melting away- as if you’re already dead.

No matter where you are (I'm a little of both) the result of a life-style like this is guilt. Guilt that you've caused pain or endured pain and guilt that you’ve become someone you didn’t want to become. Your life has paralyzed you so greatly you are yelling, running, or doing both. We all have dreams, and your vision of how your life was supposed to be has been supplanted by a reality that you can't confront because that would mean you failed. So, you're running. You spend your time minimizing pain and building up security. You've got a facade that Facebook helps you hide behind and no one really knows the real you. Instead we spend our lives not letting anything think we've been molested, raped, or beaten. We guard our image so no one will find out we're gay or that we've slept with half a college campus. We tell ourselves we're someone we are not and we hope the world will never see the truth. We tell eachother we are good, but we all know we are a mess. We know that what we are doing today doesn’t fulfill us, but we don’t know where to go next, so we just go back to what we were doing.

I call this dying. You're not alive, you're dying. I've been there. I know. You've been taught your whole life that you're good, that' you've got it together, and that everything will be ok, but your guilt screams a different truth.

That's why I love the Gospel. Gospel means good news. The good news is this: You don't have it together and you never will. God will never say to you "Well done my faithful servant." If you're hoping that when you die God will be there with a loving smile because you lived the "right" life, you are in a heap freaking load of crappy trouble. Sorry. It’s true. If you think because your child or spouse died that God owes you something, you're wrong. You're not getting anything from Him when you die. You can tell yourself I'm wrong, but I dare you to find the truth and show me. I don't care if you feed the homeless, write blogs on God and run an orphanage; you are screwed if you think you've done enough good to get in. How much good is good enough for heaven? Perfection. So, good luck with that.

Now you ask- how is that good news? It’s called freedom. God knows you don't have it together. He loves you anyway. Do you think God's some tough task masker who's holding out on you with all his rules? You don't know him. You're wrong. He's amazing. I said God doesn't owe you anything because He already gave you everything.
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His name is Jesus. You've heard of him. You probably hate him. That's ok. I did too. Someone once told me it was okay that I didn't believe in God because God believed in me. I think what they meant to say is that God loves me anyway. What does that mean? Well, first off -love is more than a feeling- it’s a decision. And, for our sake, God made a decision to love us. Here's how he did it:

He took the wrath we deserve for being screw-ups. For wasting our lives, for being afraid, for walking past homeless people and judging instead of helping, for ignoring the pain around us and doing nothing to make a difference in this shitty world. The wrath we deserve for lying to ourselves, for beating our wives, for molesting our children, for divorcing our spouses that we promised to love through thick and thin. He took the wrath for pretending we are perfect, for making our own rules, for deciding what life is about even though we didn't create it. For being someone who can't tell the truth because they are so afraid that someone won't like who they really are. For being a people that would rather die than live the life they've made for themselves. For being a people that fall so short of perfection that we create new rules and new laws to curve our guilt. For being some one who's pissed at God and gets more enjoyment out of telling Him to go screw Himself. If you're saying this isn't you, then you're lying to yourself and the whole world around you. Even this one little lie makes you unworthy of eternity in a perfect place. You could disregard all of this, but there is no greater mistake you can make. You will die. Then what?

But, God in His infiniate mercy and love for YOU took that anger and poured it on someone else on YOUR behalf. He took the only man who lived a perfect life and made him die in your place. Jesus lived the life you should have lived and died the death you deserve. But, that's not all. You get His reward too. It’s called justification through faith and it’s the only faith the bible teaches. As soon as you let Jesus take your place, acknowledging who He is and who you are not, then you get the smile of God that Jesus gets. Jesus’ life replacing your life and Jesus’ gift become your gift. That's what Grace is, and it truly is Amazing- it's the most beautiful thing in the world.

This is the only way you’ll ever stand before God and have him say "Well done my good and faithful servant.” And, it’s not because God is bad, it’s because you are bad. But, He wants to save you anyway, even if you have ignored him your whole life and are still pissed at Him because you think He stole your wife, dad, or friend. Maybe it was the only way he could get your attention? I don’t know and I don’t care, but what I do care about is letting you know that there’s a place for your guilt, fear, and death – it’s on a cross. Dead and gone. Forgiven and forgotten as far as the east is from the west, it its been that way since He rose from the dead- in your place.

Have you ever been around someone who loves you so much you can feel it? That's how it is when you feel God's smile. It changes you: From the inside out. You start to become a new person. You're gilt is taken away because you are no longer guilty! Your fear fades, because you are perfectly loved for being who you are- a mess. Your life becomes something beautiful because you were created to be loved by God and you can now feel it. You become born again. The fearful, guilt driven, drunken, mean, afraid, pitiful person gets replace by a new, fulfilled, optimistic person who sees life as the perfect risk. You become covered by God, able to take a risk and not worry. He’s got your back. You become too rich to care if you go bankrupt, too wealthy to care if you lose everything, too loved to care if everyone hates you, and driven to love the one that paid it all so you could truly live.

I invite you to give up. I invite you to stop trying to get it all together. Stop trying to pretend you're not hurting inside or that your life of meaninglessness matters. Live for something bigger than yourself. Let God take your guilt away. Let God make you into who you were created to be before you started running away from who you are. I can promise you that God's love is better than anything this life can give you or anything death can take away. You know it must be true because you’ve tried everything else and it just lets you down. Ask Jesus to be your savior, to take your place, to take your penalty, so you can have His reward.

The Gospel allows you the opportunity to be set free. What are you going to do with your freedom?