As we move deeper into Lent, I want to consider another way that we sometimes try to absolve ourselves of our very real guilt – by normalising our faults and claiming that the wrong we do is, in fact, absolutely right.
Recently I read of someone who spoke with regret of how he, like some of us perhaps, had consistently acted selfishly towards those he said he loved. Until, that is, he came across an article about a condition he came to think he was born with. Believing it explained everything he ever did wrong, he diagnosed himself with the condition and thus absolved himself of all responsibility for his behaviour.
Furthermore, by claiming that God had made him the way he was, he reevaluated his behaviour as not only ‘not wrong’, but rather ‘beautifully right’.
Now don’t hear me wrong here – I am not saying that such conditions aren’t real, nor that they can’t profoundly affect an individual’s behaviour.
But even when they do, explanation is not the same as exoneration.
And nor is the growing tendency to describe every difficulty as a gift, and every limitation a superpower, helpful.
Which isn’t to say that some conditions – typically those causing less severe problems – don’t come with certain limited benefits.
But I can’t help but notice that the parents of those with more severe developmental difficulties don’t romanticise their condition in this way. Which is not to say that they don’t enjoy being with their children – for how could they not when they love them so much. But their difficulties are a cause of great sadness too – for exactly the same reasons. And knowing how horribly hard life can be for those suffering with such disabilities – and for those who care so wonderfully for them – they don’t need the additional burden of being told they should be happy about the situation that they find themselves in.
Which is why framing real difficulties as benefits, whilst sometimes sounding kind, is in fact, often cruel.
That said, those born with such conditions are no less precious, no less loved by God, and no less His image-bearers as a result. Our value does not depend on what we can or cannot do, on what we have or should not have done, but on the worth bestowed on us by the one who created us. And since He is unchanging, it remains the same – irrespective of whether the care we need comes from novice parents, advanced palliative care experts, or those supporting individuals with the severest special needs.
Or, indeed, since nobody is beyond redemption, prison wardens in high-security detention centres.
Because the truth is that we are all born into a world that is not as it should be – and we all bear the marks of that brokenness at birth – at the very least the moral ones, and not infrequently the physical and psychological ones as well. And we make a mistake if we pretend that the faults we are all born with are, in and of themselves, part of God’s original design.
So then, we must not think that being born with a sinful disposition makes that disposition beautiful – any more than we would call beautiful a genetic condition that promises nothing more than a tragically short life marked only by pain and sadness.
Because if we do, not only will we risk romanticising disability, which, as Jesus himself made plain, has no bearing on our moral status [John 9:1-3], we will risk romanticising our sin, which does.
And seeing sin as beautiful will leave us blind to our need of repentance and, as a result, prevent us from experiencing the salvation we will no longer recognise we need.
Accepting then that we are all broken, we honour those with life-long difficulties most by loving them – and not by pretending that the disability causing them such heartache is in fact something that they are fortunate to possess.
For not all that God sovereignly permits is necessarily good – even if He can, and does, bring good out of it. Because not being part of God’s original design doesn’t mean that what we providentially experience today is somehow outside of His loving purpose.
And neither should those who are able to overcome significant hardship, often in remarkable and inspirational ways, be used to shame those who cannot.
Life isn’t that simple. God often works in ways that we cannot comfortably comprehend, and things are frequently very different from how they may appear.
Like, for example the crucifixion of Jesus Christ – that looked like ugly defeat but was, in fact, glorious victory.
So then, during Lent, we don’t need to be told we’re perfectly okay – because we’re not. And whether our faults are carefully concealed or on display for all the world to see, we are all sick and need to be offered a cure.
Because our sin and our guilt are real – we are all in need of a Saviour – one that is as real as the rescue He secures.
And his name is Jesus – the innocent Son of God who, suffering in the place of the guilty, provides the perfect sacrifice required to fully guarantee both our future physical and emotional wholeness, and atone for all our sin.
Mine as well as yours.
Even so, there’s nothing pleasant about crucifixion, nothing beautiful about being nailed to a cross, and nothing romantic about substitutionary death – it was simply the remedy that was necessary.
If, that is, we are not to remain horribly broken forever.
Related posts:
To read ‘No Ifs or Buts’, click here
To read ‘Hope in the Ashes: Why Sin Remains But Does Not Reign’, click here
To read ‘Hope for the Guilty’, click here
To read ‘When our best isn’t good enough’, click here
To read ‘On Being Confronted by the Law’, click here
To read ‘On Narcissism…an the Pot Calling the Kettle Black’, click here
Some musings 