Mistakes

So you screwed up.  Not just one time.  No, as far as you're concerned, you have now screwed up pretty much everything important, because you are a screwup. And it's hurt you, but more importantly to you, it's affected other people.  You broke life and now it doesn't work right.

   Conventional wisdom is that now you need to forgive yourself.  Well, maybe you can't, though, and maybe you can't learn to, either.  Not right now.  Something won't let you.

   Okay, the thing is, you are not meant to be the judge anyway.  You lack objectivity.  So you need someone else to forgive you.

   And it's not that hard, actually, to find some person who will say he or she doesn't think you're too bad, and that you didn't really do anything terribly wrong.  That you meant well, and didn't mean any harm. That you're a good person, especially deep down inside.  You might even be able to find someone who will say all that, whose moral standard you don't feel to be inferior to your own, who doesn't set the bar quite a bit lower, so to speak, than you do.
   And yet, that doesn't do it for you either.  Because he or she can say whatever supportive stuff he or she thinks of, but you need someone else to forgive you. Not him or her, and not yourself. You actually need someone qualified to judge and forgive.  Someone whose job it is to decide these things.  You actually need that person to do it.  Someone whose moral standard well and truly outranks yours.  You know: God.

   And here's where you're really screwed: God does forgive you.  Has forgiven you.  This is truth.  Truth you can't accept, apparently.  The bible tells you He does, and that He would forgive far worse things than anything you ever did or would be likely to do.  But you can't lay hold on that.  Which is another screwup, of course, not that that makes you feel any better.  Because you can't love yourself if you are going to keep screwing up.  You just can't.
   Should you?  God does...

   But you can't.  You want to have more exacting moral standards than God.  You want to judge more harshly than the judge of all the earth.
   And for another thing, your upbringing has told you that you are forgiven, but kind of only in theory, really.  Forgiven in terms of not actually going to Hell, of course, but as to your life now?  You are screwed.   

   Because you screwed up.  And if there's anything that seems to be a widespread, pernicious tag-along to the gospel in Christian circles, it's the idea that, really, you can't screw up.  Not you, anyway.  Not really.
   There are a thousand ways it's said.  "God forgives you, but there are things we can do which leave a mark that will always be with us."  "It's blotted out of God's book, in terms of your standing before Him, but as to your moral state, it's written indelibly on your life, forever."  You are encouraged to read the bible and see that there are "lasting consequences for sin."

   Well, I'm going to say the same thing.  Look in the bible.
    See God choosing time and time again to work almost exclusively with screwups.  Choosing them over the other people who don't seem like such screwups as those He chooses to work with.  See God turning people's screwups into bible.  Over and over.  Especially if they don't think they know better than Him, as to whether or not they are screwups who have screwed up.  See that everything lasts, and everything matters, but that also, God is magic.  See that God is victorious over human frailty and self-indulgence.  God builds the indelibly divine out of the screwed up.

   Read the parts about Paul, and Peter and Jonah, succeeding and succeeding and succeeding.  Nothing but wins.  And screwups while doing it, of course.  And not just at first.  Screwups all the way through their lives.  Which screwups don't actually cause any lasting problems to the value of their work, and which serve as vital educational content to the bible itself.  And what can be learned from them?  That this idea, the one that says if Christians screw up, there are Lasting Consequences, is misleading and disheartening in the extreme. That it's against the lesson of, the very spirit of the bible.  True only in the most unhelpful of ways.  A wonderful tool for screwing us up, as if we need some more of that.

   Yet we are hope handicapped.  We hope, at our best, for our screwups to be only kinda forgiven.  For them to kinda not cause too much trouble.  And not affect others much.  "Excuse me over, here, living a life.  I hope it doesn't inconvenience you too much...  Sorry!"

   Hope bigger. Know a Jesus who, in the course of your day, when you screw up, has your back.  Know a Jesus who expects that and is ready to complete everything.  Try not to screw up, but know that when you inevitably do, life goes on, things go on, and God keeps on working through you and then working through you some more.  Know that God uses your screwups.  Not only are they educational to others, and sometimes kinda funny in retrospect, but they don't even screw Him up at all.  He's bigger than that. He remains unstymied.  Not even Satan can screw God up.  You don't have a chance of screwing God up.  So forget about that, right now.

   Stop trying to be the person who won't screw up at all, anymore, in 2014.  Live a life that is unhampered by the fear that comes with needing to never screw up.  Conventional wisdom is that if you can't forgive yourself, then you can't forgive others.  I say unto you that if you can't accept God's forgiveness (the fact that it has happened already, and is reality right now), then you aren't really dealing with Him or reality.  Not really.
   You're screwing that up.

   The knowing the actual God who actually has your actual back.  The knowing the actual God who isn't shocked and dismayed and offended by each and every screwup.  The God who is no fool and has made them part of the plan.  A perfect plan for your perfect Christian life?  Hells no.  You don't live like that, and He doesn't work like that either.
   Reality, and God, the source of it, are out there, and you're in them right now.  You don't have to find them so much as let them in.  And even if you hold your breath and cross your fingers and toes and try to suffer for your screwups, this doesn't change God or reality.  It's dumb, it's a screwup, but whatever.

  Christ did not come to save careful people who don't make mistakes.  He came to save screwups. When he spoke to them, they didn't mainly feel his noticing their screwups either.  They felt known and accepted.  He's far better at forgiving us than the various prodigal son's elder brothers and pastors out there, who mainly can only forgive very specific kinds of mistakes.  Often they are not terribly wonderful at forgiving and dealing with mistakes people make with addictions, bible beliefs, or with their genitals.  Christ's better than they are at forgiving.   But then, He's better at everything.

  God has you.  He has stuff in hand.  It appalls us how badly He will let us, and everyone else, screw things up.  Thing is?  We're not screwing Him up.  It's how He works.  He makes roses grow out of rotting corpses and sheep manure.  He made poppies spring up in Flanders Field.  We can make the hugest mess of the playground, with spilled milk, tears and yes, even pollution, blood and death.  And not even all that screws Him up.  He has this.  He doesn't actually need our help.  He doesn't need us to not screw up. But He wants to let us play too.  So He gives us lives to live and things we can do.  He gave each of us our box of crayons, with whatever colours He put in there.  And we should get in there and play hard.  Knowing we may, on occasion, go outside the lines when colouring.  Or draw one too many fingers on the people we're drawing.
   What is a childhood without a single skinned knee or stained shirt? Hardly a childhood at all.  Now expand that to include adults, and the kinds of stuff that happens to and by us.  This is how life is done.  This is us doing it.  And God loves us.  We need to get on with it.

   To learn anything, to accomplish anything, we need to stop being so terrified of maybe making a mistake, or people not understanding.  One of the main things our screwing things up does is show who simply can't deal with screwups.  Who can't deal with people living lives.  Often these people are in positions of authority over large numbers of people, too.

   God doesn't just forgive you when you've screwed things up.  He takes it as a challenge and He always rises to that challenge.  And He delights to work with you.  Work with Him.  Try it.  Seriously.  Sometime in the next ten minutes.