Suffering or Redemption?

Enemies. Would you rather watch them suffer or watch God redeem them?

“A new thought occurred to [Mrs. May]: suppose Mr. Greenleaf had aroused the bull chunking stones at him and the animal had turned on him and run him up against a tree and gored him? The irony of it deepened: O.T. and E.T. would then get a shyster lawyer and sue her. It would be the fitting end to her fifteen years with the Greenleafs. She thought of it almost with pleasure as if she had hit on the perfect ending for a story she was telling her friends.”

-Flannery O'Connor's "Greenleaf"

People with excessive self-pity and victim thinking expose the end of my grace and mercy. I know people who take this sort of pleasure in misery, and they drain every ounce of love and patience out of me. Before I understood that the bull in O’Connor’s “Greenleaf” was a Christ-type wooing Mrs. May, I was actually pleased when the it charged at her and gored her through the heart. The fact that I was disappointed at the notion that the bull may have been a form of salvation for her made me realize my sinful attitude: I had more satisfaction in the thought of her suffering than the thought of her redemption. I’m ashamed by my heart condition, but I’m glad that I am now aware of this weakness. I’m thankful that “He’s still workin’ on me” because there is a lot of work to do.

Faking Righteousness

This post is the first of a series of journal annotations from this past spring that I will be posting on my blog.

“Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town in all the region round about. . . . throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone” -Mark Twain: “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”

Hadleyburg is a town to which many Christians in the “Bible Belt” can probably relate. They had all the outward appearances of righteousness, and they sounded their trumpets so that everyone would know just how holy they were. Like the whitewashed tombs of the Pharisees (cf. Matt. 23:27), this town was truly a wreck on the inside. It was not at all their honesty that was hardening and solidifying, but their pride and hypocrisy. The cause of the problem was the town's refusal to let any temptations or trials through its fortified gates. While they thought they were making righteousness, in reality they were only faking righteousness. As James says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Without the testing of their virtues, the town of Hadleyburg was lacking quite a bit, especially in what they took most pride: honesty.

So how about you? Where are you at? Are you open to being tested and stretched? Or are you content faking righteousness?