How did I End Up Here?

There are a lot of things that I don’t know the answer to. There’s this one that I still have trouble with, no matter how much I read and think about it.

That question is: Are we born good, get broken, then try to get better, or are we born bad and try to get better from the day we’re born?

This is a deep theological question, going to the very core of human nature. I’m in the camp of we are born good, get broken, then try to get better. But even while we try to get better, we still end up where we don’t want to be.

Now I talk about this because of a few things that have come up in the past 24 hours. Nothing big, just a conversation and a haircut.

Today I got a haircut, and not just a buzz, for the first time in 9 years. I came home, did some stuff around the house, and was working in my room. I looked up and saw myself in the mirror, and I had no idea who I was looking at. I didn’t recognize myself.

Last night I was talking with come friends of mine, and one of them was telling me about his brother, how he’s living with his girlfriend, gaining massive amounts of weight, and knows that everything that’s going on in his life isn’t good for him, yet won’t do anything about it, continually living in sin.

I’ve had times in my past where I wake up, look at myself and wonder, “How did I end up here… I was going really well in my walk, and now I have no idea where I’m at, who I am, I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”

I wonder how many people are like that, who look at themselves and wonder, “How did I end up here? How did I end up living in sin? How do I not recognize myself in the mirror?”

My theology tends to come from experience and scripture, and my experiences have been that we are good, then get broken. Then we try to find a way to get back to the good. These can be referred to as “seasons,” as one of my friends last night called them. We are raised by our parents, and if they do it right, we end up pretty well off. But we live in a broken world, and sometimes parents are that good, sometimes they’re down right terrible, and we are raised wrong. But even if we are raised right, we’re still in a broken world and we’ll still break.

No one has ever been without sin. Except Christ. He is the only unbroken person who has ever lived.

And he is the only way we can get right, get good, become unbroken and put us back together right. Even if we are raised right, we’ll still break, it’s inevitable. But when we come to Christ he will put us back together, and through him being with us we can actually be good again. It’ll be hard, we will fail at times, but that’s why we have grace. So that we can get back up, and try again, harder next time.

So when we do have those times when we get to those seasons where we don’t recognize ourselves, we can remember that Christ is there to help us get to where we need to be, so that we can see who we really are, and see ourselves as God sees us.

Find out where you are in your life, and find out where God wants you to be, and ask for God to help you get there. If you fall, get back up, he’ll be there to help you.