Our
Task
“And
this is it. This is the life we get here on earth. We get to give away what we
receive. We get to believe in each other. We get to love imperfectly. And we
never know what effect it will have for years to come. And all of it…all of it
is completely worth it.”
Nadia
Bolz-Weber (Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People)
Many
people take one look at Nadia Bolz-Weber, with her tattoos and her funky hair,
and say, “how can this person possibly represent the church or speak for the
divine.” She is different, for sure. But when we take a closer look, the
questionable thing here is our judgement. Don’t we look at most people who do
not look like us as suspicious? Don’t we look at people of other religions
besides Christianity as misguided? Don’t we look at people of color or people who
are struggling with addiction or mental illness as dangerous? Maybe, just
maybe, the log is in our own eye.
Judging
is something I was groomed to do. Overcoming it may be the task of this
lifetime. Getting to the spiritual stage of development where I can look at
people who are drastically different from me and see them as children of the one
creator, no different from me—regardless of who they are—is a mountain to
climb. I am nowhere near the summit.
But
that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To progress developmentally and spiritually—to
become what Maslow called “self-actualized,” and Jung called “individuated.”
There are many stages of development, and our lives offer opportunities to progress
up the ladder. We learn to, as Bolz-Weber says above, give away what we
receive, believe in each other, love imperfectly, and to forgive and be forgiven. We don’t do
this to earn our place in heaven, but simply because we become that way when we
begin to look at ourselves instead of others. As we let go of the need to judge
others, we allow ourselves to be forgiven for the flaws we carry, for the
mistakes made, and for the inherent prejudices we carry for whomever does not
look, act, or profess what we do.
It
doesn’t please God, or the world soul for me, or anyone else, to go through an
entire lifetime holding grudges, irrational beliefs, or angry judgements. We
are meant to progress to the level of compassion that Jesus spoke of in the
Good Samaritan story, in the Prodigal Son story, in the Sermon on the Mount.
That is what he tried to teach the people of his time. Stop judging—give it
away, believe in each other, forgive and be forgiven. And by all means, love imperfectly. It is still true today.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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