Focus less on shortcomings and more on growth

15 But the free gift of Christ isn’t like Adam’s failure. If many people died through what one person did wrong, God’s grace is multiplied even more for many people with the gift—of the one person Jesus Christ—that comes through grace. 16 The gift isn’t like the consequences of one person’s sin. The judgment that came from one person’s sin led to punishment, but the free gift that came out of many failures led to the verdict of acquittal. 17 If death ruled because of one person’s failure, those who receive the multiplied grace and the gift of righteousness will even more certainly rule in life through the one person Jesus Christ.

18 So now the righteous requirements necessary for life are met for everyone through the righteous act of one person, just as judgment fell on everyone through the failure of one person. 19 Many people were made righteous through the obedience of one person, just as many people were made sinners through the disobedience of one person.

Romans 5:15-19, CEB

Step 7: We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Last Sunday we had a lovely and wide-ranging conversation about Step 7. We talked about all of it, with particular attention given to humility and shortcomings. When it came to shortcomings- different definitions were given. Some believed they weren’t the same things as “sin,” others disagreed.

I’m not sure where I stand on this. For some time now I’ve focused my energy on Sunday mornings encouraging people to stop being fixated on sins or shortcomings, if they are indeed  two different things. One definition of sin that resonates well enough with me is the idea that it is a kind of “missing the mark.” Sin’s a bit more complicated than that because it’s not just a particular action that happens in a particular moment. It’s also a force in the world that exists outside of us that comes for us and tempts us into “missing the mark.”

People of faith for quite some time have made it their mission to take sin seriously. It’s just so serious, you know? All these people are out here sinning. We’ve got to put a stop to this! In America, the gospel has been completely distorted since the time of frontier revivals. A couple of amateur pastors figured out that if you make people feel really badly about themselves and threaten them with eternal damnation then you get a lot more people converting to Christianity.

And for the next 150 years, fear sold. Fear sold pretty hard. It sold so hard that many people in our country believe this is the only way the Gospel has ever been preached! Well, that isn’t the case. And European Christians think the way we present the Gospel is silly and confusing.

In the rest of the world, the Gospel is about what God does. God is creating a new reality that will be defined by grace, forgiveness, mercy, and love (as opposed to greed, conflict, violence, and competition) and He calls people into faith to help people see what that new reality will be like. These faithful people embody those principles so that other people can see God for who he is and to try to create a glimpse of that new reality in the here and now so we can begin to experience the benefits through the work of God’s holy spirit. (Side note: Other cultures emphasize different aspects of the gospel and there are always some things that are given greater weight and some things that are left out depending on where you are. That’s just part of the deal).

It’s so weird. I just described the Gospel and I didn’t even talk about what a sinner you are. I would guess that at least some people reading this believe that I haven’t described the full Gospel. Well, that’s true in a way. Nobody describes all aspects of what God is doing in 3 sentences. But this description has significantly more theological meat on the bone than the version of the gospel that goes, “You’re a sinner, repent or die a painful death in a sea of probably pretty good people who missed their last chance to say a prayer.”

Why am I talking about this? What’s it got to do with Step 7?

We, as a culture, have been absolutely saturated with talk about sin, failures, and shortcomings. Few cultures on earth deal with more guilt, shame, and preoccupation with our own “wrong-ness” than ours. And the reason for this is because we had a whole big movement that, for 150 years, told us that we were at best nothing and nobody and at worst deserving of eternal torment. So we, as a culture, have lived in fear and anxiety of our own bad-ness and wrong-ness.

I wonder where it has gotten us? Do we seem to be thriving? We have taken sin awfully seriously as a culture. Does sin seem to have declined? Are we becoming more “pure”?

The solution, so the thinking of the church so often goes, is more people in church. More people praying, more people confessing their sin. More people feeling guilty. More people saying the word “God” in public and praying in public and just generally acting like a Look-at-Me-Louie for the Lord. More people sending their kids to Bible studies focused on trivial matters like: Do you think David was afraid when we fought Goliath? Why or why not? Discuss amongst yourselves and nominate one member of the group to share your answers with everyone else.

Has this been the solution?

No because what’s happened is people have either left the church or stayed in it while hating themselves. Why wouldn’t they hate themselves? It’s strongly implied (often enough) that God does.

What does this do?

It creates people who are too paralyzed by their own fear and self-hatred to transform into a person of God who works to make the world a better place not so that they earn their spot in that world but just because it’s the right thing to do as an act of service to the God who is redeeming all things.

Our fear-mongering and emphasis on sin has not helped us live as more faithful people (more self-righteous maybe). It has, in fact, pushed us so far away from faith that the Church is wheezing and coughing as it slowly waits to breathe its last breath.

Fear mongering has led to cover-ups and sexual abuse scandals and spiritual abuse and verbal abuse and physical and money scandals and you name it. Just Google “church scandal” and try to read everything that comes up and watch as the years pass you by.

Are you following me? Taking sin seriously HAS NOT WORKED.

At least…taking sin seriously in the kind of way the church in America has tried to up until now.

But…is there another way?

Yes there is. Through Christ’s work, many have become righteous.

The better way is recognizing that God’s acceptance has gone before us and therefore our good behavior doesn’t earn the acceptance and the bad behavior doesn’t take it away. Acceptance went first. When we have acceptance, we can change. This is why being so serious about sin hasn’t worked- it doesn’t open us to change. It keeps us stuck in a pattern of guilt and shame and that simply does not transform us for the better. It brings out the worst in us.

And so, yeah, I’ve stopped emphasizing sin and shortcomings. Why? Because people grow when you see the best in them and when they see the best in themselves. If people are growing…there’s a good chance the world is looking more and more like God’s new reality. So…maybe there are some benefits to taking sin less seriously. Namely, that people start becoming more godly. Imagine that! They probably don’t even need to be lectured in order to become more faithful!

We have not been taught that the grace of God is a free gift of acceptance so that the world might be a little bit better as we wait for it to become completely transformed. God’s grace isn’t given to you so that you can stop having anxiety about using curse words. God’s grace is given so that creation itself can breathe a sigh of relief. So that people stop creating wars and killing each other. So that people can live legitimately peacefully together. So that all people are cared for and provided for. So no one has to hold up a sign saying, “Need help,” because all needs are already provided for. That’s where we’re headed.

And for that reason- I personally don’t give a shit whether or not you curse (yep, that was word play. And for the record taking the Lord’s name in vain has nothing at all to do with cursing. It has to do with making promises in God’s name that aren’t followed through on. So no I’m not sinning to say what I just said. And even if I was, it’d be the most harmless sin of my life). Or whether you occasionally drink too much, or smoke a little too much weed, or any number of other sins and shortcomings.

We need to focus less on this and more about living the kinds of lives that foster peace, forgiveness, mercy, and love.

This is a hard message to hear. It’s not hard in the sense that it’s hard to accept logically. Logically, it’s easy. Everyone thinks those are good things. The hard part is responding to it. This is because it’s hard to receive a gift. It feels like being in the one-down position. As if someone else has something over us. As if they have high status and we have low status. As if low status means undeserving. And this is the very reason why fear-mongering has worked. It plays into the core desire to earn love so that we don’t have to confront the fact that being in a one-down position is in our best interests.

The problem for us is that we may know this with our heads but our heart still says…I need the punishment. I deserve the punishment. The punishment will set me free.

This is a problem because punishment cannot,  does not, will not, never will set people free. It’s a prison cell. The bars of the cell are not our shortcomings. They are the voices that tell us that we are not good enough and we deserve to be miserable.

The voice of God says…the cell is unlocked. The door is open. You can step out if you want and live as a free person again. There is no catch…but it’s difficult to do. It’s difficult because it requires us to give up this silly notion that the world works in a predictable way: if i misbehave bad things happen, if i stop misbehaving then good things happen.

The world, as it stands, is more complicated than that. The message of God is more like this: the world is topsy-turvy, but one day good things will happen followed by more good things and after that: more good things.

You can get a little taste of it now…if you’re willing to set yourself free.

You set yourself free by admitting shortcomings knowing that there is no punishment coming. Knowing that it doesn’t disqualify you from love. In fact, it might just make you more deserving of God’s love. We do this knowing that, ultimately, God’s work has very little to do with our shortcomings and very much to do with creating a new and different kind of world in which to live. That world won’t have any shortcomings because he will have taken them away.

You can jumpstart the process by asking. It’s up to you whether or not you do it but, if you do, you may just find yourself feeling freer to grow in all the ways you think you need to.

Being humble can be risky

Step 7: We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Carl Rogers is, in theory, the “godfather” (for some reason I find myself wishing we said “goddaddy” instead of “godfather”) of modern therapy. This is because he was the first person to suggest that the relationship between the therapist and the client mattered. He believed it was important for the therapist to create the conditions (i.e., the environment) where change can happen. He did not believe in giving advice or telling people how to change, he believed that if people were accepted, not judged, viewed positively, and deeply heard and empathized with, and if there was a genuineness to these traits on the part of the therapist, then change would happen on its own because people have the innate desire to grow. This is called person-centered therapy. 

Now, Rogers was deeply committed to his principles. So deeply committed that it caused a great deal of chaos in his professional life. Later in his career as a professor and therapist he worked on a years-long research project with a team of people, his students. That’s how research works, there’s always a team, there’s a professor and their students. 

One of the students was out to make a name for himself and was disruptive to the team and attempted to doctor the research to make his results as a therapist appear more positive than the results of the other therapists participating in the study. That kind of ethical breach has huge consequences in a situation where you’re receiving funding through the government, or the school where the research is taking place, etc. Plus research needs to be as unbiased as possible and his portion of the research was as biased as possible.  So, logistically, the team had to do a lot of work to go back and re-do this student’s work. But, bigger picture, Rogers was faced with a dilemma: what to do with the student? Should he be kicked out of the research? 

Rogers felt that he should deal with the situation using his own principles. He wanted to show his student the exact same thing he shows his clients: unconditional positive regard. So that’s what he did. He did not ostracize the student but let him remain on the team and attempted to show him unconditional positive regard. The effects were drastic and negative. The research team blew up. Rogers moved to California and quit therapy and began work in global politics and a few other things. His students were left relatively adrift in the wind and the one who caused the biggest problems eventually died by suicide. 

The thing I wrestle with in all this is: Was Rogers wrong? The outcome was bad. But was he wrong to live according to his values in this particular way?

I’ve read Rogers’ account of this story in his biography (pretty vague) and I’ve heard some 3rd party accounts (students of Rogers’ students). Rogers believes that if he had spent more time developing interpersonal relationships amongst his students and the team in general then these problems would have been mitigated. His students believe that Rogers should have leaned more heavily on one of his other values of genuineness (perhaps expressing frustration at the unethical behavior and providing the student with consequences) as opposed to unconditional positive regard (save that for therapy, they might say, it doesn’t belong everywhere in life). 

Who is correct? 

I thought about this story after writing the message I delivered yesterday (time is funny like that, I wrote the message on Wednesday, I’m writing this on Thursday, the message will get delivered on Sunday, this will arrive to you on Monday). That’s because I wrote the message on humility, as step 7 teaches the importance of humbly asking God to remove shortcomings. Spoiler alert: I think this story is about Rogers exercising humility, and I’ll make that point a little clearer and in a little more detail in a few moments. 

But first, I want us to consider the following passage and what it might have to say about humility:

But now set aside these things, such as anger, rage, malice, slander, and obscene language. Don’t lie to each other. Take off the old human nature with its practices and put on the new nature, which is renewed in knowledge by conforming to the image of the one who created it. In this image there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all things and in all people.

Therefore, as God’s choice, holy and loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Be tolerant with each other and, if someone has a complaint against anyone, forgive each other. As the Lord forgave you, so also forgive each other. And over all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

Colossians 3:8-14, CEB

Humility, in this passage, is about recognizing the inherent equality of all people. And, as such, we put on compassion and kindness and we tolerate each other and we’re willing to forgive and we’re willing to love. 

Rogers’ story, or at least one part of his story, ended pretty poorly, especially considering the eventual death of his student. Did he chase the wrong value? I’m not so sure. We can’t always measure things by their outcomes (how very unscientific of me to say). 

When it comes to living our lives as the kind of people we want to be, we must be focussed on the process and not the outcome. Rogers’ process was beautiful. He believed that seeing the best in his student would be the best thing for that student and the team. In so doing he not only demonstrated positive regard but compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, and humility.

Now, I don’t know all the in’s and out’s of that story and there could be, and probably is, quite a lot of nuance that I’m missing. Forget the story and forget Rogers, the actual logistical details are unimportant (for the purposes of this blog). What matters is what we take away from this for ourselves. 

I don’t know about you, but one of my takeaways is that living according to our values might have a cost. It might not secure us the best outcome. But it might give us a beautiful process. This may be the very thing we’re called to: a beautiful process wherein we treat all people as if they are infused with the very spirit of God especially when they don’t act like it. 

And so here are my suggestions. 

Be careful how you treat people, and consider the call. The call of this passage extends the golden rule (I’m not talking about the “platinum rule” here, which I’m personally ambivalent about). The golden rule is about treating people how you want to be treated. Let’s go one step further: treat people as if they are infused with the spirit of God. 

People are not always going to act or behave as if they are infused with the spirit of God. The calling isn’t: treat people as if God’s spirit is in them so long as they’re doing a pretty good job of showing it. The call is: treat people as if God’s spirit is in them regardless of how they act. 

I’m going to take my own advice and stop here- I’m not going to tell you what this looks like or how to do it. But I’ll simply ask the question- consider in your life the people who are causing you the most problems…how are you treating them? Remember, the very spirit of God is in there somewhere. If the choice was entirely yours, how would you like to treat God’s spirit?

Providing help gives God joy

Step 6: We became willing to ask God to help us remove our defects of character.

What’s your experience like with asking for help? Anything ever get in the way?

I’m not a betting man…but if I was, I’d bet you don’t care for it. 

Why?

We’re culturally conditioned not to ask for help. We’re brainwashed from the time we’re knee high to a job that the most important thing in the universe is providing for yourself so that you never experience “need.” As if it’s somehow good for us not to experience need. As if it’s good for us to avoid feeling desperate. As if it’s good for us not to rely on others. As if it’s good for us to be in control (or feel like we are). 

We’re so brainwashed we think that this isn’t just a good way to live- that it’s God’s way to live. God blesses the good and puts a hedge of protection around them and prevents harm from befalling them. In order to believe this, though, we have to ignore the book of Job, where a righteous person suffers just because. We would have to ignore Jesus’ own words- where he teaches that rain falls on “good” and “bad” alike (aka, people of all kinds experience up’s and down’s in life regardless of how good or bad they are). We would have to ignore Jesus’ words in Luke 13, where he reminds his disciples that people who experience a tragedy are no worse than anyone else (save for being unlucky, perhaps…but that’s not the word Jesus uses). 

This legitimately makes me angry. I’m mad as hell and I can’t take it anymore. I was recently forced to listen to a sermon where the message was: more trust in God will solve your problems. 

God in the flesh doesn’t believe that…so why should I? 

I’m losing the thread here a bit so let me summarize. We’ve been so lost in our cultural message to strive and achieve and become self-reliant that we have turned this into theology. We believe God helps those who help themselves (a saying that is the most famous bible passage ever except it’s not a bible passage because it’s not actually in the bible because it’s actually horseshit). Yet- we’re taught that faithful people are rewarded and protected and sinful people are punished. And so we assume, if things aren’t going well, we must be getting punished and that we deserve it. 

So why would we ask for help? Under this theology, asking for help is basically like saying, “I am a sinner.” 

There are other things that get in the way of asking for help, of course, things beyond theology. Sometimes people tell me that they’ve grown weary of asking for help. They’ve learned through painful life experience that no one wants to help them and so they’ve learned not to ask because they just don’t want to be disappointed anymore. For someone in this situation, asking for help is akin to feeling isolated…because there is no one to help. 

And so…one wonders…what does the Bible say about being in need? About asking for help. Well…there are any number of passages we could point to (“ask and you shall receive”). But I always prefer to just look at an example of someone asking for help. Or, in this case, not asking, but begging, pleading, possibly crying and snotting all over himself. 

But me? I’m poor and needy.

    Hurry to me, God!

You are my helper and my deliverer.

    Oh, Lord, don’t delay!

~ Psalm 70:5

Can you imagine? This is from the Bible. This isn’t a self-sufficient person. This is a person in need of help…probably a lot of help!

Knowing that this kind of asking is biblical, how might this shape our understanding of some of the common messages we referenced above, such as: you have to be strong, you can’t show weakness, you have to be self-sufficient, you can’t rely on anyone else. Or else…or else what? Or else you’re a drain on your community or a drain on the system. You’re not worth your salt. 

Even a simple passage like this tells us that this is not God’s vision of humanity because begging for help is endorsed as a biblical method for talking to God. 

Consider some of the other thoroughly biblical messages we already know: Humans are made in God’s image. Beautiful and dearly loved simply because you exist. Simply because you were born. Simply because. 

You do not need to earn your worth. You do not need to pay your own way. You do not need to be strong and deserving to receive love. 

God’s love is given whether or not we ask. But asking for it is good for us. It is what allows us to rest into the fact that we are not mini-gods, capable of solving all our own problems. It is good to ask- it teaches us that we rely on things outside of ourselves in order to survive and thrive.

And- like this Psalm- we don’t even have to ask politely. You don’t have to ask like a good little boy or girl who sat perfectly still during worship next to your parents. You don’t need to use your indoor voice. 

You can shout and cry and beg and generally make a fool of yourself. Why? Because God will never see you as a fool. He’ll see you as a child who he’s excited to help because his love for you is just that profound.

Defects of character don’t always hold us back

Step 6: We became willing to ask God to help us remove our defects of character.

This is the section of the 12 steps where I struggle. Defects of character are tricky. Have you ever noticed how, if you think something that you do is a legitimate defect of character it’s not really that hard to admit? There’s exceptions to this, of course. But, for instance, Brittany thinks I’m impatient because I sometimes put the dinner dishes in the dishwasher before everyone is done eating. I don’t think I’m impatient. I think I’m being efficient!

However, if you asked me if I’m messy then I would tell you the truth: I am messy. 

The problem, for me, isn’t facing my defects of character or being willing to ask for help. It’s about figuring out which character traits are actually defects.

The biggest defects of character we have are (likely) problems because they cause relational problems. For instance, sarcasm can lead to some really good comedy. Sarcasm can also hurt people’s feelings. Sarcasm is only a problem when it’s personal and relational. 

The same thing is true even when we talk about substance use. A lot of people in recovery have high levels of grit and determination and ingenuity. During active substance use, those traits probably caused some problems as they helped prolong use (and likely led to relational problems). As a sober person- they might be keeping you clean! 

Do you see what I’m getting at?

Defects of character are hard to identify. In one context, the behavior might hold us back. In another it might serve us well. So how do we know whether or not to ask God to remove that thing?

I don’t have a great answer to that but I don’t want to leave you with nothing.  I’ll suggest this: we have to both trust our intuition and trust that if we’re hearing the same thing about ourselves from multiple people we trust then it might be worth listening to. In theory, the lead up to step 6 is resolving this problem anyway. 

Okay so that’s one personal struggle I have with understanding and implementing step 6. Maybe I’m crazy. I’ll give you a few more thoughts for free while I have you here. 

Here’s some stuff I really like:

• It’s about becoming willing to ask, not about asking. I like the fact that this is a process broken down into precise steps. It might be hard to jump straight to asking, it’s nice to build in some prep time. 

• It’s not about asking to have character defects removed, but willing to ask for help in the removal. Character defects don’t always go away…does that mean God hasn’t heard the prayer? No- we’re asking God for help in the removal of the defects. God might decide not to give that help. Or he might decide to only offer a little bit of help. Or he might help a lot. Who’s to say? We’re not asking for an outcome- we’re asking for help, relying on God to decide the outcome. 

Speaking of- Paul himself (ever heard of him?)  prayed just such a prayer. God answered, “no.”

…If I did want to brag, I wouldn’t make a fool of myself because I’d tell the truth. I’m holding back from bragging so that no one will give me any more credit than what anyone sees or hears about me. 7 I was given a thorn in my body because of the outstanding revelations I’ve received so that I wouldn’t be conceited. It’s a messenger from Satan sent to torment me so that I wouldn’t be conceited.

8 I pleaded with the Lord three times for it to leave me alone. 9 He said to me, “My grace is enough for you, because power is made perfect in weakness.” So I’ll gladly spend my time bragging about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power can rest on me. 10 Therefore, I’m all right with weaknesses, insults, disasters, harassments, and stressful situations for the sake of Christ, because when I’m weak, then I’m strong.

~ 2 Corinthians 12:6-10, CEB

Defects may come or go, as God pleases. Can he remove them? Yes of course. Will he? I don’t know- at least not in the short run. 

The passage suggests that there can be a purpose to having them. This is not always the case, but it’s possible. That purpose would look something like this: it’s easier to attribute things to God if they come from really unexpected places. Paul’s rationale (like it or leave it) goes like this: If a great human does something great…it’s pretty believable that the person did that thing. We expect greatness. If something great comes from someone objectively weak…we have to ask the question…what’s going on here? For Paul, this pushes us to recognize God at work. Paul is “strong” when he is “weak” because he is more clearly pointing others to God rather than himself. 

And so defects of character may serve a purpose. Perhaps there’s a parallel here. Perhaps our weaknesses invite God to be at work and allow him to be seen and recognized for the God he is.

On the other hand- defects of character might be causing harm. That’s for you to decide. But this is what I would use as my “barometer”- so to speak. If our defects of character are making life hard and are holding us back in some way, it could be that we’re waiting to see what purpose they serve. If they are causing harm, well, I don’t know about you but that’s when I’m going to ask for some help.

God’s love is deeper than your lowest moment

We admitted to God, to oneself, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs

We’re going to focus on the “God” part of this today. The focus on how the steps apply to recovery matters sometimes pulls us away from the ways in which they support our spirituality. 

One theme of my teaching in my time at NSC is exploring the question: what kind of God do we follow/worship/believe in/trust/etc.? In large part this is because when we spend time in faith communities over long periods of time our image of God gets distorted (to borrow the language of Dale and Juanita Ryan- who have many lovely books on Amazon you can order). 

Our image of God gets distorted because humans reflect God imperfectly, we understand God imperfectly, and we teach about God imperfectly. Teaching about God is like a cosmic game of telephone. You remember that game, right? One person comes up with a sentence, they whisper it to the person next to them, and that person whispers it to the person next to them, and on and on it goes down the line until you get to the last person who repeats what they’ve just heard…and inevitably it is completely different than what the first person said to the second person. 

This is because the whispering makes it hard to understand precisely what the person before you says and so each person gets a little bit right and a little bit wrong but the message gets increasingly distorted as it travels from person to person. Teaching about God works quite similarly. We get a little bit right, we get a little bit wrong, and as we pass it down inevitably things get lost in translation. 

The big difference is- we don’t just learn about God from what people tell us- we learn about God from how people live. Because, at the end of the day, faith is about how we live…not just what we believe. So when a member of the clergy berates his staff because tithing is down…this shifts how the staff views God. My pastor is supposed to be like God…but does this mean God is like my pastor?

When a leader of the deacons fusses at someone experiencing homelessness for not being clean enough to enter church…we start to wonder. Is my God the kind of God who would fuss at someone over their cleanliness? Or, if this person who has so little compassion is a representative of God…what kind of God is that? Do I want to have anything to do with that God?

Worse yet- most people aren’t asking these kinds of questions. It’s more likely you’ve internalized some messages as a result of things you’ve seen and experienced in faith communities. This leader of the church just yelled at me…there must be something wrong with me. 

Our experience of our faith communities and the people in them lead to distortions in how we view God and ourselves. The latter is a big problem, of course, but we’ll try to address that another day. (I’m letting myself ramble a bit in my writing here.)

When it comes to step 5, the distortions we carry of God impact our willingness to admit things to him. We ask ourselves questions. Is he going to be mad at me? Is he going to punish me? If God knew who I really was…he wouldn’t accept me. I’ve done something wrong, so I must not be that faithful, or I must not really believe, etc. etc.

These thoughts illustrate a distorted view of God. They point us to a God who is cruel, unforgiving, cold, and fickle. 

Is that the kind of God we worship?

The Old Testament is most clear about this (despite what you may have heard), and pretty emphatic. Consider these words:

The Lord is merciful and compassionate,

    very patient, and full of faithful love.

~ Psalm 145:8, CEB

This description of God appears time and time again in the Old Testament. I don’t have an exact count of the number of times it shows up because I just can’t be bothered to do that right now. But this is the dominant description of God throughout scripture, and it appears most commonly in the Old Testament.

God is, often enough, not who we are afraid he is. While we think of God as being angry and/or unwilling to tolerate mistakes, this passage contains the most repeated characteristics of God in the OT. God is merciful and compassionate. Very patient. Full of faithful love. 

There are times in scripture where God gets angry and where he does not show mercy, it’s true, but these are not his dominant sides and the Bible is very clear about that (and in most cases it took God 100’s of years to decide to stop showing mercy…which is probably a pretty merciful way to go about deciding what to do with your mercy, if you’re God). The handful of times God acts in ways that don’t match this description hang around in our memories. And- they are frequently over-emphasized by pastors who want people to behave better or give more money. But the Bible is very clear about what traits are dominant. Mercy. Compassion. Patience. Faithful love. 

Faithful love is a kind of passionate loyalty. It’s not about infatuation and it’s not about some strong positive feeling (think of all the silly worship songs that are out there these days that make it sound like we need to be in love with God as opposed to loving kinds of people). It’s the idea that God is not going to run away at the first sign of trouble. He will persevere in order to remain in relationship with his people.

That is who God is. It’s not just a part of who God is. It’s a dominant part of who God is. God does not run away at the first sign of trouble. A red flag here or there is not a problem for God. His presence persists. 

There may be fears associated with admitting things to God. What will he think of me? Will he still stand by me? Will he abandon me? 

Let me answer those in order. He will love you and view you as a beautiful part of his creation. Yes, he will stand by you as he stands by all his people simultaneously. No- he won’t abandon you. That isn’t the kind of God that God is. He will think the exact same thing of you tomorrow as he does today. You are a beloved member of his people. No matter what you’ve done or what you’ve confessed, God stands at the ready to offer all the mercy and compassion you’re able to receive.