I had an interesting conversation with a fellow passenger today on my business trip. He explained to me that he is currently enrolled in the Police Academy where he is training to join the force. Being an irregular church-goer, he told me how his wife made him promise to start attending church regularly once he joined “The Force.” When I asked him why he was waiting for that point in time specifically, he told me that it was because his wife was afraid that if he spent all of his time with criminals, he would begin to pessimistically view everyone – the good and the bad – as criminals. She wanted to make sure that he still believed that there were still inherently good people in the world – therefore, he should go to church more.
I couldn’t help but to be hit with the irony of it all. I understand –in some way- her rationale, but in my mind, it would seem that church should be the precise place where we are made aware of how inherently evil we are. There is indeed no hope for us on our own. We are all by nature, criminals. But then there is grace; the overwhelming gift that frees me from living as a slave to my inherent bad-ness. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, I am seen by the Father as clean, redeemed. I would hope that church would not be a place full of “good people,” rather, a place of redeemed sinners living day by day in light of the reality of the gospel and the grace that is indeed greater than all of our sins.
-Laura
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