Users

There are no words for just how deflating and depressing it is to uncover the desperately selfish ugliness driving people behind their masked performances. If one has a taste for more than the banal, pre-loaded conversations, then our ghastly thoughts will be lit-up, revealing life on a totally different planet—a smokey, dizzying place where one hardly exists except as the faceless drone fulfilling momentary needs. Yeah, it’s really that bad.

Thank God the freeing word of the gospel doesn’t have its source in people. Theology, Christian reflection, isn’t an education pursued in order to be freed or saved; but theology is full of the gospel word that we are fully sinners yet fully free of every inauthencity; in Christ his Spirit is at work clearing the smoke from our eyes, healing the sores, restoring our souls so we may walk with confidence in his world, mask-free.

*Nota bene: There is a trend in our day to scorn such thoughts as too overtly negative or pessimistic, but that would be to misunderstand where my optimism is seated. I will not pretend that I do not suffer, or that people are better without Christ than I’ve described.