Contending with Contempt in the Season of Repentance
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By Meg Raby
As we enter the Lenten season I'm once again examining my own sin. In historical church tradition, this is the season of remembering the fragility of our human lives ("to dust we shall return") and the ways we fall short of living like Jesus. This year, I'm thinking a lot about contempt. Throughout this pandemic, I’ve seen my heart gripped with smugness and disgust at fellow friends and family with differing world views in a time of such great political tensions. Daily I’m reminded by the news and social media newsfeeds of bitterness I feel towards people with confoundingly, deeply different world views than mine. I end up feeling deep anger at myself for feeling such contempt for those who seem to understand Jesus in a way that is so unlike my own understanding of the Jesus I know and love.
Do you see how the smugness intertwines with the righteous anger and the sadness? Do you see how I can’t even be angry in a completely pure and holy way? I want to love my family and my friends who are so different from me in the way we view and experience the world. I don’t want to feel this heavy anger toward them--towards God’s creation. I want death to this weight. I need death.
“I need my picture of God to be renewed. To see God with arms opened wide for me and especially for my family and friends with whom I may have bitter disagreements.”
To fully appreciate and to even tap God’s love--I need to sit in this space of repentance. I need God to “try me and know my thoughts...and lead me in the way everlasting” as David says in Psalm 139:23-24. I need God to sit with me in this dying process and to make me alive again in Christ as it says in Ephesians 2:4-6. I need my picture of God to be renewed. To see God with arms opened wide for me and especially for my family and friends with whom I may have bitter disagreements. I need my picture of those I scorn to be renewed through God’s loving eyes.
So here’s my muck. Here’s what needs to die in me or all will stop at death--in ashes. I’m uncomfortable with my sin and it’s not easy to be so honest about it, but these are reasons for participating this Lenten season. How exactly am I participating? Each day I plan to pray for those with whom I am angry. I love to write, so I will journal my prayers each night rather than cracking open one of many books I’m in the midst of reading. I will ask Jesus to forgive me and to put to death my anger in people--his creation--so I can live and love like him again. I will be reminded that I am clothed in Christ and so are they, and we all shall live the rest of our earthly lives showing each other a very loving and very amazing God--no exclusions--surely bumps and mishaps along the way, but no murderous anger.
If you would like to contribute a blog post, email David at david@missiodeislc.com.