Spiritual honesty, that rare and refreshing place

honesty

The honest place is a happy place, often quite a funny place, and the place where most people gather and where the walls are down.

That wonderful scholar F F Bruce pointed out that the wisdom literature in the Bible (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Lamentations, the Song) are all about human responses to truth. They are the place in the Scriptures where you can sound off about how you really feel. (God loves me! God hates me! I’m not giving up! I am giving up! I wish that person was dead! You can overdo religion! Ordinary lives and ordinary pleasures are wonderful!)

I don’t know about you but though I made a commitment to follow Jesus years ago it is taking me a long time to be honest. It has taken me many years and a lot of pain to say things like:

‘God, don’t talk, I just want to hold your hand’

or

‘God, I feel like a tin can being kicked down the road, and you are the one doing the kicking.’

Learning to think those thoughts is, I have found, worth the effort.

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