There's a persistent perception that many people hold. That perception is that they are unwelcome to God and to the Church because they don't have their shit together. I am a priest and I don't have complete order in my life spiritually, and certainly not temporally. At times, I feel I fail more often than I succeed.
I'm actually wrong in that, and I judge myself too harshly; but my failures are not barriers to God.
There was a time in my life when I looked on the Church (God's people) as hypocrites. That was a line that was fed to me by some source, I don't know what source. That source wanted to keep me from knowing God. What I found when I came to be with faithful people was that I was the one who was the hypocrite.
While I pointed the finger at self-righteous bible-thumpers, I was actually judging myself. I could say that, "I believe in Jesus, the forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection." But at that time in my life, I had very little grace for myself and I had even less grace for other people. I was the hypocrite because my thoughts and actions moved me farther away from the beliefs I held. I lived incongruously, in-authentically.
And because of my in-congruent life I perpetrated the very line I had been fed about hypocrisy.
I am still in-congruent. But the difference in me today is the direction I'm heading. I turned and am heading toward God and I am striving to let go of the weight of sin that holds me back. My failures still look like hypocrisy to those outside. I know this won't matter to many of you, because you hold to some other belief system. But for those of you who want to know God and have relationship with him, you can have that. He wants the same thing. He pursues you more than your desire to know him.
You can be found by him. I was found in the Church. To be transparent, I've also found the devil sidling up here. But I don't let that get me down, it's always been that way. Evil finds its way because it wants to disrupt the Good. What I hope I affirm to you is that there is goodness. It is found in relationships with those who are striving together (the Church) to know God. And I hope you'll respond to his pursuing you.
