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I'm Not That Guy

This is not a blog to come and feel bad about yourself. I have no platform to "minister" to you and tell you how bad you really are. And that's mostly because I don't know. But this passes for religion for some people. You get the feeling God just puts up with us for the sake of His Son. I don't know, but my "Jesus loves you" would sound pretty hollow at that point.

Jesus loves me and all of us more than we could possibly know. I KNOW that. I'll say that. If there's something in the way, go deal with it! But then move on. We fail; He still loves. If that judgment still falls on us, it's because we have finally forsaken Total Love.

This is what Papa Francis was talking about last week. He's not a universalist; he's making the distinction between objective redemption, and subjective redemption. Objective redemption is the fact of what Christ did for all of us; subjective redemption is the application, the reality of that work experienced in the life of a person.

And there is a natural goodness, a dignity, in human beings made in God's image. That dignity and the objective goodness, the praiseworthiness of what even wicked unconverted sinners do from time to time is the arena for a witness to God's grace. It's not that hard, really. It just doesn't sell newspapers.

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