I need to check the TV to make sure Tiger Woods is doing badly.Implied, I think:
He deserves to lose because of his fall from grace and what he did to his wife and kids.My son and I were lamenting that this is too often the heart of the church. He targeted this thinking with two astonishing questions:
Is it possible for Satan to be saved?
Is God rooting for Satan?Not will he be saved but in the context of God's complete love and grace, is it possible? Has God stopped loving Satan?
Our answer here may very well reflect our true heart concerning forgiveness and where we place ourselves in the scheme of humanity, especially in the realm of fellow believers.
Does God write anyone off because of what he or she has done?
We are in a bit of a Pharisaic dilemma here. Jesus often condemned the Pharisees for hardheartedness in the midst of preening their service to God. In our churches, we write off our fellow believers if the sins they commit fall under our pseudo-shouldn't-be-redeemed list. Yes, Tiger Woods blatantly committed adultery. Is he out of the reach of God's forgiveness? If not, then why is he out of the reach of ours?
When our hearts are not tender toward each other's stumblings, we cannot love them well. When we decide they are somehow missing the evangelical mark, we cannot love them well. As believers, we claim to carry with us the heart of God, but we pick and choose toward whom we will grant that love. In God's eyes, could this qualify as evangelical cruelty?
Spiritual autism is the absence of love demonstrated toward the one True God. As good evangelicals, we never falter in our demonstration of love toward God. Or do we? 1 John 2 brings us up short:
Anyone who claims to live in God's light and hates a brother or sister is still in the dark.Don't we hate when we do not love?
A person close to me shared this story:
I was to teach a lesson on forgiveness. As I prepared, I was reminded by God how I deemed this particular person a 'worm' for what he had done to my friend. My next image was myself as that same 'worm.' I, too, was in the same need of the same forgiveness.No sin can remove us from the forgiveness of Christ. No evangelical performance can remove us from our need for Christ.
These days, the sin I fear most in myself is setting myself above another for any reason.
Lord, show me continually how I set down the torch of Christ to set myself above another. Forgive my spiritual autism and show me how to return to full fellowship with you through my love toward others.
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