An Open Door, Part 2: Letting Go

This is part of a series of posts starting with: Part 1: Crisis

The entirety of Jesus’ teaching on earth revolved around what he called “Kingdom of God”. He described it through numerous parables and stories. He proclaimed it as having already arrived on earth and was close enough that anyone could touch it. He is recorded as even demonstrating the nature of this new kind of Kingdom by healing the sick, accepting those rejected by society, and unraveling the false piety of the lead religious institutions. It was so central to Jesus’ identity and purpose that he was ultimately willing to die for it to see it fulfilled.

Unfortunately, the term “Kingdom of God” has lost much of its weight and meaning for us in a modern age. Most of us don’t live in actual kingdoms and have no frame of reference for this kind of language or worldview. More often than not, we may even imagine negative images of wayward Crusaders driven by a misguided understanding of what God’s rulership is really about. However, when you closely look at what Jesus had set about to teach we discover nothing less than an alternative Reality – in allegiance to an alternative Ruler.

If the phrase “the kingdom of God” has had much of its meaning lost or confused, so have many other words throughout scripture. Perhaps none has lost its original intent more than the word “repentance”. As soon as it’s uttered, an image immediately comes to mind of a person crying at the front of a church on their hands and knees, pleading for forgiveness. Worse yet, we may have a picture of an angry preacher standing at a podium yelling at a church full of bended heads, “Repent of your sins!” with an angry God to back him up with fire and brimstone. The problem with all such images is that it really misses the point that Jesus was trying to make.

The original idea of repentance certainly includes a genuine desire to make amends or seek reconciliation with those we have caused harm. However, this is not primarily what people actually heard when Jesus began proclaiming, “Repent! The kingdom of God is at hand!” He was not hurling condemnation at “sinners.” He was not admonishing the guilty misdeeds of the people who listened in the crowd. When Jesus called out for people to “repent” it was an invitation to reconsider their lives and the assumptions that got them there in the first place.

We have been conditioned to believe that in order to come to God we must begin with an admission of our own personal guilt over sin. Yet, in Jesus’ own time, both personal and collective guilt for sin was already being taken care of through the Jewish sacrifices and traditions passed down through Moses. What wasn’t being dealt with through the ancient Mosaic covenant was the personal shame that crippled a person’s identity, and the collective shame that created a class of outcasts believing that God was forever out of reach. 

Women, the poor, the sick, the crippled, the diseased, non-Jewish people – each of these had been pushed to the fringes by the religious culture and traditions in Jesus’ own times. Marginalized and shamed by the powerful social structures and norms, these people were told that they were not able to approach God – either because of their ethnicity, gender, economic class, or even health status. Jesus’ original message was a bold proclamation that an entirely new kind of society had arrived on the scene with him. A “spiritual” society that saw everyone as co-equals before the Creator of all things. The kingdom of God was at hand!

The problem was, and still is today, that people don’t just feel bad about the wrong things that they have done, but they actually believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with them. That their identity – their sense of self-worth and value – is somehow inherently deficient and broken, beyond all hope of repair. Where have people gotten this belief? Through the relentless messages of shame hurled down upon them by other people and by society itself. Directly or indirectly, these slowly build up the subtle lie that we are ultimately not worthy of love and belonging. And the more it seeps into a society, the more we believe and participate in the lie without even realizing it.

Now, I’m not talking about a person feeling some kind of grief or remorse when we recognize the mistakes or damage we have caused. Remorse is a product of guilt – coming to terms with just how capable we are of doing evil. However, shame is the belief that because of our failure we must therefore mask and hide so that we might still be accepted. We don’t merely believe that we do bad things, but that deep down inside, where no one can see us, we are actually bad people and therefore unlovable by others. So, we cover, posture, and blame others in hopes that no one can see the true failure of a person beneath the facade. 

This is why feeling guilt or remorse is never enough to actually change your life. If you believe that at the very core you are an unlovable and unworthy person, you will never step out from behind the false self you have created to stay safe. You can feel bad about your behavior and the damage it causes, but you have no hope that you are capable of much else. It seems much safer to simply pretend to be something that we are not so that we can experience some kind of acceptance. However, the tragedy is that at the same time our false self is performing for acceptance, our true self is falling further and further into despair. Something must happen that will change our mind about who we are, and that we are capable of being loved, accepted and connected with God.

I can guarantee that somewhere along the way, someone has shamed you or caused you to believe in your self-worth less. This may have been a parent or other family member, a friend, or even a trusted leader. What’s worse, many of us have even received these messages of shame from the very Christian followers and leaders that should have known better. However, the path to God’s alternate reality begins with a hope – a hope that dares to believe that our identity and self-worth is not based on what we have done, but on belonging to a loving Creator. Until we can let go of this old identity and take hold of the new one that Jesus revealed, we will continue to believe and perpetuate the world’s cycle of shame.

No matter what you think you know or may have heard about God, Jesus’ original proclamation (“Repent. The kingdom of God is at hand!”) was not really a call to confession of one’s past guilt. It was and is an invitation to let go of a false identity of shame and take hold of a new identity and sense of belonging based on simply being a child of God. It was a bold call to believe in a completely different narrative about the Self and the Creator. To know that in deepest parts of who you are, that you belong to God. The same way a child belongs to a loving father and mother. And although it’s meaning may get lost in translation or misunderstood, the call of Jesus can still be heard:

“Think you know how life works? Think again! Check your expectations, your assumptions about everything and everyone. God doesn’t dwell in the palace with the high and mighty, or in the temple with the religious elites. God dwells with those who are willing to let go of their false self, this shame-based identity that everyone is trying so hard to cover up. God’s society is not like this world’s – with its scorekeeping games of insiders and outsiders. It’s made up of those that the Creator created in Love. 

The kind of world and the kind of people God wants to restore is open to everyone. It’s right here, close enough that any of you could touch it, if you will only let go of this destructive system of shaming and blaming. You have been made to believe that you are unworthy of love and belonging because of your failures and mistakes. But the One that made you loves you completely, and nothing you have done or ever could do will change your identity as God’s child.

Come with Me. Let go of the pretend version of you that you’ve created in order to fool other people into thinking you’re something else. Let go of the lies that you have heard, or even told yourself, that say you are anything other than the simple child God created and loves. Let go of this life you have known and take hold of a completely different way of living.

Look! I make all things new again.“

A Prayer in Response:

Father/Mother God – what is it about your Love that I am still struggling to believe? I want to believe that I truly belong to you as a true Child, but am still so scared to open up my true self to You and the people who love me. It’s so much easier to pretend I have it all together, to say the right things and follow the right rules so that others will accept me. But this will keep me from ever truly experiencing real love and acceptance. I know that the love and acceptance that I long for can only come from You. Help me to let go of my false self so that I can hold on to You.