Giving Up and Starting Over

I only know one way to keep the faith - and that is to find a way to understand my life through the lens of scripture. I have a ton of favorite authors; I practice various spiritual disciplines with about as much regularity as I imagine you do; I have thousands of quotes (many inspirational) that I love and store religiously in notebooks that my children will discard over my dead body. These things are helpful. But for me, and I know I'm a weirdo, but it's the way it is - the scriptures are the thing that usually turn my desperation into a decision to carry on. I blame John the Baptist for this.

While Jesus was living in the Galilean hills, John, called “the Baptizer,” was preaching in the desert country of Judea. His message was simple and austere, like his desert surroundings: “Change your life. God’s kingdom is here.” Matthew 3:1-2 The Message

In a previous blog I shared Barbara Brown Taylor's perspective on John's call to repentance. She believes that John's followers heard hope for a new beginning in his call to repent. She suggested that more of us need to repent of our despair than our arrogance. (Can we have both?). This reminds me of my experience with the 12 steps. Both the steps and the gospels invite us to move away from our compulsion to stare into mirrors and bemoan our fate.

From John's perspective, this other way of viewing repentance is healing, not shaming. It asks us to turn from needless recrimination and see the intentions of God's heart - to work with what we give him - even our worst mistakes.

Taylor says it like this, "Those of us who have committed ourselves to a life of repentance and return will not give up on ourselves, no matter how many times we have to repeat the process." (p. 25, Teaching Sermons on Suffering, God in Pain). Why do we not give up? Because we believe in a God who will not give up on us.