Trusting Jesus
Christopher B. Harbin
Romans 3:21-31
We talk readily about trusting Jesus. We sing songs about trusting Jesus. All too often, however, we are unsure about how to apply that slogan to our lives. What does it mean to trust Jesus? Where are we to trust, and where are we to take initiative? What does trusting Jesus really mean?
Nationally and within our religious framework we speak rather consistently of sin, guilt, and shame. We may not always use that terminology, but we are consumed with the concept of determining where to point fingers, how to designate responsibility for disasters and tragedies of various kinds. Our insurance companies want to know who is at fault in a traffic accident. We want to assign blame in our justice system as though it were possible to make the world a safe place by punishing and blaming those who are guilty of one or more misdeeds.
This week's events in Boston serve to highlight the lengths to which we will go to ascribe blame, identify an offender, and bring the offender into our justice system. We breathe a communal sigh of relief at locating the offending party. We feel safe with him in the hands of the authorities. We find security in the mass show of force expended this week to locate one man on the run. We shut down a metropolitan area twice the size of Charlotte to locate one man on the run. Our sense of security is off balance. The fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas this week claimed many more lives, but did not make us feel threatened. Our trust is misplaced.
We actually like to judge others. We like sensational captures. We like a fast chase with shows of force. We like to pin down an individual we can readily accuse of instigating a tragedy. At heart we desire to condemn, to accuse, and to declare others guilty, as though somehow we ourselves are all that different from those we would condemn.
We struggle with issues of needing to be perfect, holy, without blemish. We think of God as the ...
Christopher B. Harbin
Romans 3:21-31
We talk readily about trusting Jesus. We sing songs about trusting Jesus. All too often, however, we are unsure about how to apply that slogan to our lives. What does it mean to trust Jesus? Where are we to trust, and where are we to take initiative? What does trusting Jesus really mean?
Nationally and within our religious framework we speak rather consistently of sin, guilt, and shame. We may not always use that terminology, but we are consumed with the concept of determining where to point fingers, how to designate responsibility for disasters and tragedies of various kinds. Our insurance companies want to know who is at fault in a traffic accident. We want to assign blame in our justice system as though it were possible to make the world a safe place by punishing and blaming those who are guilty of one or more misdeeds.
This week's events in Boston serve to highlight the lengths to which we will go to ascribe blame, identify an offender, and bring the offender into our justice system. We breathe a communal sigh of relief at locating the offending party. We feel safe with him in the hands of the authorities. We find security in the mass show of force expended this week to locate one man on the run. We shut down a metropolitan area twice the size of Charlotte to locate one man on the run. Our sense of security is off balance. The fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas this week claimed many more lives, but did not make us feel threatened. Our trust is misplaced.
We actually like to judge others. We like sensational captures. We like a fast chase with shows of force. We like to pin down an individual we can readily accuse of instigating a tragedy. At heart we desire to condemn, to accuse, and to declare others guilty, as though somehow we ourselves are all that different from those we would condemn.
We struggle with issues of needing to be perfect, holy, without blemish. We think of God as the ...
There are 7694 characters in the full content. This excerpt only shows a 2000 character sample of the full content.
Price: $5.99 or 1 credit
