Vince Vitale  [00:00:42] Hi friends, welcome to Ask Away. I'm Vince and I'd love to know who you are too, especially if you have a question you've been wrestling with that you'd like us to talk about on this podcast. We certainly don't have all the answers, but we love questions and would count it a real honor to come alongside you on your journey as we seek truth together. Recently, we've had a number of questions come in around the topic of God's judgment of humanity and what that reveals about his character. Specifically, whether there is a contradiction between the claim that God loves us and the fact that he nevertheless judges us. My wife, Jo, personally struggled with this question in her early 20s when she was working on her master's in Biblical Interpretation. So I'm particularly excited for you to hear some of her reflections on the topic through a talk that she gave last month titled, How Could a Loving God Judge Us? Here's Jo. 

‍

Jo Vitale [00:01:46] Well, good evening everyone. This may not be the accent that you were expecting when you heard that someone called Jo Vitale was going to be speaking with you this evening. Most people think of like a New Jersey Italian-American wise guy. That's actually my husband, Vince, so don't worry. If that's what you were hoping for, I'm going to bring him up for answering some questions later, so you'll still get to hear that gorgeous New Jersey accent. But I moved to the States eight years ago, and honestly, I'm still kind of figuring this place out. I guess some of you are too, right? Since I moved here, Vince has just spent countless hours trying to teach me about baseball. I'm definitely a little bit of a lost cause. For example, for a few years, I actually thought that the Orioles were called the Oreos. Which means, to be honest, what could be more American than an Oreo cookie? But Vince, he's just continued to kind of patiently sit me down and try and explain all the rules to me. But I just can't get over why everybody is running around in circles wearing pajamas. And we've even gone through a few games here and there. We watched the Orioles beat the Yankees. But after a while, I just gave up on trying to figure out what was going on because I find myself daydreaming a lot. And then I'm sort of startled out of my seat in the seventh inning when suddenly the whole stadium stands up and they'll start singing God Bless America with tears in their eyes. And I'm standing there feeling a bit awkward because I don't know the words. I'm just sort of mumbling along and I'm just really thankful that they have hot dogs. 

‍

[00:03:14] But I just wonder how many of you here this evening do you find yourselves feeling exactly the same way about Christianity that I do about baseball? I mean, sure, like Christianity is, it's a national hobby in America, right? And some people, they might be really into it, but to you it's always been a little bit more of a spectator sport and honestly a kind of boring and outdated one at that. One that comes with a lot of confusing rules to follow, where people seem to spend all of their time doing things that make absolutely no sense to you. Maybe you've even been dragged to church a couple of times, perhaps this evening is one of those occasions. Well, like on Christmas and you just find yourself mumbling along to things that you don't really know and you're wondering, why is everybody else getting so emotional and teared up about this? And you sort of wish that you were at a baseball game because at least they have hot dogs. If that's been your experience of Christianity, then you're by no means alone. I discovered in an article that I was reading a while back that Brad Pitt apparently feels similarly to you. You're in great company there, and yes, those are exactly the kind of high brow, intellectually stimulating articles that I like to read. Don't judge me, you do it too. But in the words of Brad Pitt, I never understood growing up with Christianity. Don't do this. Don't do that. It's all about don'ts. And I was like, how do you know who you are and what works for you if you don't find out where the edge is, where's your line? You've got to step over the line to know where it is. Wisdom according to Brad Pitt. 

‍

[00:04:44] But before my husband Vince became a Christian in college, he remembers meeting a Christian in his first year who kind of summed up Christianity this way, "I used to drink, I used to party, I used to have sex, but now I'm a Christian and I don't do any of those things anymore." And Vince's immediate reaction was "Great. Where do I sign up?" We don't want to be [inaudible], we want to be rebels. We don't want some distant, detached God telling us how to live and making up a bunch of random rules for life, and then arbitrarily judging us for not following them like some curmudgeonly old baseball umpire-- is an umpire a referee? Which one? Umpire. Thank you. Sorry Vince. We want to make our own meaning, don't we? We don't want to judge. We want to make our own meaning. And if that's your perspective, then Christianity probably not only seems like the enemy of fun and freedom, but even worse, it actually seems like the enemy of love, doesn't it? Because after all, isn't love supposed to be the opposite of judgment? Who doesn't love [inaudible] somebody as they are on their own terms and not trying to change them? You might even say that in our culture today, an undefined, unchanging vision of love is about the only thing that we're interested in worshiping. As the philosopher Simon May has noted, in the wasteland of Western Idols, only love survives intact. Where once God was love, now love is God. In other words, if we want a better world, then just take God out of the picture and remove all of that judgmental baggage and we will be left with love. There you go. Problem solved. Fixed it for you. 

‍

[00:06:31] And yet, while many of us think that this is a goal worth shooting for, ultimately, I actually believe this is the greatest cultural delusion of all. I think it's actually the biggest lie we've ever told ourselves. Because actually, if you take God out of the picture, then what you're left with is no real love at all, and instead all that remains is judgment. Why do I say that? Because without God, what you have to resort to is a naturalistic explanation for the universe. And from a purely naturalistic, evolutionary perspective, then the type of beings that we have evolved to become, we're actually just not capable of the kind of freewill choice required for love to even be a meaningful possibility. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has famously put it, we are machines built by DNA, whose purpose is to make more copies of that same DNA. It is every living object's sole reason for living. DNA neither care no knows, DNA just is and we dance to its music. Now, if this is an accurate account of reality, then actually the implications for love are severe. As Doctor Helen Fisher, author of The Anatomy of Love and the Chief Science Officer for Match.com-- and don't you love that Match.com has a science officer? Well, several, I guess because she is the chief. Anyway, she comments, all of our human rituals concerning courtship and mating, marriage and divorce can be regarded as scripts by which men and women seduce each other in order to replicate themselves, what biologists call reproductive strategies. Well, to put it more bluntly, we are courtship machines. Never mind what motivations we may want to put to our actions, DNA is actually driving us towards self-replication, whether we know it or not. 

‍

[00:08:14] So if you strip passion and romance down to their base components, then actually it all just becomes a matter of survival, conducive chemistry, just another random evolutionary adaptation, which means that any relationship with someone else is actually entirely instrumentalist. It actually all becomes about how can they help you achieve your pre-programmed goals. Now, sure, you may experience all kinds of feelings for a person because your nervous system is firing and your pheromones are flying. But even if you enjoy spending time with somebody, even if you're working hard to take care of them, ultimately our loved ones become nothing more than a means to an end to survival rather than being the end in themselves. I love you because you're good for my survival. Now, there's the words every woman wants to hear. But not only is that so far from the kind of love that we long for, but actually it's also a statement of judgment. You forget about being loved or accepted for who I am without having to prove myself. It turns out the entire system is fixed such that I'm required to meet a standard after all. But now the sole standard by which I will be judged is on account of my fitness for survival. Survival of the fittest is what it boils down to, that's the underlying foundation for all of human relationships. Then no wonder we live in a society that is constantly telling us that love is something we have to earn, that all worth is going to be judged by our performance, and that we're only valuable and lovable to the extent that we can measure up to the expectations of the people around us we're trying to impress. 

‍

[00:09:57] We see these underlying assumptions, don't we? In the way that we sometimes talk about other people's relationships. We say things like, "He is way out of her league." Or "He was really punching above his weight to get to her." I'm not sure. I think that's a boxing term. Vince can tell you later. But if this is how relationships work, then no wonder these days fewer and fewer people are choosing to get married, right? Because if love is about deserving, then what happens when your partner disappoints you or let's you down? And if it's all about being impressive and the more impressive you are the more lovable you are, then what happens if down the line your partner meets somebody who's more funny or more beautiful or more anything than you? If love is something that you have to prove and earn, then there can never be a stability or a safety in relationships because it will always come down to performance and you will always be competing to be loved. It's a bit of a bleak picture, isn't it? Our account of reality in this sense that the happily ever after is that we long for, they just exist only in fairy tales or Hollywood, right? The atheist philosopher, John Gray, he puts it this way. A truly naturalistic view of the world leaves no room for secular hope. Without God, we can never know real love, because there is no real love to know. Instead, all we're left with is judgment. But if that's the situation without God in the picture, then what about with God? Is it possible to believe in a God who loves us while at the same time just scrapping the whole judgment thing? I get why you might want that, why you might feel that way. At one point in my life I strongly felt that way too. 

‍

[00:11:36] And yet I kind of want to push back against this complaint this evening, because as much as we all say that it's what we want, I'm not actually sure if we really mean it or if we quite realize what we're asking for when we say it. Just think for a moment about the best human relationships that you know, any of them actually meaningful without some form of judgment. What kind of parent would I be? For example, if I said, "Well, it's just not my place to judge," and I just let my three-year-old, my five-year-old boys just do whatever they want, treat people however they want, and then just never called them out on their bad behavior, or ever ensured that there were some sort of related consequences for treating other people badly, what sort of children would I be producing? Far from loving my children well, I actually think that would make me a bad parents and my behavior would actually be harming their development, not helping them. What about a marriage? I saw a signpost a few years back as I was driving down the highway that said "Maritalaffairs.com, where the grass is always greener." Yeah. But in this judgment-free love that we're all shooting for, are you supposed to be the kind of partner who just says, "Yeah, do whatever you want. Never mind the impact on me. Just do what feels good to you. You be you." Or is actually there a place to stay within marriage? No. You made vows of faithfulness to me. And I'm looking to you to keep your word and the consequences of breaking those vows, they would be serious because the hurt would be serious. I think in theory it sounds so good in our head, doesn't it, to be able to say you do you. There's no such thing as right and wrong. It's all just a matter of preference, whatever you feel then practice. 

‍

[00:13:22] That actually only works in a world with a population of one. As soon as you add even just one other person to the mix, suddenly your actions begin to matter profoundly, because what you do has direct consequences on everybody else. Not only is there a fitting place for exercising judgment in relationships and in society, and we call that the justice system, but I would actually go one step further and say that actually there can be no real love without judgment. Now, this realization hit home for me during my college years. And at the time, I definitely thought of love and judgment as total opposites. After all, if God is so loving it, why doesn't he just forgive everyone? Isn't that what we have all been taught to do ever since we were children? So why can't God practice what he preaches? Then my thinking was abruptly overturned one day when something horrendous happened and one of my friends went through the terrible trauma of being sexually abused. And you're seeing her deal with the consequences of that, seeing the way that she just live with fear every day, and the guilt and shame that she felt over something that she had no reason to feel guilty for, and the way that she just punished herself by just stopping eating, and the way that she went from one broken relationship to another. Because ever since then, she just couldn't cope with the idea of intimacy. There were no words to describe the horror of that, or of how devastated and angry I felt and how badly I wanted the man who did that to her, and who got away with it, to be held accountable for what he'd done and to receive judgment. And that's when I realized, if I love my friends so much that I cannot stand to see them mistreated, how much more would a God who loves every single one of us more than we could possibly imagine, be for the ways that we wrong and abuse and hurt one another? 

‍

[00:15:17] The truth is that in a group like this, some of you have been treated really badly. And that matters to God. That truly, deeply matters to him. We think of love and judgment as opposites, but actually I think the two go hand in hand. It's precisely because God loves each one of us so much that actually has to be judgment for the ways that we wrong each other. If he didn't judge, it would actually be like he was saying that he doesn't really care. One Christian writer, Marisol Wolff, he puts it this way. He says, "I used to think that anger was unworthy of God. Isn't God love? Shouldn't divine love be beyond anger? My last resistance to the idea of God's anger was a casualty of the war in former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come, 200,000 people were killed and over 3 million were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed. My people [inaudible], day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination. And I could not imagine God not being angry. How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath, but instead affirming the perpetrators basic goodness? Wasn't God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God's anger, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn't angry at the sight of the world's evil. God isn't angry in spite of being love. God is angry because God is love. And I think sometimes what happens is that those of us who have never been the victims of severe injustice to us, the idea of God's judgment, it can seem severe or unloving. To those who've been grossly wronged, far from this being a problem, the promise of God's judgment is actually for them the very hope that they can hold on to, that even if human justice systems fail them, to know that ultimately God's justice will not. 

‍

[00:17:21] We were reminded of this a few years ago when Vince and I were at a dinner party and we were speaking with an agnostic woman about her view of the world, and quite far into the conversation, Vince asked her if she believed that hell exists. And intriguingly, this was her response, "Well, I don't know, but I sure hope so." It wasn't the response that I was expecting, but it did make me wonder what had happened to her in this life to make her long for justice in the next. The truth is, when we or anybody that we love is treated unjustly, we find ourselves crying out for justice because that is what you do when you love someone. And more than anything, in those moments, we want to know that there is a God who hears our cries. Like in Genesis chapter four, when we read about the very first murder, when Cain killed his brother Abel and the Lord said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground." If we say we don't want a God who judges-- but I actually don't believe that. You just look at the social justice movements that have been sweeping across the globe in this last decade, the MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter, Environmental Justice, what are these movements if not a crying out for justice? When a man is lying brutalized on the ground we want to know that there is a God who hears that cry. He's not indifferent to it, but he was fiercely angry because he loved that man and he's so committed to responding with justice. The hang up for all of us, however, is that we want justice for ourselves. Sean’s already said it, in the people that we love. But that also then means that we have to be prepared to face justice ourselves. 

‍

[00:19:06] Here, I think, is where we get to the real heart of the question. It's not that we don't want a loving God to judge, is that we don't want him to judge us. And I think the idea that we might be judged for anything is understandably not so appealing, particularly when we have trouble admitting that we've ever done anything wrong in the first place. And my husband, Vince, and I realized how ingrained this perspective had become in British culture when, as an American citizen, he had to take a citizenship test in order to be allowed to stay in the UK, which is ridiculously hard, by the way. I took 15 practice tests and I only passed two, so apparently I'm not British enough to live in my own country. But in the paperwork, one of the questions that he had to answer no to in order to be allowed to stay living in England was the following. Have you or any dependents who are applying with you, ever engaged in any activities which might indicate that you may not be considered to be persons of good character? Isn't that nuts? It was basically asking him to say he'd never done anything wrong, and if he said he had, he would be deported. Apparently everyone is very well behaved in England. It's not surprising that people feel that way, because academic studies show that in nearly every area of life, human beings have an inflated sense of self. In fact, apparently 90% of people tend to rate themselves as better than average, which is definitely a statistical impossibility. We like to think of sin as other people's problem, but that actually doesn't work that way. You see, typically what we do is we categorize people according to just how bad we think they are. So the scale is like, here the saints up here, and here the murders and the people who hold different political views down here. And then we kind of place ourselves like somewhere around the middle, but definitely above average. Obviously, the statistics show. 

‍

[00:20:52] And then we draw this line. We're here, we draw the line like here or somewhere. And then we say, okay, well that's where it is. That's where God judges, below the line. What always stands out to me is we're always above the line. Do you know what else stands out? When we're thinking about drawing the line, we're always the one holding the pen, aren't we? It's always a whole line. And every time we're costing ourselves in the position of judge. Well, take a step back and think about that for a second. If God actually exists, who's holding the pen? A real issue with God is not that he judges, but his judgments are not the same as ours. Which is kind of ironic because if God does actually exist, if God is real, then what did you expect to find? If our criteria for worshiping God is that he agrees with you on everything and that all of his judgments are going to fall morally the same as yours, then what you're really saying is actually the only God you're going to worship is yourself. In other words, I'll worship the God I get to make up who just so happens to align with you and everything. Logically, if God actually exists, then he would be so far above us in perfection and goodness and love and wisdom. His way of seeing the world would be so far beyond our capabilities to even comprehend that we should absolutely expect him to view the world radically differently from us, and at times, it's probably going to shock us. You know what, it would be more shocking if it didn't. It would be more unbelievable. As God, he's the only one in the position to draw that line and determine right from wrong, because he's actually the only one who isn't already morally compromised. 

‍

[00:22:27] And honestly, from that perspective of way up there, I don't think any of us are looking too great. I try to minimize my sin, and I'd like to deceive myself because I so badly want to think of myself as a good person and someone who never causes harm. Even when I take a close look at my own relationships in my life, I'm forced to concede it's just not true. Just this past year, I suddenly identified or had brought to my attention actually some huge blind spots in some of my relationships. I'd been causing actually some of my closest friends a lot of hurt due to some selfish behaviors that I wasn't even paying attention to. It actually took me 37 years to see it. It was so hypocritical of me because if one of my friends had treated me that way, I would have spotted it immediately. When it comes to other people, I have all sorts of expectations and judgments about how I expect them to behave, and I get mad when they don't. But let's be real, I do not even measure up to my own standards. In the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent eight years in a Soviet labor camp in the 1940s, so he had a pretty clear perspective on human nature. "If only it were all so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them off from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human person, and who's willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" 

‍

[00:23:54] A while ago, I was reading my four-year-old god-daughter [inaudible] English children's nursery rhyme. I don't know if any of you guys know it's called Humpty Dumpty. Show of hands. Yeah, what a classic. In case you don't, this is a children's poem about an egg called Humpty Dumpty that is sitting on a wall. Then he falls off the wall and he breaks. Okay, admittedly not an overly sophisticated plot, but the message itself is quite profound. And this is how it goes. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again. The end. How brutal is that? They couldn't put it back together again. And this is the story we tell a four-year-old. But at a deeper level, I actually think the truth behind this story is striking, because Humpty Dumpty is the story of every one of us. It's actually the story of the human condition. We've fallen off the wall and we're lying in pieces. And as hard as they may try and we may try, nobody can put us back together again. The Bible describes it this way. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We've broken trust with God. We've broken trust with other people, and in turn, we've kind of broken ourselves. You may look around at all the headlines in the world right now and think, we're in really bad shape. I actually think it's much worse even than we think. Which leaves us in a really tough spot, doesn't it? Because once you recognize that for justice to be possible we actually need judgments, it kind of flips the question. Perhaps the real issue we have is not why would a loving God judge us, but why would a judging God love us? What reason have we given him? 

‍

[00:25:34] It's interesting to consider the way that different belief systems deal with individual moral failure. In pantheistic Hinduism, for example, the law of karma is at work, which states that a person consists of desire and as is his desire, so is his will, and as is his will so is his deed; and whatever deed he does, that he will reap. So the equation is clear. You reap what you sow. You get out what you put in, and at the end of the day, it's all going to come down to your efforts and how much work you're willing to do to outdo the bad with the good. But once you've messed up, there's no take backs. Islam is another example. A couple of years ago, Vince and some friends were traveling in a taxi that was driven by a muslim called Mohamed. And as they were talking about faith with Mohamed, they asked him how he felt about Judgment Day. To which he replied that he was terrified. And then he added, "Ask any Muslim and they'll tell you that they're terrified because we never know if we've done enough." You see, in Islam, good and bad are weighed as if placed on a set of scales. And if the good outweighs the bad, then you're okay. But if the bad winds up outweighing the goods and you're in serious trouble, the Quran says, "And every man's work we fasten into his neck, and on the day of resurrection we shall bring him before him a book which you will find open, and it will be said to him, read your book. He who follows the right way, follows that only for the good of his soul. And he who goes astray, goes astray only to his own loss. And no bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another." And notice what it's saying here. No bearer of burden will bear the burden of another on judgment Day. It's every person for themselves. I can kind of see why that would cause anxiety. 

‍

[00:27:13] Because if you don't know where the line is, how would you ever know if you've done enough? And even more than that, if God is the one drawing the line, if he's holding the pen, then from that position of perfect goodness, how could anyone ever be enough to cross that line? This is where I see the true distinctiveness of the Christian faith. Because alone among wild religions, Christianity talks about God in terms that nobody else does. Because not only is God conceived of as being loving, but the Bible explicitly states that God is love. You see, according to Christianity, there's a reason that you long for love like nothing in this world has to offer. Because you were created for a relationship with a God who made you by love, in love and for love. A God who is in his very nature, love. And therefore, it's the best kind of love that God has for you. It's love at its very best. A love that isn't driven by what he can get out of you, or how he can make use of you, or how fit for survival you are. A love that has nothing to do with how well you measure up or how well behaved you've been. According to Christianity, God's love doesn't even rely on you loving him back. With God, you never have to wake up in the morning and wonder is he still into me? Because he always will be, no matter what. This is a God with whom you can actually be both fully known and still fully loved. How is that possible? How can a God who is committed to perfect justice know us fully, right down to every ugly thought and every secret, selfish action, and still love us unconditionally? After all, haven't we put him in kind of an impossible situation? He's the God who loves every one of us so much that he cannot bear to stand by and do nothing, and watch his children be wounded and hurt. He's absolutely committed to justice for everyone. And yet, on the other hand, he's also the God who loves each of us so much that he can't bear for us to pay the severe price that justice demands for the ways that we've all abused each other. 

‍

[00:29:17] From this perspective, it feels like there's just no resolution. Despite his love for us by our own actions, we've sabotaged any possibility of experiencing that real love we were made for. Because what we've actually come to deserve is judgment. I'm so thankful that nothing is impossible for God. But even humanly, I don't think there was a way. What we find at the heart of the Christian faith is God Himself making a way. Earlier I mentioned Humpty Dumpty as this illustration of the kind of human brokenness, this unfixable mess that we're all in. But there's a writer called Alice Potter who notes that actually, from a Christian perspective, there is one really important line missing from that poem. And the line is this, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again, but the king could. But the king could and the King did. And then the king cried out from where he was strung up and dying on a cross, "It is finished." At the cross of Jesus Christ, the King of the universe who Christians understand to be God Himself come in human form to show us what God is truly like. To not only living human life alongside of us, but he also died on that cross precisely to do for us what none of us could do for ourselves. At the cross, we see God's judgment on humanity as he declares all of us guilty. In fact, the cross is kind of God's strongest and most overt statement that we are not okay, and that the ways that we debase and demean and dehumanize and destroy one another is so serious and deadly that the only just punishment for that is quite literally death. And yet at the very same time, the same God who is the just judge, he also refuses to condemn us to the fate that we deserve. Instead, he issues the verdict but then he condemns himself in our place. As Jesus willingly takes on our sentence, he makes himself vulnerable by becoming human, and then he literally switches places with us so that the judge becomes the judged. 

‍

[00:31:29] And in return, the only person who's never sinned, the only one who's never done anything which might be considered to be reason to be deported from England. This God, this Jesus, he gives us in exchange his innocent status, so that when God looks at us, he no longer sees our guilt. Instead, because of Jesus, God sees an innocent person and a brand new life. Justice demands judgment and love demands mercy. But at the cross of Jesus Christ, we see the love of God and the justice of God coming together in perfect intersection. Earlier we looked at naturalistic definitions of love, but this is how Christianity defines it. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And this is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. Just try to get your head around that for a moment, because it's pretty mind blowing. The same God who creates the universe, hang up, bleeding out and gasping for breath. In the words of one author, the world takes us to a silver screen where flickering images of passion and romance play. And as we watch, the world says, this is love. And then God takes us to the foot of a tree on which a naked and bloodied man hangs and says, this is love. Do you see it? Can you see just how loved you are? God was so committed to finding a solution to our problems that he himself became the solution to our problems, even when becoming that solution meant he himself endured unimaginable suffering, anguish and death. That is how determined he was to love you and for you to know that he loves you. In Islam we're told that on Judgment Day, no one can carry the burden of another. In Christianity, it's God Himself who carries that burden. 

‍

[00:33:34] Naturalism judges us according to survival of the fittest. Christianity says the complete opposite. It says it's all about the fittest giving up their life for the least fit for their survival. And that is the most beautiful truth that I've ever heard. A God who won't compromise on what is right because he's too good to consent to evil, and yet a God who will sacrifice everything to make us right because he's too loving to ever turn his back on us. And what does God ask of us in return for this extraordinary gift of love and life? Only this. That we receive it. Just receive it. Despite how simple that sounds, I actually think for many of us that can be the hardest part of all to believe, can't it? That we could truly actually be loved that much. It's kind of like as human beings, we've been conditioned to always find it so much easier to accept bad news than good news. And to truly believe that someone could love me like that, seriously I don't have to prove myself every second any more of the day just to feel like I'm enough? No more condemnation for me? No more beating myself up about the bad choices I made yesterday or, well, this morning or three years ago or 10 years ago? I met Vince at a time of my life when I was really struggling with some of the choices that I've made in the past. And honestly, I felt so guilty and I just felt so unworthy of love. And I was convinced that if Vince actually knew the truth about me, then he was definitely not going to want to be with me. And so I just thought it'd be better to get dumped sooner rather than later. And so I wanted to tell him before our relationship got too serious about some of the things that I had done. 

‍

[00:35:13] But as I told him, I actually couldn't even look him in the eye. I just was sitting there and I just stared at the ground and I cried. I was just crying, crying. And after I'd shared, choked it out, Vince just said, "Jo, look at me." And I said, "No, I can't." And I just carried on crying because I just was so afraid. I was so scared to look into his eyes because I thought I would just see condemnation, disappointment, rejection. But then he said it again. He said, "Jo, look at me." And then he took my face in his hands and he raised it until we were looking eye to eye. And then he just said to me, "That is not who you are anymore." That is not who you are anymore. And all I saw was love. And that was the moment when I think it really hit me. That's when I kind of got it. That actually for so many of us, we are so afraid. We are so afraid to look at God because we're just terrified that if I have to look him in the face, then all I'm going to see is just this angry judgment on his face and eyes just full of condemnation. The cross of Jesus, that's the place [inaudible]. Is if God literally comes down and he takes our face in his hands and he raises it until we're looking with him eye to eye. And he says to every single one of us, "That's not who you are anymore. This doesn't need to be your story. You don't have to live life defined by all of your failures and mistakes. They don't get to determine you. You are more than the sum of everything that you've ever done and everything that has ever been done to you." 

‍

[00:36:57] The Bible says that there's no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, you're fully known and you're fully loved, which means you can finally break free from that endless cycle of searching for love and having to prove yourself worthy and falling flat on your face time and again. So you can just relax. You can just enjoy it because you have nothing left to prove. It's not about what you can do for God, it's what he's already freely done for you. And when Vince said that with Mohamed, who was driving the taxi, he responded by saying, "That's a beautiful story. I wish it were true." The reason I find that to be a beautiful story is because it is true. It is true. God loves you. He loves you so much. And it's not just true for me or for a select few. If it's true for one, then it is true for the world. For his love and forgiveness are freely given to anyone, anytime, anywhere. All you need to do is believe and receive him. And the Bible tells us that we too will be given the right to be called children of God.

‍