What God thinks

One of the reasons that the gospel doesn’t make sense to us is that we have to accept the fact that we might be wrong about ourselves. The fact that God loves us despite our frailty and despite our self-hatred is difficult to grasp. It goes against everything we know. We love others because they’re cute and nice. God loves us because he is love.

So, we might have to accept that what others say about us is wrong. We might even have to admit that what we say about ourselves is wrong, even though we profess to know ourselves quite well. God has the final say about who we are and how much value we have.

There’s this Brennan Manning book where he’s talking about this very idea and he quotes a line from the movie Apocalypse Now: “The only real freedom is freedom from the opinions of others, even freedom from the opinion of yourself.” The apostle Paul takes hold of the same idea in 1 Corinthians 4:3-4: “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.” The truth that we grasp at as Christians is that because of Jesus, we are judged worthy. God has the final say on our worth and because he is love, we can trust his say and not anyone else’s – not even our own.