Random Rants

I'm not really sure if I ever got around to one central point....but that's what rants are for anyway. Just some thoughts on humanity:

The human race is incredibly fascinating. Fascinating and hilarious, I might say. Being a part of the race, I can’t say I’m not susceptible to its calamities, its chaos. However, if one steps back and looks at how easily we tattoo the history of our race on our skin they might find that the pigment is so distorted we can’t tell which way is backwards and which is our front. Humans remember in a way that is unlike the rest of earth’s inhabitants. We remember the mistakes of the past and take them on as our own burlap load over this rail-tie crossing journey we call life. My sins are the sins of my mother, of her mother, of hers and so on…


This isn’t to say that we should forget the past at all. That’s how things like the Holocaust repeat themselves. No, we shouldn’t forget what we’ve learned over the course of our existence, but have we paid so much attention to what our father’s father’s father’s father did that we spend each day making it our duty to make up for it. What the human race fails to see is that we cannot recall the entire history of our ancestors’ sins on our bones or they’ll break. We must own our own sins and right them before anything else.

What am I getting at? Let me find my point here.

If we continue to try and make up for things that are gone and done with, how will we move forward? We constantly live in the past and with our necks craned so far behind us, we’re liable to stumble over our next big problem. Honorable as it may be to try and make up for our blunders, we over exacerbate them by bringing them up day after day.

Here’s what I propose:

Make a mistake (for it’s good to make mistakes every now and again) and learn from it. Apologize, repent, whatever you have to do, and then move on. Move on. In Isaiah 43:18 God says, “’Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.’” He goes on to say that He is making new things and making, “’a way in the desert; and streams in the wasteland.’” God makes all things new again and forgives those who repent. We should remember our sin, learn from our sin, but should not dwell on it. The whole point of having a savior is having sins removed. Our transgressions are gone and forgotten by God, so why do we insist on remembering them.

I’m afraid, I haven’t quite reached what I intended to say initially. We as humans, as people have difficulties accepting the fact that we’re no longer guilty in God’s eyes. That’s not to say that we don’t sin, but that we’re forgiven for what we do. When God wipes the slate clean, it’s so hard to wipe it clean in our minds.

There are terrible things that our own nature can lead to when left unchecked, but they are also things that I think we inherently know are wrong. However, we can’t seem to forget the years of slavery that was put on the African Americans in the U.S. or that Blacks were discriminated against for years after was slavery was gone. I’m not saying these things should be forgotten, just put to rest. We can’t atone for something forever. I’m also not saying that God forgives all of America for that blotch of iniquity, because I don’t know the mind of God and can’t speak for him. All I’m trying to say is that we as a people need to put to rest all of our reservations. I can’t look at every person on the street with a different race than mine and think, Oh, well, I better be nice to them because of all that stuff that happened in the past.

That’s not getting rid of the problem. The only way to be rid of racism is to look at each individual person as a person with thoughts and ideals. We as Christians are taught to love all people. Jesus says to his disciples in Mathew 25:45 “’I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’” We are called to not just be evangelicals or to “save” the masses, but to love all people and serve them through our service to God. Service comes from love and therefore if we love God, we serve him. If we love people, we serve them. How do we love people? Look at them as individuals and stop remembering the history of the world when we see the color of someone’s skin.

The way we remember also gives me another point—we hold grudges. We can’t let go of, not only our own transgressions, but the sins that others have committed against us. Forgiveness is a mouthful for humans—for Americans especially. We’re taught from an early age that this world is eye for an eye and that no wrong should go unpunished.

Unpunish it.

That’s another dare I have for you. The next time someone says something or does something to you, love them and let it go unpunished. We’re not the judges of the world. We as Christians are not God’s mouth and we cannot speak for him. It is not my job or anyone else’s to condemn those who do wrong. That’s God’s job. Our job is to love people. Our job is to stop hurting people with the way we remember their debts to us and the way we live around them. Our job is to be the servants of people regardless of what they do to us. That’s how Christ came into the world and that’s how He taught us to be throughout His teachings. We must come with a childlike eagerness to the Lord and we must stop looking inwardly to how we’ve been hurt. Look into the eyes of that one co-worker you can’t stand, look into the lines of the face of that kid that insists on insulting you and tell me that Jesus doesn’t love them too. Remember that they are one of God’s creations as much as you are and remember that God forgave you for the wrongs you did. Tell me that there’s one reason that we shouldn’t forgive and love them.