EPISODE 241

People are so good at minimizing the human situation. I’ve encountered this throughout Mary’s and my ministry, right from the very start, in Silver Spring, MD.

The religious “professionals” detested my message, that the world was in incomparable conflict with itself, and that each human being experiences comparable conflict inwardly. People would say, your message is too “down”, and I just don’t like it. It’s too dark, or depressing, or gloomy.

But what actually happened is that a majority of the people listening tuned in fast! And then they started inviting their friends.

It’s not that the human condition is hopeless. With God it is never hopeless. But without God, yes, the human condition is hopeless.

And the older you get — I know this can sound patronizing — but the older you get, the more empirically evident it becomes that life stumps a person. An inflexible person becomes an impossible person — and an impossibly unhappy person. A messy person becomes a hoarder. A depressed person becomes suicidal — and actually DOES TAKE THEIR OWN LIFE. To put it mildly, nascent emotional tendencies in people become hard-and fast character assaults — on everyone else!

But you’re not allowed to say this. Every time I pointed out the obvious, a couple incensed hearers would come up briskly, and accuse me of terminal pessimism. But we weren’t. We weren’t pessimists. We were realists, and had the rudiments, from the Bible and a few wise mentors, of applicable hope. Because with God, nothing is impossible. I can honestly say that and look you in the face.

This podcast simply says that it’s time we accepted the disappointments and impasses of our lives; and instead of fighting them, give them to God — Jesus, really — in a spirit of repentance and humility. Say “Uncle!”

But don’t carp. Don’t “say it isn’t so” (Hall and Oates). Be like ‘Pilgrim’, in Robin Anderson’s favorite great Epic, and lay that burden, of the truth, down, at the foot of Someone. LUV U.

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