I have tried three different days and dozens of different ways to write this post, and I have decided there is just no graceful way to jump in – so here I go!

Yes, Christianity states that you are a sinner. Is that a pleasant thought? No. Is it a comforting and beautiful thought? Nope, not at all. Is it offensive and detrimental to your sense of self-worth? Oh, yeah. Could it be damaging to your self-esteem? Could it possible sink you into depths of depression and wreak havoc on you delusions of grandeur? You better bet it can.

And you know what? That is precisely what it was designed to do.

I know, I know, precious, you want to think that this whole religion thing was meant to be comforting and sweet – something to help you sleep better when the monsters under your bed threatened to eat you alive. You want to believe that faith is meant to be affirming and uplifting, and all these horrible people are using it to beat you down when you just wanted be loved for who you are.

Well, get over it.

Real Christianity is a religion of death and bloody wounds. We serve a God who was nailed naked to a cross and then commanded us to follow his example. It is not pretty picture. I don’t care how nicely you try to paint it.

The image was never meant to be comforting. It was never supposed to a pretty idea to soothe your frazzled nerves. Everything about it was meant to disturb your senses, to shred your ideas of propriety and dismantle any thoughts of self-worth you might be tempted to entertain. The cross is a mirror held up to the soul, showing us what true love looks like and exposing our selfish attempts at self-preservation for what they are - greed, pride, and selfishness. Who among us would endure such a tragedy for the sake of another? Who among us has the courage to be laid bare before the world? To remain still as our lungs filled with fluid and our hearts shredded in an attempt to keep beating?

Not I, and probably not you either, but our Lord, Saviour, and our Redeemer did. When freedom from suffering was a mere thought away, when an end to the agony required but whisper to be made real, and when the excruciation could have been stopped simply because he desired comfort above our redemption.

I know, I know. Even to call him by those titles – Lord, Saviour, and Redeemer – is an affront! For in declaring him to be those things would be to acknowledge that you need him to be all of those things and more. It is saying that you need someone to rule in your life who is greater than you because you are not enough. It proclaiming that you were lost, in need of saving, because you were incapable of saving yourself. It is saying that you are of no value outside his redeeming love, and that is blow that stings our pride.

These are the truths that so many find distasteful and offensive. Who is this God who would dare imply that we are nothing apart from his love? What kind of love would demand that we acknowledge such painful ideas about ourselves before allowing us to experience his presence?
Surely, he is a monster who does not deserve our love if these are his demands.

And if we stopped the story of his love right there, he would indeed be such a monster, but this is the beauty of the Christian faith – it never ends in death.

On the contrary, death is but the beginning the necessary prelude so that richness of the symphony mercy might be appreciated. For what is the glory of resurrection without the gory death? Where is the beauty of rebirth without the terror of mortification? What victory is there if there is no grave?

We have grown soft and selfish, wanting the beauties of our faith while never submitting to the demands that we pick up our cross and follow in the footsteps of Jesus. We try to claim the prize but refuse to run the race.

Is it any wonder that we face a world who denies the validity of our faith? That is disgusted by the very tenants of what we believe because the revelations of the Bible are too cruel to be embraced, to be lived, or to be honored as true? When we claim to have known the beauty of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, but deny that his death and suffering has any bearing on this reality? We cannot blame the world for pointing at the ugliness we reject as reason to reject our faith. We cannot hold them accountable for failing to see past the blood and cruelty when we have never embraced it as the means of our salvation.

We are the ones who told the lie, who softened our message so that we could live at ease with the horror of it all. We are the ones who never looked into the mirror of the cross and saw our own corruption and begged for it to be removed from us so that we could walk in fellowship with our King. Instead, we said, he loves us – just as I am, he loves me, and that is all I need to know. We reached out for the grace and spurned the holiness as too demanding and cruel to be encompassed in the love he offered. And in doing so mocked his divinity, elevated our humanity, and worshipped a god we have created in our image.

It is time to get real. We were sinners, born in sin, downing in the ever encroaching tide of death, weighted down with our pride and self-justification. Embracing his holiness is the beginning of death for all these things, and death hurts, it terrifies, and leaves us empty of all that we were before. And if you have embraced a god who does not burn these things from your being then you have not embraced the God of love who is never content to leave us as he found us but rather died so that we might become a new creation, free from the damaging effects of former selves. For it is only in the death of who we were that we are empowered to become who might be in his presence.