Don’t Take a Human Measure of Mercy

The human measure of divine characteristics has always been interesting. Earthly expressions of damnation and wrath know no bounds. You’ll not struggle to find believers who will judge a person worthy of hell without equivocation if a particular sin goes without repentance or is committed too many times. No matter what the extenuation in circumstance, the conception of God’s punitive measures does not struggle to exceed imagination.

Unfortunately this abundance of imagination doesn’t tend to extend to God’s mercy in the same degree. Time and again religious wisdom reaches beyond even the cruelest levels of human sadism to warn others what God is capable of for punishment. These punishments can come in return for something as taking God’s name in vain inadvertently in the moment, or ascribing to the wrong religion despite an honest desire and attempt to be close to God.

Imagine what these religious leaders would deem as the Godly punishment for putting Jesus to death? Continuous physical and spiritual torture notwithstanding, the punishment for simply not believing is harsh enough let alone cruelly going after God in human form. If the punishment for blasphemy is eternal damnation what is the cost of killing God?

Fortunately for them Jesus’ divine standard of mercy deemed them worthy of forgiveness. As Jesus lingered close to death his final words regarding his tormentors was a plea for exactly that.

Dare to believe God’s love and mercy are more than you can express. Moreover, dare to share such s message with others. You may find your faith in your own salvation strengthened.

The Best Rebuke Can Be Aid Withheld

Compare God’s presence in the bible to how little divine will is witnessed in the world at large today.

Gone are the days of red seas parting and burning bushes. The more we develop as humans the more it seems that God steps back and lets our lives be the lesson.

Many prayers are sent up and many of those prayers are denied or go unanswered. Increasingly God’s greatest and loudest answer to us is no answer.

This is fitting for the way we live our lives. We are not the humans of old who lacked the knowledge of the world to do for ourselves what we would otherwise otherwise call on Godly assistance for. We are and continue to grow in our role as the chief if not sole architects of our own situations.

In this environment God’s lessons on righteousness are best taught through the consequences of our unrighteousness. Lessons on greed are taught through the consequences of obesity and financial meltdown.

A large part of teaching this lesson is not bailing us out of suffering these consequences. The lesson sticks to us through the way that the subsequent struggle stays in our memory. There’s little need on God’s part to actively dole out rebuke. The rebuke is in the consequences.

And so it should be with us. We don’t need to come on strong with rebuke or feel obligated to bail people out when they fall victim to themselves.
Like the Lord we can be a base of support spiritually but not a negative voice or an enabling source of aid.

Learn a little from God and step back from trying to erase people’s mistakes. Imagine where our spiritual self reliance would be if we called on God to rectify every mishap we brought on ourselves. From financial rescue to being locked out of the car, how much would we lose of ourselves for the sake of convenience? How long before we’d start the day with prayer to pre-empt any consequence we’d brought on ourselves?

Something to think about next time the temptation to get involved in someone’s self created calamity kicks in.

Man need not head a Christian family

One theme that often defines the nature of Christian families is that a man needs to be at the head of it. That is fine for those families who willingly enter into those arrangements, but is a poor expression of best practice. If the implication is that families without a man at the head are somehow handicapped we unfairly undermine the value of families where that is not a practical reality.

Consider a family with a single mother. We should not make her feel like her children are going to be worse off no matter what her efforts because she doesn’t have the time, or perhaps the inclination, to bring a man into her life to be part of the careful balance she has cultivated with her children without one.

Consider a family where the man has been head of the house for many years. The woman has a very rigid role with set responsibilities. Neither the husband nor wife have a real appreciation for what the other does. They certainly haven’t taken the time to involve themselves with what the other does or share those responsibilities in any way.

What happens if the husband dies or leaves the wife for another woman? Suddenly she’s not just coping with loss but also how to fill the gaps her husband has filled without a transition or handover. Especially if she was a stay at home mother, she may be faced with having to re-skill and re-enter the workforce while still feeling like she has to maintain what she used to be able to do with her children.

What happens if the husband’s capacity is diminished through accident or an illness like post traumatic stress disorder? There’s not only the adjustment of the set gender roles to cope with, but the danger that the man finds his sense of manhood diminished because he’s not able to fulfil the duties he once took care of. When those duties are part of what that man feels defines his masculinity, it can lead to a further mood of depression that can weigh down on the household.

If families are more comfortable in a partnership where neither leads, and gender roles are not fixed, we should praise the practicality of an arrangement sensitive to the reality of the world, rather than trumpet a Christian alternative in such a way to devalue it.