love & transformation

August 19, 2010

Adrian: I know you really well. Ricky, I know you &I accept you for who you are. Unlike Amy, she's never going to understand you the way I understand you.

Ricky: Good! I'm glad alright? I don't want her to accept me or understand me. I want her to change me.

This interaction happened on the most recent episode of "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." Yeah, I don't watch it very much, just when I want to rot my brain for a bit, lol. But this interaction caught my attention. Some background info. Adrian is still in love with Ricky, her ex, but Ricky is now wondering if he likes Amy, who is the mother of his baby. However, to ever be in a relationship with Amy, he'd have to never sleep around anymore, and be completely exclusive with Amy, and Ricky is known to be the little player.

Anyway, aside from all of the problems and issues with that TV story, I'm going to concentrate merely on what was said by Ricky. That he wasn't looking for someone to accept him exactly as the player that he is, but someone that would change him for the better.

It got me thinking. In our relationships with Christ, do we simply approach Christ because we believe he loves and accepts us exactly for who we are or do we approach Christ expecting and wanting want him to change us? Now this is kind of tricky; a fine line. Because yes, Christ loves us exactly for who we are, His prodigal children, but he also loves us despite who we are, depraved sinners who have spurned and rejected Him, and because he loves, he also seeks to transform and change us into what he had created us to be.

It's true that God loves everyone. After all, John 3:16 clearly points to this, but the verse points to Christ, and how he came to die for us that when we believe and repent of our sins, we may have eternal life. And that is key. It's not a fixed life to which we're called, where there is no change for the better. There is to be transformation; a repentance of our past and future sins, and a continual striving after and pursuit of holiness because our God is holy (Leviticus 11:44).

Our theology or concept of God has ever so slightly turned into a "God loves us for who we are, so we don't really need to change or be transformed. Or else, doesn't it mean that He doesn't love us for who we are?" I suppose this comes down to what "for who we are" refers to, for who we are as sinners? or for who we are as his prodigal children? I believe the latter. And with this is the concept brought up by CS Lewis in his "Mere Christianity" concerning the way we love ourselves. We love ourselves so we get disappointed with ourselves with the bad that we do, but that doesn't mean we stop loving ourselves. It is precisely because we love ourselves that we hate the bad and want to do better.

In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again. (Mere Christianity)

In the same way, God loves us, and it is precisely because he loves us, that he wants the best for us, and that requires a transformation of our sinful lives. So often we demand of God and of those around us that they accept us for exactly who we are as sinners and flawed people, and that they not try to change us. On the contrary, may we approach God, as well as the people we allow into our lives, with this concept: that through their love for us, they will change us for the better and we should rejoice in the awesomeness of it all, that while God loves us for who we are and despite what we are, His love for us leads to our betterment and transformation if we allow and welcome it. May we continually strive to be transformed by our Lord Jesus Christ for the better; that we may attain that which has already been set before us!

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2