Experience! How we need it, how we want it, how we run from it! When we are young we go to school to LEARN, then when we get older we want to KNOW; finally we are told, ‘That is not enough, you must have EXPERIENCE’. So off we go to get experiences.
Then we make mistakes. We wonder who gave us the bad instruction manual. We wonder why someone didn’t tell us the whole story before we started down our pursuit for experience.
People expect us to have perfect experiences; ie. only do good, no mistakes, no sins, no failings, no faltering. Because of this we think that this what God is looking for too; after all, does He not say, ‘Be perfect’. Does He not say that He will judge ‘sin’ (the missing of the mark) and even sins of omission? It seems to me that we should have spent a lot more years eating from the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil before EXPERIENCING IT. Right??
Nah. God has repeatedly told us that His basic nature is LOVE, FORGIVENESS, LONGSUFFERING. If that doesn’t tell us right up front that He was expecting us to flub it up, then I don’t know what does. And He must have known we’d make some pretty bad blunders along the way; after all, HE ASSIGNED HIS SON TO DIE for those mistakes. Ouch. Martyr the only one who DID IT PERFECT and give unto us experiential fools and fumblers HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Now that is REALLY foolishness to us wise ones.
If someone continually stabbed your heart with a knife, spit in your eye, ran away from you, and then attacked the people you loved, would YOU die for them, or hand over your kid as a sacrifice for them??
One thing is for certain: HIS WAYS ARE NOT OUR WAYS. God is good to a degree that we cannot even fathom; so we try to remake His goodness in our works oriented religious image. And all we ever hear by the Spirit is FORSAKE YOUR IDOLS! It’s time to lay your biggest idol down, folks; the idol of… YOUR REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR. See GOD instead! Seek God — He is the ULTIMATE experience!!
Original Copyright: © Anthony J. Massotti Th.M. 9/26/2004