mirror, mirror

"Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God."
- 2 Corinthians 4:1-2

I confess. I am uber guilty of this; "handling the word of God deceitfully." Like Eve, my intentions are good (well, mostly), but the outcome, not so much. As an image bearer of Christ, I have not been doing my job properly, I have been a poor representation of the gospel that I owe my life too. I have not reflected Glory of God, the infinite creator, as I have been designed to do. Instead I have sought my own happiness in things created and well, let's be honest, that doesn't really work out in the end. I have sought my own glory and in the name of Christ no less, which is quite reprehensible.

Let me get more specific. Christ has called us to live in the world but not of the world. Reconciling what this looks like in practice is not an easy or quick task. I would even venture to say we spend our whole lives working on this practice as culture and our stages of life change, requiring us to re-contextualize the gospel as seen through our lives. In recent months my life has been a hands on exercise of this.

Nearly every unbeliever I have ever met has some sort of skewed vision of Christianity based on past Christians they have interacted with. This has caused me to make it my personal mission to redeem Christianity by proving how cool Christians are. I'm not disillusioned to the fact that there are a lot, a majority even, of uncool Christians who are difficult to relate to, I am also not diminishing the value of contextualization, quite the opposite. What I am trying to do is confess as my recent attempts to contextualize the gospel have turned into justification of sinful behavior. I have found myself regularly repenting of events having taken place the night or weekend before, my heart broken further each time. The friends who were with me, telling me I didn't do anything they haven't and worse, while others who have known me for years, worried at my destructive behavior and seeming to them, lack of remorse. My own thoughts trying to weed through the good and the bad, knowing the answer is not to disassociate with the unbelieving friends with whom most of my unacceptable behavior takes place, but not knowing how to merge the dualities of my life.

And now it hits me, the words of my dear sister not long after reconciling her own life. Honesty. Brutal honesty. After a dark time in her life, she left the darkness behind when she began being brutally honest with everyone in her life, no matter how much it cost her. She became a woman of integrity, her life being transparent to all. Her "lives" merged together into one perfect testimony of God's grace and mercy.

Now that it has taken me three days to write this blog, I think I am simply going to wrap it up by asking you to pray as I, with God's grace and power, merge my lives into one honest reflection of Christ.