And so are you. So is everyone ever.
Light and dark. Good and bad. Faithfulness and flakiness. Holiness and sinfulness. Trust and skepticism. Hope and cynicism.
In the Gospels, the disciples are our example par excellence of this. Perhaps Peter more than any other. The question that comes to my mind is, why do I seem to highlight his faults more than his strengths?
Yes, he sank into the water when Jesus called him, but he was the only one who even stepped out of the boat to set his feet upon the surface of the water. Yes, there was that time Jesus himself referred to him as Satan, but on another occasion he also called him Rock because he intended to build his church on him as the foundation. Yes, he denied Christ three times after his arrest, but he was also one of only two disciples who followed him to court.
There’s something hardwired in our brains that draws our attention to failure and faults—it’s called “the negativity bias.” Put simply, it means that negative events or feelings tend to have a stronger impact on our psychological state than do positive ones.
Which sure makes my self-image complicated when I’m a mixed bag. I might be objectively 50/50 bad to good, or perhaps even better on a good day, but I can easily believe that I’m 70/30, or worse—even on a good day.
Yet the more I read the Gospels, and the longer I simply endeavor to keep following Jesus no matter what, the more I’m convinced that he’s simply not all that worried about my mixed-bag-ishness. He alone sees my true ratios, but for some reason also seems to be the only one who couldn’t care less. Oh, he’ll call me out on something, for sure. But in the end, I mostly see him looking back over his shoulder, smiling that I’m still stumbling eagerly behind him.
