J.S. Park

Question: I’m A Screwed Up Hypocritical Pharisee — Is There Grace For Me?

Anonymous asked:

So I have discovered that, I’m a hypocrite and a Pharisee. I ended up disappointing my pastor and my spiritual family with my dishonesty. I feel that I have no strength to face Jesus or my church because of my sinfulness. I am honestly confused with my faith and lukewarm in everything that I do. I want to turn and follow Jesus but I feel that I have crossed the line so now I don’t even know if I’m forgiven by God. What I’m asking is does Jesus really meet us where we are? Even Pharisees?

If I could talk to you face to face, I’d give you an awkwardly long hug and start from there. Please, please, please believe: God still loves you and He’s still rooting for you, and so am I.

I’m not just saying that. Your message shows that you’re owning up to what you’ve done. I see no hint of defensive posture or making excuses. Right now, you have more insight and self-awareness about your condition than the majority of churchgoers — and while I don’t mean to compare or keep score, you’re in the right place. God is already doing something in you. Yes, you might lose opportunities in the world — perhaps big ones that you’ll mourn over — but you’ll always have a second chance with God.

I understand what it’s like to disappoint people. I know what it’s like to walk into church unable to look at people in the eye. I know what it’s like to believe you can’t do anything right and to think an entire ministry hates you. I especially know what it’s like to imagine a room full of people who are talking about you, berating you, saying “I always knew he was a little weird,” and maybe saying some truth in there, but filled with their own embellishments.

I beat myself up almost daily over stupid things I have said and for stupid actions that I can hardly explain myself. You know: there’s that late-night twitch when you replay some terrible thing you did, over and over. It’s a loop of self-condemnation, and I’ve been there.

I’m not trying to play the victim-card. We know what we’re responsible for. Sure, our motives might be a hot mess and our actions messier still, but we still know where we got it wrong. People might be rightly upset with you, and you need to let them have that, which it appears like you’re doing.

This is why the moment of defeat matters less than the moment right after. That probably sounds like the Christianese thing to say, but I am so dang serious. You can’t beat yourself up forever. You can’t keep sitting in the back of church with your head down. You can’t revel in your own shame and self-pity as if this is paying your debt. You might think, “I need to show these people I’m really sorry” and I understand that mentality, but there is no end to that, and life goes on, and so must you.

It could mean that you must reconcile with some people, to pick up a few pieces of the wreckage and make sense of it before you move on. It could mean you schedule with your pastor face-to-face and ask him how to make it right. It could mean changing churches and starting over. However it looks moving forward, please do not be motivated by shame or the urge to punish yourself out of penance.

Maybe no one will believe you’re truly repenting. Perhaps this church or this pastor won’t get over it for a long time. That’s okay. You need to work on you today. Approach Him with open hands and ask for grace, restoration, mercy, wisdom, and a way forward. Instead of telling people you’re repenting, just repent.

This time, more than any other time, is your moment to cling onto Jesus for all his strength to grow into the person you were meant to be — NOT because you’re trying to prove yourself to anyone, but because God knows you’re better than this, and He can still work through fallen people such as us.

I’m with you on this. I have failed more times than I can count. I have wept over dead dreams, broken ministries, lost opportunities, and worst of all, vanished friends. I end up in a spiral of wanting to explain my side of the story, but not everyone will believe it anyway. There is Only One who truly sees my heart and yours, because He made you and He knows you — and He truly does meet you where you are. At rock bottom, Jesus is there. I pray you will not use this time to be too hard on yourself nor lash out at your church, but instead to work on you. That must begin with Him.

— J.S.

Freedom to Love, Fail, and Act A Fool

I don’t know if I’ve ever been fully free to do exactly what I wanted to do.

What I mean is: I’m always worried about the piercing eye of perception from others around me.  I modify my voice to fit the crowd, change my opinions just enough, maintain the appropriate social standards, keep an invisible distance between who I really am and how I want others to perceive me.

A few days ago I texted a friend: “I thought I saw you, looks like your twin.”

She said, “Go up to her and tell her!  Show her my picture!”

And I replied, “I can’t just do those things.”

But — why not?

When I was about eleven, I remember seeing a beautiful girl working in the mall at the food court every time I went.  My dumb eleven year old soul could not stop staring at her.  This happened for weeks. 

Finally one day I got the teriyaki chicken, looked her straight in the eye, and said, “You look really, really nice today.”

She smiled, and that was that.

And right there: I walked away feeling free and giddy and alive.  I didn’t care what happened from there, I just cared that I told her.  It was a small stupid moment in the life of a child, but it felt like a world had opened.

I want to make excuses: She’ll think I’m a stalker, she’ll take it the wrong way, I’m naturally an introvert, I’d be interrupting her, that’s not what people do anymore.

I see hundreds of people every week who are not really free but enslaved by a blurry idea of conformity that is never questioned. 

I can see it in their eyes: enslaved by beauty, prestige, their boss, their mother’s words from childhood, that bully in sixth grade, a violent relationship, the TV, the inner-loop of self-loathing.  They are essentially hollowed out zombies, filled by other people’s visions for their lives.

But I recall a day when I didn’t make up a hundred excuses to be myself.  I could leap in free fall out of my comfort zone, NOT because I cared about the results, but because the journey was worth it.  To love, to fail, to act a fool: is part of what makes us human.

Sometimes, I quit using other people’s judgments as an excuse to diminish myself — and even when I fail, it turns out fine.  Better than fine.

And you know: there are times I reached out and it saved someone’s life.  A stranger about to spiral into the abyss; a poor man on his last dollar; a young child full of hate and frustration; a young girl discouraged and distraught — I just went to them without knowing and spoke in love.  It was awkward.  It was uncomfortable.  I sort of hated it.  But it was awesome.

Jesus said: The truth will set you free.  I take that to mean a lot of things, but at least a part of that is Jesus trying to free us from the slavery of the world’s eye.  To really be free from popularity, status, achievement, moralism, opinion, gossip, reputation, and dancing on the stage of performance. 

It’s Jesus saying, Be true to how I made you.  You have permission to be you.

That requires a thousand little deaths to fear, to religion, to results.

It requires a repentance from a propped up self towards the true self found in Christ.

It requires us not only to be unafraid of failure, but to actually just fail.  At some point we have to stop protecting ourselves from ourselves: because failure is okay, and it’s only success when you can keep going in spite of what happens.

I am free to do what God wants: because what He wants, I want, and He wants me to be the true me He has created us to be.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

— Galatians 5:1