12 Years A Slave: Part 3

Part 3 on my thoughts from 12 Years A Slave

(Read the previous two posts for this to make sense.)

We – all of us, right now – will quite likely be on the wrong side of history on something.  This is a horrifying thought to many people, especially to us Enneagram 1’s and to Millennials.  But this was another epiphany for me:  I will never be morally right about everything.  I used to think that I would never be morally good in the sense that I would never be able to keep from sinning.  The Bible is clear that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  But I really thought I could hold all the right moral beliefs, even if I couldn’t live up to them.  Now I see the impossibility of even that. 

Human fallibility extends not just to our actions, but to our understanding of right and wrong, or at least to our interpretation of how to live out the right and wrong.  We just can’t see it all, even when we try so hard according to our consciences.  Even if we COULD live up to our own standards, or God’s, or society’s, we will never see it all clearly.  We are quite likely to be “on the wrong side of history” at some point for some issue and we will be dead and unable to right that wrong.  We will be judged by future generations.

So.  

We have to have Jesus.  If not, we will collapse under the weight of our own imperfections and blind spots.  We have to reside in the wideness of the mercy of God.   Our God “is lavish with forgiveness” (Isaiah 55:7).  This is the phrase used right before God declares, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways. . . As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts than your thoughts.” (8,9)  This is a declaration of the immensity of God’s grace, that His forgiveness is beyond our capacity to grasp.  I take great comfort in the truth of that verse.  It’s the only thing that saves me from condemnation by God, by our judgmental culture, and by my critical self.