My allergies are gone!… but my stigmata’s acting up again. Dammit!
Hopefully I can get the fieldwork stuff done this week, since the public school’s year is up very soon.
Yes, I have a new profile picture. As to what profile pictures usually represent, click here. Mine usually represent that I like to manipulate photos; I think the fact that I’ve been picking a lot of Matrix photos lately indicates a God-complex of some sort.
So I was on the San Jose to Santa Cruz bus this evening and I overheard some kid talking to the bus driver about Christianity. I don’t think his goal was to evangelize the driver or anything; he was mainly chatting about his experience at a youth camp, and about his hypocritical, racist grandfather.
For some reason, I developed an attitude—an unhealthy one—that I understood more about Christianity and theology than this kid did; that he was getting minor points wrong; and who was he, anyway?
…But why on earth was I having this attitude? Where’d that come from? What rational grounds did I have for being bothered by this kid? Who am I, anyway?
This is a very typical form of temptation for us egomaniacs: Irrational, arrogant pride. For what reason? None; since when does temptation need to have a reason? Most temptations don’t. They appeal to our emotions. Reason only comes into it when we try to rationalize why we should give in to them, or try to come up with a good excuse for why we gave in to them.
I had no reason to be annoyed at anyone—and, recognizing this, I was able to recognize the temptation for what it was and resist it.
It’s things like this that make me keep my brain turned on.
Some of it may have been triggered by how dogmatic the kid got. He believed he had Christianity all figured out. Nobody does; and I’m sure he’d admit that he doesn’t have it all figured out if someone quizzed him on specifics. But that doesn’t stop him, and others like him (including me, years ago) from banging away at the parts we’re pretty certain on. In his case, he was pretty certain that racists don’t make it to heaven.
Jesus pointed out that our sins will be forgiven only to the degree that we have forgiven others. (I know this goes against the magic formula of the sinner’s prayer. I can’t help it; Jesus’s teaching is in scripture and the sinner’s prayer isn’t.) Thus it’s very unlikely that racists will be saved; Christians have to love and forgive their neighbors, and that’s hard to do when you hate them irrationally. So this implies that racists are going to hell; but again, I can’t be dogmatic about it. God’s grace can overcome any obnoxious racism; and if God can redeem such people, I’m all for that.
Who are we to say who is going to hell or not? Jesus warned us that we will be judged by the same standard we use to judge others. Considering the things I’ve done, I can’t afford to be anything but gracious. Few can.