Not Okay (Friday Devotional)

Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning.

- Ecclesiastes 7:20

I’m always amazed by the things my two-year old son teaches me, even when he’s just being silly. The other night at dinner was just such a time. Having refused to nap that afternoon, he was full-scale loopy, talking about whatever popped into his head with even less of a filter than his toddler brain usually has. So it was after a stream-of-consciousness monologue about a mosquito bite on his leg that his face got serious for a second and he announced with the utmost concern, “The people at the church house are not okay!”

A moment later he elaborated, and we realized he was pretending that everyone at church also had mosquito bites, and dinner carried on normally (at least as normal as dinner with a tired toddler ever is.) But his words stuck with me: the people at the church house are not okay.

We try to pretend that’s not the case. Sunday mornings are marked by cheery attitudes, plastered-on smiles, and well-worn phrases about how God is good all the time. When asked if we need prayer, we’re eager to rattle off the ailments of our relatives, coworkers, and friends, but our own issues never come up. When asked to share our testimonies, we intuitively understand the need for our stories to have happy and uncomplicated endings, lest we embarrass both ourselves and our listeners.

When we do these things, when we put on the façade of having it all together, we do so for the sake of appearances. But especially among brothers and sisters in Christ, such a masquerade shouldn’t be necessary, because as the old saying goes, the church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners. Being flawed or troubled doesn’t make you an outlier in the church, it makes you just like everybody else!

When you come to know Jesus, you also come to know yourself, to realize that you are a sinner in need of salvation. No one is born righteous, nor does anyone achieve righteousness by their own good deeds. The only perfect person who ever lived was not your Sunday School teacher, your pastor, or any of the other smiling saints in the church house—it was the Lord who is mighty and compassionate enough to save the weak, the tempted, and the broken. People, in other words, like you and me.

My son was right: the people in the church house are not okay. We are all sinners saved by grace, nothing more and nothing less. So perhaps the time has come to set aside your pride in the name of truth and pursue confession instead of applause. We all need grace—may you be willing to accept it and offer it in equal measure.