Lie #11 – It Ought to Hurt

from Helena Sorensen Aman:

Lie #11: “It oughta hurt.”

I learned in church that nothing about God or faith should be easy. People spoke contemptuously of “easy grace” and “easy believe-ism” and curled their lips at the idea of being “soft on sin.” If you read the Bible and felt good about what you read, you’d misinterpreted. That wasn’t the point; you weren’t supposed to be comfortable. You were supposed to be convicted, challenged, pricked to the heart. The Good News was a bitter pill that everyone had to swallow. (And you’d better swallow it now and keep swallowing, or Someone would pin you to the ground and force it down your throat.) I don’t know how to make sense of all this. We held so many contradictions while claiming our faith was simple. How could Love be the stated reality if I came away with so many violent, abusive images? Because I know what it feels like to be loved without condition or expectation, without pressure, without being patronized. It doesn’t hurt at all.