A New Way of Seeing – Why we argue over goats and sheep
Speaking the truth can be a tricky thing. When we are kids, telling the truth is usually the quickest way to get out of trouble or ease a correction from our parents. But when we grow up, things change. If we speak honestly as adults, without adding a personal slant to the story, we quickly experience the consequences of that truth. Sometimes, that truth makes people very uncomfortable. In fact, it might even offend a few folks. I do not mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I have noticed that when you look at what the Bible actually says instead of what we want it to say, everybody gets a little bit irritated. Let me give you an example of what I mean.
In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, Jesus tells a famous story about His return. He says that when the King comes back, He will separate people into two groups. He will put the sheep on His right side and move the goats to His left side. I suspect some of you already see where this is going, but let me tell you about a funny thing that happened on my own social media page recently.
A friend of mine posted a meme about this exact Bible verse. The responses in the comment section were all over the place. A few people gave it a thumbs-up emoji. Several people posted laughing faces. A few others left angry, red faces.
If you scrolled down into the actual text of the comments, things got ugly fast. Some of the language should have been rated PG-13. Honestly, it made me question if these folks ate their dinner with the very same fingers they used to type those nasty comments, if you know what I mean.
But then I had to laugh. A whole group of people suddenly got up on their soapboxes to argue about the grammar. They claimed that of course the goats were on the left because the word “GOAT” is a modern acronym for the “Greatest Of All Time.” They thought Jesus was throwing shade at the best people!
Oh boy, did that fire up the conversation. Within minutes, the whole post turned into a political shouting match. People started tossing around heavy labels like socialist, fascist, MAGA, and libertard. Nobody was listening to anybody else. There was absolutely no conception of real social discourse. It had turned into a total free-for-all. The only emoji I could muster in my own mind was the one where the yellow face has its eyes slightly closed, looking down, with a single tear running down its cheek.
It made me sad to see how quickly a lesson from Jesus could be turned into a weapon for our modern political shouting matches.
What Did Jesus Actually Say?
After watching that online circus, I decided to pull out my Bible. I wanted to read the rest of this teaching by Jesus to try and understand the real lesson He was trying to get across.
If you go back and look at the context, Jesus is talking about His future return. This conversation happens right before His arrest, before the crucifixion and burial, and even before the resurrection and ascension. Jesus was preparing His followers for a long deployment. He was telling them that what they were about to experience with His death was not the end of the story. There was real hope. He promised that He would one day return in glory.
However, Jesus made it clear that when the King returns, He is going to take a very close look at the manner in which we lived our lives. In verse 34, Jesus looks at the people on His right side—the sheep—and tells them they will inherit the Kingdom of God. Why do they get this reward? He tells them that when they encountered someone who was hungry, they fed them. When they met someone who was thirsty, they gave them a drink. When a stranger showed up, they welcomed them in. When someone was naked or homeless, they provided clothing and shelter. And even when people were sick or locked up in prison, these individuals took the time out of their busy days to go and visit them.
The followers in the story are completely confused by this. They look at the King and ask, “Lord, when did we ever see you hungry, or thirsty, or lonely, or sick, or in prison? When did we do these things for you?” And Jesus gives the famous response: “When you did this for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it to Me.”
The Great Political Tug-of-War
This entire passage is one of the most argued pieces of scripture in the whole Bible. The problem is that almost everybody argues it completely wrong because they want to use Jesus to prove that their specific political side is correct.
Let’s look at the first group of people. There is a large crowd today who will argue that Jesus is speaking directly to political nations. They look at the state of the world and say that our country, as a whole governmental system, should be the one working to provide free food, housing, and healthcare. They believe our prison systems should be run differently by state laws and that the government should use tax dollars to make sure every single citizen has clean drinking water, clothes, and a place to live.
They look at the wealthy and think about fairness. They look at the people who have millions or billions of dollars and say, “It isn’t fair that some folks have so much money while others have nothing. The government needs to step in, take a portion of that wealth through taxes, and distribute it to the people who need it.”
I find this argument deeply curious, especially looking at it from my context as a citizen of the United States. It is often the exact same group of people who will argue passionately that our country must keep the church and the government completely separated. They do not want religion in public schools, and they do not want laws based on the Bible. Yet, at the exact same time, they turn around and demand that the state budget reflect the personal heart of Jesus.
I am not sure that it is possible to have it both ways. You cannot demand the fruit of the spirit from a machine that you stripped the spirit out of.
It reminds me of that old Willie Dixon blues song that was first released by Bo Diddley called “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover.” In the lyrics, he sings that you can’t judge the honey by looking at the bee. That sounds nice, but I would contend with that lyric: how in the world would you ever have honey without the bee in the first place?
In other words, how could the personal, loving heart of Jesus be present in a government system if Jesus Himself isn’t welcome there? A government bureau is a cold, mechanical thing. It runs on forms, red tape, and automated systems. It does not have a soul. But still, many folks want us to respond to poverty by using our national systems to force a reflection of Christian morals and values.
They want the honey, but they want to ban the bee.
The Danger of Institutional Giving
On the flip side, you have people who realize the government cannot be the savior. They look at the problem and say, “No, this isn’t a job for Uncle Sam. This is a job for the church.”
They believe Jesus was speaking directly to religious institutions, telling the church leaders and congregations that they are the ones who hold the collective responsibility to fix society. So, churches have taken up this mantle. They do a lot of good things. They build mission-based groups, stock up food pantries, run thrift stores, and open low-cost or no-cost shelters.
These ministries are often run by small groups of faithful folk who go out into the community to seek the least, the last, and the lost. But if we are being completely honest, this model has a major flaw too. Institutional church work is often limited by two big things: finite resources and human judgment.
Because churches are institutions run by humans, they tend to start judging the needs of others through the lens of their own choices. They look at the person standing in the food pantry line and start asking questions behind the scenes. “Why don’t they have a job? What are they spending their money on? Do they deserve this help, or are they just taking advantage of us?”
Suddenly, the open-hearted love of Jesus gets trapped behind a checklist of rules and parameters. The help becomes conditional. We end up with small pockets of humanity helping small pockets of their brothers and sisters, but only if those brothers and sisters fit into the right boxes or believe the right things. It becomes a system of corporate charity rather than personal relationship.
Sometimes, the desire to handle things through a local church program is less about loving the neighbor and more about controlling the situation. It lets the individual church member write a check or drop off canned goods so they can feel like they checked the box, without ever having to sit down, look a broken person in the eye, and learn their name.
The Shocking Greek Grammar Lesson
But what if I were to offer you a completely different option? What if Jesus was not talking to the federal, state, or local governments at all? And what if He wasn’t even talking to the church as an organized institution?
What if I were to offer to you that Jesus was looking past the presidents, past the governors, past the preachers, and past the committees, and was looking directly at you?
Let’s talk about that for a minute.
A lot of people read this story in the Bible and get confused because verse 32 says, “All the nations will be gathered before him.” They see that word “nations” and immediately think of big systems, national borders, and political parties. They think Jesus is putting America, Canada, or Rome on trial. But if you look closer at the text, Jesus isn’t talking to a system. He is talking to the individual.
To really understand the depth of what Jesus is saying, we have to put on our detective hats and look at the original Greek language that the New Testament was written in. There are two specific words in this passage that completely change how we see the whole story.
First, let’s look at that word “nations.” In the original Greek text, the word used is ethne. This is where we get our modern English word “ethnic.” It means a collection of people, a crowd, or a specific people group. In the ancient Greek language, this noun is considered grammatically neutral. It does not have a masculine or feminine gender.
Now look at the very next sentence in verse 32. Jesus says the King will separate “them” one from another, just like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
Here is the kicker: in the original Greek grammar, the word Jesus uses for “them” is autous, which is a masculine pronoun.
Why does a dry, boring grammar rule matter so much for our lives today? Because a neutral noun like ethne (nations) cannot be paired with a masculine pronoun like autous (them) if you are talking about the nations themselves. By shifting the grammar from neutral to masculine, the text shows us that Jesus is not separating the political structures or the geographical nations. He is reaching inside those nations and separating the individual people out from the crowd!
Think of it like a giant school project. Imagine your teacher stands up in front of the classroom and says, “The whole class is going to be graded on this project.” But then, instead of giving a single grade to the room, the teacher walks down the aisles, looks at every single desk, and hands out individual grades based on exactly what each student did.
Jesus does not look at a government’s tax ledger or a nation’s welfare policy. He doesn’t look at a church’s annual budget report. He looks at a single, living human being. He looks at you, and He looks at me.
The King looks us in the eye and says, “I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was lonely, and you visited me.” A government agency cannot look someone in the eyes and show them the love of God. A government program cannot sit by a hospital bed, wipe away a tear, or hold a dying person’s hand. A state department cannot walk into a prison cell and offer genuine human friendship. Only a real, individual person can do those things.
Jesus is telling us that changing the world is not someone else’s job. It is a personal, daily choice that lands squarely on our own doorsteps.
The Beautiful Puzzle of Society
When we realize that Jesus is talking to us as individuals, it flips our entire world upside down. It strips away our ability to make excuses.
Think about how easy it is to point fingers when we see a problem. When we drive past a homeless person on the corner, one side might say, “The government needs to build a shelter for that man.” The other side might say, “The local church needs to start a ministry for people like him.” Both sides are doing the exact same thing: they are passing the buck. They are using an institution as a shield to protect themselves from the raw, uncomfortable reality of human suffering.
But Jesus pulls that shield away. He says that each of us is an individual puzzle piece.
Think about how a jigsaw puzzle works. A puzzle is made up of hundreds of tiny, uniquely shaped pieces of cardboard. No single piece can show you the whole picture on its own. If you just pile all the pieces into a messy heap, it looks chaotic and broken.
A lot of people look at our society today and see a broken picture. They think the solution is for a big, powerful hand—like the government—to come in, smash the pieces together, and force them to fit by passing laws. But force doesn’t work. It just bends and ruins the pieces.
Instead, Jesus explains how the individual should live. He tells us that when each of us lives exactly as we are called to live, to the absolute best of our individual ability, something amazing happens. When I take care of the person right in front of me, and you take care of the person right in front of you, the puzzle pieces naturally begin to slide into place. The collective society, from the ground up, begins to create a better, more beautiful world.
This isn’t about forced fairness or redistribution by decree. Jesus isn’t telling us to take by force from one person to give to another. That is a political strategy, not a spiritual one. True transformation only happens when a human heart chooses to sacrifice something of its own out of genuine love. Jesus is calling each of us to do what we can, in the unique ways that we can, whenever and wherever we find ourselves.
The Mirror of Truth
If we actually started to live this way, the world would look radically different overnight.
Imagine if we stopped waiting for the perfect political candidate to save us. Imagine if we stopped shouting at each other online about who is right and who is wrong. What if we took all that energy we spend on social media discourse—all those angry comments and political soapboxes—and redirected it toward our actual, physical neighbors?
I suspect that if we did that, our preaching houses and church buildings would start to fill up to the brim. Not because we built a better program or ran a flashier ad campaign, but because we would finally be living in a way that looks like Jesus actually called us to live. People would see a community of individuals who stop expecting others to fix the world and start taking personal responsibility for the pain around them.
This kind of life is hard. It requires us to lay down our pride, our political labels, and our desire for comfort. It requires us to look at the person who is hungry, sick, imprisoned, or brand new to our city, and see them not as a political talking point, but as an individual made in the image of God.
It leaves us with a profound question that we have to answer every single morning when we wake up. We cannot hide behind a system anymore. Once we see the truth of this personal mandate, we have to find a practical, everyday way to live it out without making a mess of things. We need a map for our daily walk. We need a few simple, reliable guideposts to keep our hearts on the right track so we can actually be the puzzle pieces we were created to be.
Prayer – almighty God let our vision not be focused on the politics or priorities of our own lives but in the needs of our brothers and sisters. Amen
Monthly Archives: July 2026
How Are You Using That Treadmill???
If you have a piece of exercise equipment somewhere in your house right now, do me a favor. Stop reading for just a second, get up, and go take a look at it.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
What did you find? Are there a couple of heavy sweatshirts from last winter draped over the handles? Maybe a pair of jeans that don’t quite fit right now hanging from the side rails? A stray towel? A basket of laundry that you’ve been meaning to fold since Tuesday?
The reason I ask is because I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace the other day, just killing time, when a listing caught my eye. It made me laugh out loud, but then it made me sit in silence for a really long time.
It was an ad for a treadmill. The description started off like this:
“Just finished a bedroom remodel and have more space in our closet, so we are now selling our gently used treadmill.”
That part wasn’t the funny part. The funny part was the photo. Attached to the listing was a picture of this treadmill, completely buried under a mountain of clothes. There were shirts hung neatly by their hangers on the side rails, sweaters piled high on the running belt, and a jacket thrown over the digital console. It had literally been repurposed as a massive, expensive, metal coat rack. The owners didn’t need the treadmill anymore because they finally built a bigger closet to hold the clothes that had taken it over.
Once I stopped chuckling, my mind started wandering. I started thinking about all the things in our lives that we buy or invite into our spaces with the absolute best of intentions, but we don’t actually use them for what they were made for.
Human beings are kind of famous for this, you know. We take something designed for one specific, incredible purpose, and we twist it into something completely different.
Did you know that when Listerine was first introduced back in 1879, it wasn’t meant for your breath at all? It was originally invented to clean surgical wounds and help doctors scrub down flesh before surgery. Later on, they marketed it as an all-purpose cleaner. For years, people were using it to scrub their kitchen floors and treat athlete’s foot before anyone ever thought to gargle with it.
Or think about bubble wrap. The geniuses who invented it in 1957 were actually trying to create a trendy, textured, plastic wallpaper. Can you imagine lining your living room walls with bubble wrap? It failed miserably as home decor, but today, we use it to protect fragile things in transit—and, let’s be honest, to drive our family members crazy by popping the bubbles the second a package arrives.
We do this all the time with common household items. We use butter knives as screwdrivers. We use old coffee mugs to hold rusty nails in the garage. We use heavy textbooks as doorstops.
But as I sat there looking at that picture of the treadmill buried under a pile of laundry, a much deeper, much heavier question hit me right in the chest. It’s a question I want to ask you, and I want to ask myself:
In what way are we using our relationship with Jesus?
Have we done the exact same thing to Him? Have we taken the living, breathing, dynamic invitation of Christ and turned it into an expensive, underutilized piece of furniture in our lives? Have we piled so much stuff on top of Him that we can’t even see what He was originally intended for?
I’ll be the first to admit something to you: I have struggled with my weight and my physical conditioning for a lot of my life. It is a real, daily, vulnerable mountain to climb. And over the years, whenever I hit a point where I felt frustrated or out of shape, buying a piece of exercise equipment always seemed like the right answer. It felt like a monument to hope.
In my mind, the moment that machine entered my house, I was going to become a runner. I was going to be healthy. I was going to feel vibrant and strong.
But here is the hard truth about a treadmill: it doesn’t possess magic powers. Just owning it doesn’t lower your cholesterol. Stepping over it on your way to the kitchen doesn’t strengthen your heart. Unless you actually turn it on, step onto the belt, and use it properly for its intended purpose, it does absolutely nothing for you. It doesn’t strengthen you, and you will never see the benefits of what it was engineered to do.
Instead, because we aren’t using it, we start to feel a little guilty every time we look at it. It becomes a reminder of what we aren’t doing. So, to make ourselves feel better, we start treating it like a piece of furniture. We throw a jacket over it. Then a pair of pants. Then a blanket. Before you know it, the machine is completely hidden. It’s still there, right in the middle of the room, but its original purpose has been entirely suffocated by the clutter of daily life.
I think a lot of us have done the exact same thing with faith.
Maybe you are someone who didn’t grow up in church at all. Or maybe you are someone who used to go, but you walked away because you got completely burnt out by the rules, the politics, the judgment, and the exhausting performance of it all. You might be totally “done” with organized religion, but you still have this quiet, persistent ache inside of you that wonders if there was actually something real underneath all the noise.
You see, many of us sought out Jesus with beautiful, genuine intent. We were lonely, or we were broken, or we were looking for a life that felt like it actually mattered. We looked at Jesus and thought, “Yes. That is what I want. I want that love. I want that peace.”
But somewhere along the way, we wrongly applied what we found. Instead of letting Jesus change the way we live and love, we allowed religion to pile a bunch of heavy, dusty clothes on top of Him. We turned a life-giving relationship into a rigid, dusty monument.
Why Did He Show Up in the First Place?
To understand how we get the relationship so wrong, we have to pull back all the layers of laundry and look at what Jesus actually said He came to do. What was His original purpose? Why did He step into our messy, chaotic world in the first place?
If you ask a lot of modern churches, they might tell you He came to start a country club with a really strict dress code and a long list of people who aren’t allowed inside. But if you look at the actual biographical accounts of His life, Jesus paints a completely different picture.
There are two major moments in the scriptures where Jesus clearly defines His own mission statement. He didn’t leave it up for guess work. He spelled it out for us, and both times, He did it in the middle of everyday life, speaking to people who felt entirely left out.
1. To Seek and to Save the Lost (Luke 19:10)
2.
The first place we see this is in the book of Luke, chapter 19. Jesus is walking through a crowded city called Jericho. There’s a guy there named Zacchaeus who is a chief tax collector. In those days, tax collectors weren’t just disliked; they were viewed as traitors and thieves. They worked for the oppressive Roman government and skimmed extra money off their own neighbors to line their own pockets. Nobody liked Zacchaeus. He was the definition of an outsider. He was spiritually and socially isolated.
Because Zacchaeus was short, he climbed up into a sycamore tree just to get a glimpse of Jesus passing by. Now, if Jesus were like a lot of religious folks today, He probably would have pointed at the man in the tree and used him as an object lesson on how not to live. He would have told him to clean up his act, pay back the money, and come back when he was respectable.
Instead, Jesus stops right under the tree, looks up, calls Zacchaeus by his name, and says, “Hey, come on down. I’m having dinner at your house today.”
The religious crowd went wild with anger. They started muttering, “He went to be the guest of a sinner!” They couldn’t believe Jesus would contaminate His reputation by hanging out with someone so compromised. But during that dinner, without a single heavy sermon or angry lecture from Jesus, Zacchaeus’s heart completely melts. He stands up and promises to give half his wealth to the poor and pay back anyone he cheated four times over.
Seeing this radical transformation, Jesus looks around the room and delivers His core mission statement:
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)
Notice the order of the words there. Jesus didn’t say He came to wait around for the lost to find Him. He didn’t say He came to judge the lost for being lost. He said He came to seek them. It is an active, pursuing, loving search.
Think about it this way: if you lose your car keys in the house, you don’t stand in the middle of the kitchen and scream at the keys for being irresponsible. You don’t tell the keys that they need to become better keys before you’ll look for them. No, you go on a relentless hunt through the couch cushions and under the counters because those keys are valuable to you, and things can’t function right without them.
That is the heart of God’s grace. It is a grace that is wild, free, and available to absolutely everyone. It’s what theologians call “prevenient grace”—the love of God that goes before us, chasing us down long before we ever even think about turning toward Him. Jesus didn’t come to set up a hurdle setup where only the best jumpers get to win. He came to find the people who were stuck in the bushes and carry them home.
3. A Life of Abundance (John 10:10)
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The second time Jesus explicitly defines His purpose is in the book of John. He is talking to people about what it means to be cared for, using the imagery of a shepherd and his sheep. He contrasts Himself with the religious leaders of His day, who were using people, taking their money, and making their lives incredibly heavy with legalistic burdens.
Jesus looks at the tired, worn-out crowd and says:
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Some translations say, “that they might have life abundantly.”
Let’s be really clear about what Jesus means here, because this verse gets misused all the time. An abundant life doesn’t mean a life where you suddenly get a promotion, a mansion, and a perfect bank account. Jesus wasn’t a life coach trying to help you maximize your material success.
The word “abundance” here means a life that is overflowing with meaning, connection, peace, and love. It’s a life where your soul is healthy, no matter how chaotic the world around you gets. It’s the kind of life where you don’t have to pretend to have it all together, because you know you are completely loved just as you are.
When you tie Luke 19:10 and John 10:10 together, you get the beautiful, original intent of Jesus: He came to find people who felt disconnected and lost, and invite them into a rich, beautiful, free relationship that brings true life to their souls.
He didn’t come to build a museum of perfect people. He came to launch a movement of rescued people who know how to love.
So, if that was His original purpose, how on earth did we get to where we are today? How did we end up with a religious culture that often feels so cold, so exclusive, and so incredibly heavy?
We did it by taking our eyes off the purpose of the machine and using it to hoard clothes.
When we wrongly apply our relationship with Jesus, one of the first things we do is become self-righteous. We start believing that because we have invited Jesus into our lives—or because we sit in a specific building on Sunday—we are somehow fundamentally better, cleaner, or more righteous than the people who don’t.
We start holding ourselves higher than those who don’t see things the way we do. We look out the window at the world, and instead of seeing people who are deeply loved and sought after by a pursuing God, we see people to judge, criticize, and fix.
We turn our faith into a moral club. We use it to score points. We weaponize the very relationship that was meant to make us humble, and we use it to push other people down.
Think about how this plays out in our ordinary, messy days. It doesn’t usually start with a giant theological argument. It starts in the small, ugly moments.
It happens when we get cut off in heavy traffic on the highway. What’s our immediate internal reaction? Is it grace? Is it a prayer for the person who might be having a terrible day or rushing to a medical emergency? Or is it a flash of hot anger and a feeling that our time is more valuable than theirs?
It happens when we click on social media and see someone post a political understanding or an opinion that completely contradicts our own. What do we do? Do we lean in with empathy, trying to understand the human being behind the screen? Or do we immediately launch into a mental tirade, labeling them as stupid, wrong, or evil?
In those moments, the manner in which we love does not strengthen our relationship with Jesus at all. In fact, it does the exact opposite. Every time we choose pride over humility, every time we choose judgment over empathy, and every time we choose to stay comfortable in our self-righteousness, we are throwing another heavy winter sweatshirt onto the treadmill.
We are creating massive, suffocating barriers that prevent us from experiencing His true intent. We become so busy managing the clutter of our opinions, our traditions, and our moral superiority that we don’t actually move. We aren’t growing stronger. Our hearts aren’t becoming healthier. We are just standing in a room, surrounded by a bunch of religious clutter, wondering why our spiritual lives feel so incredibly stagnant.
If you are someone who feels done with the way church has been done—if you are tired of the weaponized faith, the political posturing, and the heavy piles of judgment—I want you to hear this loud and clear: Jesus is tired of it too.
He never asked us to build a coat rack out of His grace. He asked us to walk with Him.
So, how do we begin to move into a real, authentic relationship with Jesus moving forward? How do we clear off the exercise equipment and finally start using it for what it was made for?
It starts with three incredibly simple, profoundly hopeful steps.
Step 1: Clear off the Laundry
You cannot start running on a treadmill until you take the clothes off the belt. In the same way, you cannot experience the true life of Jesus until you decide to drop the religious performance and the self-righteous clutter.
We have to stop pretending we are better than anyone else. We have to admit that we get cut off in traffic and get angry. We have to admit that we don’t have all the answers. We have to look at the people around us—especially the ones we disagree with the most—and remember that Jesus is actively seeking them with the exact same fierce, unstoppable love that He uses to seek us.
When you clear off the laundry of having to look perfect, a massive weight lifts off your shoulders. You realize that faith isn’t about being right; it’s about being loved, and learning how to love in return.
Step 2: Step onto the Belt
A treadmill only works if you actually get on it and turn it on. A relationship with Jesus only works if you actually start practicing His way of life in the real, ordinary moments of your day.
Faith isn’t a set of ideas you agree with in your head. It’s a way you walk with your feet.
Moving into a relationship with Jesus means that the next time you get cut off in traffic, you breathe out grace instead of anger. It means that the next time you encounter someone with a completely different political understanding, you choose to treat them with honor and kindness, rather than dismissal. It means you stop trying to use Jesus as a shield to keep people away, and you start letting Jesus soften your heart so you can pull people close.
It’s about making the daily choice to believe that His way of love, humility, and sacrifice is actually the best way to live.
Step 3: Enjoy the Strength of the Abundant Life
When you start using exercise equipment consistently, something beautiful happens over time. At first, it’s hard. Your muscles ache, and you gasp for air. But if you keep at it, your lungs expand. Your heart gets stronger. You find yourself with more energy, more endurance, and a greater capacity to handle the stresses of life.
The exact same thing happens when you step into a genuine, uncluttered relationship with Jesus.
As you practice His love, you find that your capacity for joy expands. Your anxiety begins to lose its grip. You start to experience that “abundant life” He promised—not because your circumstances are perfect, but because your soul is anchored in a grace that cannot be shaken. You stop looking at faith as a heavy obligation, and you start seeing it as the incredible, life-giving source of strength it was always meant to be.
Let’s go back to that Facebook Marketplace ad for just a moment.
The people selling that treadmill were letting it go because they built a bigger closet. They decided it was easier to just make more room for their clothes than to actually use the machine for running. They gave up on the dream of conditioning, packed up the machine, and sold it to someone else.
I don’t know where you find yourself today. Maybe your faith feels like it’s buried under years of church hurt, hypocritical behavior, or personal disappointment. Maybe you’ve been tempted to just put your faith on the marketplace, post a picture of the clutter, and walk away from it entirely.
But before you click “sell,” I want to invite you to do something different.
Don’t give up on Jesus just because the version of religion you experienced turned Him into a coat rack. Toss the sweatshirts off the handles. Clear the laundry off the belt. Look at Him again, completely bare, beautiful, and full of grace.
Listen to His voice calling your name, just like He called Zacchaeus out of that tree. Hear Him reminding you that He didn’t come to condemn you or burden you. He came to find you, to rescue you, and to give you a life that is full to the absolute brim.
The machine isn’t broken. It’s just waiting for you to take the first step.
What do you think?
• Have you ever bought a piece of household equipment that ended up serving a totally different, funny purpose?
• More importantly, have you ever felt like your view of Jesus got completely buried under the “laundry” of religious rules or judgment?
Let’s talk about it in the comments below—I want to hear your stories.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
What did you find? Are there a couple of heavy sweatshirts from last winter draped over the handles? Maybe a pair of jeans that don’t quite fit right now hanging from the side rails? A stray towel? A basket of laundry that you’ve been meaning to fold since Tuesday?
The reason I ask is because I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace the other day, just killing time, when a listing caught my eye. It made me laugh out loud, but then it made me sit in silence for a really long time.
It was an ad for a treadmill. The description started off like this:
“Just finished a bedroom remodel and have more space in our closet, so we are now selling our gently used treadmill.”
That part wasn’t the funny part. The funny part was the photo. Attached to the listing was a picture of this treadmill, completely buried under a mountain of clothes. There were shirts hung neatly by their hangers on the side rails, sweaters piled high on the running belt, and a jacket thrown over the digital console. It had literally been repurposed as a massive, expensive, metal coat rack. The owners didn’t need the treadmill anymore because they finally built a bigger closet to hold the clothes that had taken it over.
Once I stopped chuckling, my mind started wandering. I started thinking about all the things in our lives that we buy or invite into our spaces with the absolute best of intentions, but we don’t actually use them for what they were made for.
Human beings are kind of famous for this, you know. We take something designed for one specific, incredible purpose, and we twist it into something completely different.
Did you know that when Listerine was first introduced back in 1879, it wasn’t meant for your breath at all? It was originally invented to clean surgical wounds and help doctors scrub down flesh before surgery. Later on, they marketed it as an all-purpose cleaner. For years, people were using it to scrub their kitchen floors and treat athlete’s foot before anyone ever thought to gargle with it.
Or think about bubble wrap. The geniuses who invented it in 1957 were actually trying to create a trendy, textured, plastic wallpaper. Can you imagine lining your living room walls with bubble wrap? It failed miserably as home decor, but today, we use it to protect fragile things in transit—and, let’s be honest, to drive our family members crazy by popping the bubbles the second a package arrives.
We do this all the time with common household items. We use butter knives as screwdrivers. We use old coffee mugs to hold rusty nails in the garage. We use heavy textbooks as doorstops.
But as I sat there looking at that picture of the treadmill buried under a pile of laundry, a much deeper, much heavier question hit me right in the chest. It’s a question I want to ask you, and I want to ask myself:
In what way are we using our relationship with Jesus?
Have we done the exact same thing to Him? Have we taken the living, breathing, dynamic invitation of Christ and turned it into an expensive, underutilized piece of furniture in our lives? Have we piled so much stuff on top of Him that we can’t even see what He was originally intended for?
I’ll be the first to admit something to you: I have struggled with my weight and my physical conditioning for a lot of my life. It is a real, daily, vulnerable mountain to climb. And over the years, whenever I hit a point where I felt frustrated or out of shape, buying a piece of exercise equipment always seemed like the right answer. It felt like a monument to hope.
In my mind, the moment that machine entered my house, I was going to become a runner. I was going to be healthy. I was going to feel vibrant and strong.
But here is the hard truth about a treadmill: it doesn’t possess magic powers. Just owning it doesn’t lower your cholesterol. Stepping over it on your way to the kitchen doesn’t strengthen your heart. Unless you actually turn it on, step onto the belt, and use it properly for its intended purpose, it does absolutely nothing for you. It doesn’t strengthen you, and you will never see the benefits of what it was engineered to do.
Instead, because we aren’t using it, we start to feel a little guilty every time we look at it. It becomes a reminder of what we aren’t doing. So, to make ourselves feel better, we start treating it like a piece of furniture. We throw a jacket over it. Then a pair of pants. Then a blanket. Before you know it, the machine is completely hidden. It’s still there, right in the middle of the room, but its original purpose has been entirely suffocated by the clutter of daily life.
I think a lot of us have done the exact same thing with faith.
Maybe you are someone who didn’t grow up in church at all. Or maybe you are someone who used to go, but you walked away because you got completely burnt out by the rules, the politics, the judgment, and the exhausting performance of it all. You might be totally “done” with organized religion, but you still have this quiet, persistent ache inside of you that wonders if there was actually something real underneath all the noise.
You see, many of us sought out Jesus with beautiful, genuine intent. We were lonely, or we were broken, or we were looking for a life that felt like it actually mattered. We looked at Jesus and thought, “Yes. That is what I want. I want that love. I want that peace.”
But somewhere along the way, we wrongly applied what we found. Instead of letting Jesus change the way we live and love, we allowed religion to pile a bunch of heavy, dusty clothes on top of Him. We turned a life-giving relationship into a rigid, dusty monument.
Why Did He Show Up in the First Place?
To understand how we get the relationship so wrong, we have to pull back all the layers of laundry and look at what Jesus actually said He came to do. What was His original purpose? Why did He step into our messy, chaotic world in the first place?
If you ask a lot of modern churches, they might tell you He came to start a country club with a really strict dress code and a long list of people who aren’t allowed inside. But if you look at the actual biographical accounts of His life, Jesus paints a completely different picture.
There are two major moments in the scriptures where Jesus clearly defines His own mission statement. He didn’t leave it up for guess work. He spelled it out for us, and both times, He did it in the middle of everyday life, speaking to people who felt entirely left out.
1. To Seek and to Save the Lost (Luke 19:10)
2.
The first place we see this is in the book of Luke, chapter 19. Jesus is walking through a crowded city called Jericho. There’s a guy there named Zacchaeus who is a chief tax collector. In those days, tax collectors weren’t just disliked; they were viewed as traitors and thieves. They worked for the oppressive Roman government and skimmed extra money off their own neighbors to line their own pockets. Nobody liked Zacchaeus. He was the definition of an outsider. He was spiritually and socially isolated.
Because Zacchaeus was short, he climbed up into a sycamore tree just to get a glimpse of Jesus passing by. Now, if Jesus were like a lot of religious folks today, He probably would have pointed at the man in the tree and used him as an object lesson on how not to live. He would have told him to clean up his act, pay back the money, and come back when he was respectable.
Instead, Jesus stops right under the tree, looks up, calls Zacchaeus by his name, and says, “Hey, come on down. I’m having dinner at your house today.”
The religious crowd went wild with anger. They started muttering, “He went to be the guest of a sinner!” They couldn’t believe Jesus would contaminate His reputation by hanging out with someone so compromised. But during that dinner, without a single heavy sermon or angry lecture from Jesus, Zacchaeus’s heart completely melts. He stands up and promises to give half his wealth to the poor and pay back anyone he cheated four times over.
Seeing this radical transformation, Jesus looks around the room and delivers His core mission statement:
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)
Notice the order of the words there. Jesus didn’t say He came to wait around for the lost to find Him. He didn’t say He came to judge the lost for being lost. He said He came to seek them. It is an active, pursuing, loving search.
Think about it this way: if you lose your car keys in the house, you don’t stand in the middle of the kitchen and scream at the keys for being irresponsible. You don’t tell the keys that they need to become better keys before you’ll look for them. No, you go on a relentless hunt through the couch cushions and under the counters because those keys are valuable to you, and things can’t function right without them.
That is the heart of God’s grace. It is a grace that is wild, free, and available to absolutely everyone. It’s what theologians call “prevenient grace”—the love of God that goes before us, chasing us down long before we ever even think about turning toward Him. Jesus didn’t come to set up a hurdle setup where only the best jumpers get to win. He came to find the people who were stuck in the bushes and carry them home.
3. A Life of Abundance (John 10:10)
4.
The second time Jesus explicitly defines His purpose is in the book of John. He is talking to people about what it means to be cared for, using the imagery of a shepherd and his sheep. He contrasts Himself with the religious leaders of His day, who were using people, taking their money, and making their lives incredibly heavy with legalistic burdens.
Jesus looks at the tired, worn-out crowd and says:
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Some translations say, “that they might have life abundantly.”
Let’s be really clear about what Jesus means here, because this verse gets misused all the time. An abundant life doesn’t mean a life where you suddenly get a promotion, a mansion, and a perfect bank account. Jesus wasn’t a life coach trying to help you maximize your material success.
The word “abundance” here means a life that is overflowing with meaning, connection, peace, and love. It’s a life where your soul is healthy, no matter how chaotic the world around you gets. It’s the kind of life where you don’t have to pretend to have it all together, because you know you are completely loved just as you are.
When you tie Luke 19:10 and John 10:10 together, you get the beautiful, original intent of Jesus: He came to find people who felt disconnected and lost, and invite them into a rich, beautiful, free relationship that brings true life to their souls.
He didn’t come to build a museum of perfect people. He came to launch a movement of rescued people who know how to love.
So, if that was His original purpose, how on earth did we get to where we are today? How did we end up with a religious culture that often feels so cold, so exclusive, and so incredibly heavy?
We did it by taking our eyes off the purpose of the machine and using it to hoard clothes.
When we wrongly apply our relationship with Jesus, one of the first things we do is become self-righteous. We start believing that because we have invited Jesus into our lives—or because we sit in a specific building on Sunday—we are somehow fundamentally better, cleaner, or more righteous than the people who don’t.
We start holding ourselves higher than those who don’t see things the way we do. We look out the window at the world, and instead of seeing people who are deeply loved and sought after by a pursuing God, we see people to judge, criticize, and fix.
We turn our faith into a moral club. We use it to score points. We weaponize the very relationship that was meant to make us humble, and we use it to push other people down.
Think about how this plays out in our ordinary, messy days. It doesn’t usually start with a giant theological argument. It starts in the small, ugly moments.
It happens when we get cut off in heavy traffic on the highway. What’s our immediate internal reaction? Is it grace? Is it a prayer for the person who might be having a terrible day or rushing to a medical emergency? Or is it a flash of hot anger and a feeling that our time is more valuable than theirs?
It happens when we click on social media and see someone post a political understanding or an opinion that completely contradicts our own. What do we do? Do we lean in with empathy, trying to understand the human being behind the screen? Or do we immediately launch into a mental tirade, labeling them as stupid, wrong, or evil?
In those moments, the manner in which we love does not strengthen our relationship with Jesus at all. In fact, it does the exact opposite. Every time we choose pride over humility, every time we choose judgment over empathy, and every time we choose to stay comfortable in our self-righteousness, we are throwing another heavy winter sweatshirt onto the treadmill.
We are creating massive, suffocating barriers that prevent us from experiencing His true intent. We become so busy managing the clutter of our opinions, our traditions, and our moral superiority that we don’t actually move. We aren’t growing stronger. Our hearts aren’t becoming healthier. We are just standing in a room, surrounded by a bunch of religious clutter, wondering why our spiritual lives feel so incredibly stagnant.
If you are someone who feels done with the way church has been done—if you are tired of the weaponized faith, the political posturing, and the heavy piles of judgment—I want you to hear this loud and clear: Jesus is tired of it too.
He never asked us to build a coat rack out of His grace. He asked us to walk with Him.
So, how do we begin to move into a real, authentic relationship with Jesus moving forward? How do we clear off the exercise equipment and finally start using it for what it was made for?
It starts with three incredibly simple, profoundly hopeful steps.
Step 1: Clear off the Laundry
You cannot start running on a treadmill until you take the clothes off the belt. In the same way, you cannot experience the true life of Jesus until you decide to drop the religious performance and the self-righteous clutter.
We have to stop pretending we are better than anyone else. We have to admit that we get cut off in traffic and get angry. We have to admit that we don’t have all the answers. We have to look at the people around us—especially the ones we disagree with the most—and remember that Jesus is actively seeking them with the exact same fierce, unstoppable love that He uses to seek us.
When you clear off the laundry of having to look perfect, a massive weight lifts off your shoulders. You realize that faith isn’t about being right; it’s about being loved, and learning how to love in return.
Step 2: Step onto the Belt
A treadmill only works if you actually get on it and turn it on. A relationship with Jesus only works if you actually start practicing His way of life in the real, ordinary moments of your day.
Faith isn’t a set of ideas you agree with in your head. It’s a way you walk with your feet.
Moving into a relationship with Jesus means that the next time you get cut off in traffic, you breathe out grace instead of anger. It means that the next time you encounter someone with a completely different political understanding, you choose to treat them with honor and kindness, rather than dismissal. It means you stop trying to use Jesus as a shield to keep people away, and you start letting Jesus soften your heart so you can pull people close.
It’s about making the daily choice to believe that His way of love, humility, and sacrifice is actually the best way to live.
Step 3: Enjoy the Strength of the Abundant Life
When you start using exercise equipment consistently, something beautiful happens over time. At first, it’s hard. Your muscles ache, and you gasp for air. But if you keep at it, your lungs expand. Your heart gets stronger. You find yourself with more energy, more endurance, and a greater capacity to handle the stresses of life.
The exact same thing happens when you step into a genuine, uncluttered relationship with Jesus.
As you practice His love, you find that your capacity for joy expands. Your anxiety begins to lose its grip. You start to experience that “abundant life” He promised—not because your circumstances are perfect, but because your soul is anchored in a grace that cannot be shaken. You stop looking at faith as a heavy obligation, and you start seeing it as the incredible, life-giving source of strength it was always meant to be.
Let’s go back to that Facebook Marketplace ad for just a moment.
The people selling that treadmill were letting it go because they built a bigger closet. They decided it was easier to just make more room for their clothes than to actually use the machine for running. They gave up on the dream of conditioning, packed up the machine, and sold it to someone else.
I don’t know where you find yourself today. Maybe your faith feels like it’s buried under years of church hurt, hypocritical behavior, or personal disappointment. Maybe you’ve been tempted to just put your faith on the marketplace, post a picture of the clutter, and walk away from it entirely.
But before you click “sell,” I want to invite you to do something different.
Don’t give up on Jesus just because the version of religion you experienced turned Him into a coat rack. Toss the sweatshirts off the handles. Clear the laundry off the belt. Look at Him again, completely bare, beautiful, and full of grace.
Listen to His voice calling your name, just like He called Zacchaeus out of that tree. Hear Him reminding you that He didn’t come to condemn you or burden you. He came to find you, to rescue you, and to give you a life that is full to the absolute brim.
The machine isn’t broken. It’s just waiting for you to take the first step.
What do you think?
• Have you ever bought a piece of household equipment that ended up serving a totally different, funny purpose?
• More importantly, have you ever felt like your view of Jesus got completely buried under the “laundry” of religious rules or judgment?
Let’s talk about it in the comments below—I want to hear your stories.
A Truth Far Older
A Truth Far Older
There is a truth that sits underneath everything we believe about human dignity, even if we do not always notice it or know where it came from. Long before there were governments or nations, before laws were written or systems were built, there was a statement made about what it means to be human. It is found in the book of Genesis: “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…’ So God created mankind in his own image.” Genesis 1:26–27. That one idea has shaped more of human history than most people realize. It means that every person—every race, every background, every nationality, every personality, every story—carries worth not because of what they do, but because of who they are. Value is not assigned by governments or earned through success. It is given by God simply because He created us.
That belief becomes the quiet foundation for everything that comes later in history, even when people don’t fully live it out. Centuries later, thinkers like John Locke helped put language to this idea by saying that human beings have natural rights—life, liberty, and dignity—that do not come from kings or governments. Governments do not create those rights. They recognize them and are supposed to protect them. That idea eventually made its way into the founding of the United States, where a group of men in 1776 tried to explain why a people might separate themselves from a powerful empire. In the United States Declaration of Independence, they wrote that all people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
That sentence is worth slowing down for. It does not say the government gives you rights. It does not say society votes on your worth. It says your rights are already there because they come from your Creator. That is a massive shift in thinking for the world at that time, and honestly, it still is today. It places human dignity outside of politics. It places it above governments, above systems, above public opinion, and above power itself. It says that if you are human, you already matter before anything else is said about you.
And yet, the same people who wrote those words were not fully living them. That tension is part of our story, and it is important to be honest about it. At the time of the founding, slavery still existed in the American colonies. That reality sits in painful contrast with the words “all men are created equal.” It is one of the deepest contradictions in American history. Even more than that, in the early draft of the Declaration, there was a paragraph that directly condemned slavery and the slave trade. It called it cruel. It described it as a violation of human nature itself. It was not soft language. It was strong, clear, and direct. It named the injustice without hesitation.
But that paragraph did not make it into the final version. As the colonies debated and tried to stay united, that section was removed. Some delegates objected. Some came from regions where slavery was deeply connected to the economy. Some were not ready to face what it would require if they fully applied that truth to every situation. And so, in order to preserve unity at a fragile moment in history, the paragraph was left out.
One of the main writers of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, also lived inside this same tension. He wrote powerful words about freedom and equality that still shape the world today. And yet, in his personal life, he owned enslaved people. That contradiction is hard to hold, and it should be. It reminds us that people can sometimes see a truth before they are willing or able to fully live it. We can write what is right before we have the courage to fully become what we have written.
That is not just a historical observation. It is a human one. We do this more often than we want to admit. We understand love before we consistently practice it. We believe in fairness before we fully apply it. We recognize injustice before we always know how to correct it. And sometimes we speak better than we live. Jefferson and others like him were not exceptions to humanity in that way—they were examples of it.
But here is something important that often gets missed. Even though the anti-slavery paragraph was removed from the Declaration, the idea behind it did not disappear. Truth has a way of surviving even when it is delayed. The belief that every person has value because they are created in God’s image kept working its way through history. It did not stay locked in 1776. It kept pressing forward, shaping conversations, challenging systems, and slowly changing the moral imagination of a nation.
America’s story, when you step back and look at it honestly, is not the story of a perfect beginning. It is the story of an ongoing struggle to live up to what was said at the beginning. It is a nation learning, sometimes painfully, what it actually means to believe that every person carries God-given worth. That learning process has not been smooth. It has included deep division, civil war, injustice, and long seasons where the gap between belief and behavior was wide. The American Civil War is one of the clearest examples of that fracture coming to a breaking point.
And yet, even through that breaking, something else was happening. The nation was being forced—slowly, unevenly, and sometimes unwillingly—back toward its own stated truth. If every person truly has dignity because they are made in the image of God, then that truth cannot stay contained in words alone. It has to eventually shape laws, relationships, and society itself. Over time, it has pushed America forward, not in a straight line, but in a real one. Sometimes forward, sometimes backward, but always circling back to the same question: do we really believe what we said we believed?
That question is still alive today. It shows up in how we see each other. It shows up in how we talk about people who are different from us. It shows up in whether we see others as individuals with stories or as categories to be sorted. It shows up in whether we believe dignity is something that must be earned or something that must be recognized.
This is where the words of Jesus speak so clearly into the middle of our world. When asked what matters most, He said to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And when people tried to limit that idea by asking, “Who exactly is my neighbor?” He responded with a story that broke down every boundary people tried to draw. His teaching consistently pointed in one direction: every human being matters more than the systems that divide them.
That is why this idea from Genesis matters so much. It is not just ancient theology. It is a claim about reality. If every person is made in the image of God, then every person carries value that cannot be taken away by government, culture, or circumstance. That truth existed before America. It existed before any modern nation. And it will exist long after every nation has changed or passed away.
So when we look at America today, the most honest thing we can say is this: we are still becoming what we said we believed. Not because the original idea was wrong, but because it is bigger than any one generation can fully live out. America has not always gotten it right. But it has often returned to the right question. And that matters.
There is something hopeful in that. It means failure is not the end of the story. It means contradiction does not cancel truth. It means progress is possible, not because people are perfect, but because truth is persistent. And if history tells us anything, it is that the idea of human dignity rooted in the image of God does not fade—it keeps calling us forward.
That is why, even with all of our complexity as a nation, there is still reason for gratitude. Not blind pride. Not denial of history. But gratitude that we live in a place where these questions can still be asked openly. Where disagreement can still happen in public. Where change can still be pursued. And where the idea that every person matters can still be spoken without fear.
At its best, America has never been about claiming perfection. It has been about trying to live closer to a truth that was already bigger than us. And that truth is simple, but not easy: every person you meet today is made in the image of God. Every person carries worth. Every person carries dignity. Every person matters.
Not because a nation said so, but because God did.
There is a truth that sits underneath everything we believe about human dignity, even if we do not always notice it or know where it came from. Long before there were governments or nations, before laws were written or systems were built, there was a statement made about what it means to be human. It is found in the book of Genesis: “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…’ So God created mankind in his own image.” Genesis 1:26–27. That one idea has shaped more of human history than most people realize. It means that every person—every race, every background, every nationality, every personality, every story—carries worth not because of what they do, but because of who they are. Value is not assigned by governments or earned through success. It is given by God simply because He created us.
That belief becomes the quiet foundation for everything that comes later in history, even when people don’t fully live it out. Centuries later, thinkers like John Locke helped put language to this idea by saying that human beings have natural rights—life, liberty, and dignity—that do not come from kings or governments. Governments do not create those rights. They recognize them and are supposed to protect them. That idea eventually made its way into the founding of the United States, where a group of men in 1776 tried to explain why a people might separate themselves from a powerful empire. In the United States Declaration of Independence, they wrote that all people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
That sentence is worth slowing down for. It does not say the government gives you rights. It does not say society votes on your worth. It says your rights are already there because they come from your Creator. That is a massive shift in thinking for the world at that time, and honestly, it still is today. It places human dignity outside of politics. It places it above governments, above systems, above public opinion, and above power itself. It says that if you are human, you already matter before anything else is said about you.
And yet, the same people who wrote those words were not fully living them. That tension is part of our story, and it is important to be honest about it. At the time of the founding, slavery still existed in the American colonies. That reality sits in painful contrast with the words “all men are created equal.” It is one of the deepest contradictions in American history. Even more than that, in the early draft of the Declaration, there was a paragraph that directly condemned slavery and the slave trade. It called it cruel. It described it as a violation of human nature itself. It was not soft language. It was strong, clear, and direct. It named the injustice without hesitation.
But that paragraph did not make it into the final version. As the colonies debated and tried to stay united, that section was removed. Some delegates objected. Some came from regions where slavery was deeply connected to the economy. Some were not ready to face what it would require if they fully applied that truth to every situation. And so, in order to preserve unity at a fragile moment in history, the paragraph was left out.
One of the main writers of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, also lived inside this same tension. He wrote powerful words about freedom and equality that still shape the world today. And yet, in his personal life, he owned enslaved people. That contradiction is hard to hold, and it should be. It reminds us that people can sometimes see a truth before they are willing or able to fully live it. We can write what is right before we have the courage to fully become what we have written.
That is not just a historical observation. It is a human one. We do this more often than we want to admit. We understand love before we consistently practice it. We believe in fairness before we fully apply it. We recognize injustice before we always know how to correct it. And sometimes we speak better than we live. Jefferson and others like him were not exceptions to humanity in that way—they were examples of it.
But here is something important that often gets missed. Even though the anti-slavery paragraph was removed from the Declaration, the idea behind it did not disappear. Truth has a way of surviving even when it is delayed. The belief that every person has value because they are created in God’s image kept working its way through history. It did not stay locked in 1776. It kept pressing forward, shaping conversations, challenging systems, and slowly changing the moral imagination of a nation.
America’s story, when you step back and look at it honestly, is not the story of a perfect beginning. It is the story of an ongoing struggle to live up to what was said at the beginning. It is a nation learning, sometimes painfully, what it actually means to believe that every person carries God-given worth. That learning process has not been smooth. It has included deep division, civil war, injustice, and long seasons where the gap between belief and behavior was wide. The American Civil War is one of the clearest examples of that fracture coming to a breaking point.
And yet, even through that breaking, something else was happening. The nation was being forced—slowly, unevenly, and sometimes unwillingly—back toward its own stated truth. If every person truly has dignity because they are made in the image of God, then that truth cannot stay contained in words alone. It has to eventually shape laws, relationships, and society itself. Over time, it has pushed America forward, not in a straight line, but in a real one. Sometimes forward, sometimes backward, but always circling back to the same question: do we really believe what we said we believed?
That question is still alive today. It shows up in how we see each other. It shows up in how we talk about people who are different from us. It shows up in whether we see others as individuals with stories or as categories to be sorted. It shows up in whether we believe dignity is something that must be earned or something that must be recognized.
This is where the words of Jesus speak so clearly into the middle of our world. When asked what matters most, He said to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And when people tried to limit that idea by asking, “Who exactly is my neighbor?” He responded with a story that broke down every boundary people tried to draw. His teaching consistently pointed in one direction: every human being matters more than the systems that divide them.
That is why this idea from Genesis matters so much. It is not just ancient theology. It is a claim about reality. If every person is made in the image of God, then every person carries value that cannot be taken away by government, culture, or circumstance. That truth existed before America. It existed before any modern nation. And it will exist long after every nation has changed or passed away.
So when we look at America today, the most honest thing we can say is this: we are still becoming what we said we believed. Not because the original idea was wrong, but because it is bigger than any one generation can fully live out. America has not always gotten it right. But it has often returned to the right question. And that matters.
There is something hopeful in that. It means failure is not the end of the story. It means contradiction does not cancel truth. It means progress is possible, not because people are perfect, but because truth is persistent. And if history tells us anything, it is that the idea of human dignity rooted in the image of God does not fade—it keeps calling us forward.
That is why, even with all of our complexity as a nation, there is still reason for gratitude. Not blind pride. Not denial of history. But gratitude that we live in a place where these questions can still be asked openly. Where disagreement can still happen in public. Where change can still be pursued. And where the idea that every person matters can still be spoken without fear.
At its best, America has never been about claiming perfection. It has been about trying to live closer to a truth that was already bigger than us. And that truth is simple, but not easy: every person you meet today is made in the image of God. Every person carries worth. Every person carries dignity. Every person matters.
Not because a nation said so, but because God did.
Some of the Hardest Words Jesus Ever Asked Me to Live
Some of the Hardest Words Jesus Ever Asked Me to Live
I want you to think back to the playground—say, first grade. Have you got that mental picture? The monkey bars. The swings. The squeak of the merry-go-round. The smell of fresh-cut grass. The excitement of recess after sitting in a classroom all morning.
Now imagine someone pushes you off the monkey bars.
How do you react? What’s your first thought?
If you’re anything like most of us, it probably isn’t, I hope they’re having a good day.
Last weekend I drove past an older playground, and suddenly a memory came rushing back. I remembered a fall I took at school. I remembered the feel of a hand on my back. I remembered hearing the laughter as I fell. I remembered the sharp pain as my back hit the ground, followed by my head. Then I remembered the rage as I climbed back to my feet and looked up.
Before I could react, an adult hurried over to check on me. My side hurt, and my head was beginning to throb as a goose egg slowly appeared. I answered their questions and let them make sure I was okay, but if I’m being honest, my mind wasn’t on my injuries.
In my heart, I was already plotting revenge.
I suspect there isn’t one of us who hasn’t experienced something similar. Maybe it happened on a playground, in your backyard, or on the neighborhood street while an intense game of kickball was underway. Somewhere along the way, someone treated us unfairly.
As children, we instinctively believed everyone should play fair. Everyone should be kind. Everyone should follow the rules.
But if they didn’t? Then we would play by their rules. We’d be just as mean.
Just as hurtful. Just as willing to get even. The funny thing is, we grow older, but we don’t always grow out of the playground. The playground simply gets bigger.
Instead of monkey bars, we have offices. Instead of kickball games, we have board meetings. Instead of classmates spreading rumors, we have coworkers, neighbors, family members, or strangers on the internet. The faces change. The settings change. But the temptation remains exactly the same.
Someone hurts us. Someone betrays us. Someone lies about us.
Someone takes something from us. Someone wounds us in ways that don’t heal nearly as quickly as a scraped knee. And our first instinct is often the same as it was in first grade.
Get even. That’s why Jesus’ words in Luke 6:27-36 are so startling. They don’t simply challenge our behavior; they challenge our instincts.
In this passage—often referred to as Jesus’ teaching on loving our enemies—we find some of the most difficult instructions He ever gave His followers. Here we encounter the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want them to treat you. We also hear His command to turn the other cheek rather than retaliate.
Beautiful words. Inspiring words, until someone actually hurts you. Then they become some of the hardest words Jesus ever asked us to live. Perhaps no sentence is more challenging than this:
“Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you.” (Luke 6:28, NLT)
Really, Jesus? Let me make sure I understand. I’m supposed to bless the boss who fired me without cause? Pray for the person who abused me physically or emotionally? Wish God’s best for the friend who spread rumors about me? Pray for the individual whose actions forever changed my family?
Those words don’t merely sound difficult. They seem impossible.
If we’re honest, every part of us cries out for fairness. We want justice. We want wrongs to be made right. Sometimes, if we’re honest enough to admit it, we want the people who hurt us to experience a little of the pain they’ve caused.
Jesus doesn’t ignore those feelings. He simply refuses to let them have the final word.
I often think about the observations of Matthew Henry, the eighteenth-century theologian, as he reflected on this passage. He reminds us that followers of Christ are not called to live according to the standards of this world but according to the values of heaven.
That’s easier to admire than it is to practice, because if we’re honest, many of us still resemble that child standing beneath the monkey bars, fists clenched, hearts racing, convinced revenge will somehow make things right.
Yet history—and our own lives—tell a different story. Revenge rarely heals.
Bitterness rarely comforts. Anger will not restores what was lost. If anything, they tend to deepen the wound.
We don’t have to look very far to see what happens when forgiveness disappears.
We see it in neighborhoods where lifelong friendships dissolve over a disagreement.
We see it in families divided by words that were spoken years ago but never released.
We see it in workplaces where resentment quietly poisons relationships.
We see it online, where outrage often spreads faster than compassion and where extending grace is sometimes mistaken for weakness. Sadly, we even see it in our churches.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve begun to believe that strength belongs to the person who wins the argument, gets the last word, or settles the score.
Jesus tells a different story. According to Him, true strength isn’t found in revenge. It’s found in mercy. Not because mercy denies justice, but because mercy refuses to let someone else’s wrongdoing determine the condition of our own hearts.
Forgiveness is often misunderstood. It isn’t pretending evil never happened.
It isn’t excusing abuse. It isn’t saying justice no longer matters. Forgiveness doesn’t erase consequences. Rather, forgiveness is choosing to release our right to personal vengeance while entrusting justice to God.
That may sound simple, but it isn’t! In fact, it may be one of the hardest acts of courage a person will ever choose.
During a high-profile criminal case that began in 2025 and concluded in 2026, the father of the victim publicly shared that he forgave the person convicted of causing his child’s death.
His words caught my attention because he later clarified something important.
His forgiveness was not an attempt to excuse the crime.
Nor was it intended to remove accountability. Instead, forgiveness became the beginning of his own healing. He refused to allow hatred to become another victim. That is the heart of Jesus’ teaching.
Radical. Unexpected. Undeserved grace. The same grace God has poured out through Jesus.
I sometimes wonder if, from God’s perspective, we still look like children on a playground.
Not because we’re childish, but because we so often cling to the things that hurt us while overlooking the freedom He offers us. C. S. Lewis once wrote,
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us… We are far too easily pleased.”
That phrase has stayed with me for years.Far too easily pleased. I don’t believe Lewis wasn’t suggesting that we settle for small pleasures. He was saying that we settle for far less than God desires for us. We cling to resentment because it feels justified. We rehearse conversations we’ll never have. We replay old wounds as though doing so somehow gives us control over them. In reality, all we’re doing is allowing those moments to continue shaping our hearts. God desires something better.
That doesn’t mean life will suddenly become easy. Following Jesus has never been a promise of comfort or a guarantee that we’ll avoid suffering. We will still experience betrayal. We will still grieve. We will still carry scars from words spoken and actions taken against us.
The difference is that we do not carry those burdens alone.
Through His Holy Spirit, God walks with us. He comforts us in our grief, strengthens us in our weakness, and slowly reshapes our hearts to look more like His. The obstacles don’t always disappear, but they no longer have the power to define us. As we learn to love, forgive, and extend grace as God has done for us, those obstacles begin to lose their grip.
That doesn’t happen overnight.
Forgiveness is rarely a single moment. More often, it’s a journey.
Sometimes the deepest wounds require us to forgive the same person more than once—not because our first forgiveness wasn’t genuine, but because the pain resurfaces. Old memories have a way of finding us when we least expect them. A familiar place. A song on the radio. An anniversary on the calendar. Suddenly, emotions we thought we’d left behind come rushing back.
When that happens, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve failed.
It may simply mean we’re being invited, once again, to place that hurt into God’s hands.
So how do we begin? Jesus gives us a place to start, even when our emotions haven’t caught up with our intentions.
First, forgive the person—or the people—who have hurt you. Write it down if you need to.
Say it out loud if that helps. There is something surprisingly powerful about giving words to a decision you’ve made in your heart. It doesn’t have to sound eloquent. It doesn’t have to be perfect or polished. Simply say, “I forgive Joe for what he did to me.”
Be as specific as you can or need to be. God already knows the details. You’re not informing Him of anything He doesn’t already know. What you’re doing is choosing, by an act of your will, to release your grip on the offense. You may not feel different immediately.
That’s okay. Forgiveness is a choice before it becomes a feeling.
Then take a second step. Pray for them, not because they’ve earned it. Not because what they did was acceptable, but because Jesus asked us to.
Think about something you would genuinely ask God to do in your own life and pray that for theirs.
“Lord, let them know how close You are.”
“Father, bring healing where there is brokenness.”
“Grant them wisdom.”
“Lead them to Your peace.”
At first, those prayers may feel awkward. They may even feel unnatural. Don’t be discouraged by that. Our hearts often need time to catch up with the decisions we’ve made. Keep bringing that person before God. Keep choosing forgiveness. Keep praying.
Little by little, you’ll begin to notice something remarkable.
The prayer that once felt forced begins to become sincere. The bitterness that once occupied so much space in your heart begins to loosen its grip. The anger doesn’t disappear because you’ve ignored it. It begins to fade because you’ve surrendered it.
I’ve often heard bitterness compared to drinking poison and expecting someone else to become sick. It’s a vivid image because it’s true. The person we refuse to forgive may never know the battle taking place inside us. Yet every day we hold on to resentment, it quietly shapes our thoughts, our relationships, and even our capacity to experience joy.
Jesus offers another way.
He invites us to lay down what we’ve been carrying for far too long. When I think back to that first-grade playground, I still remember the sting of the fall. I remember the laughter. I remember wanting nothing more than to push back. Looking back now, I realize the greatest victory wouldn’t have been getting even. It would have been becoming the kind of person who no longer needed to. That’s the invitation Jesus extends to every one of us.
Not to pretend we haven’t been hurt.
Not to deny injustice.
Not to excuse evil.
But to refuse to let someone else’s worst moment become the defining moment of our own lives.
That kind of forgiveness isn’t weakness.
It’s freedom.
It frees us from carrying burdens we were never meant to bear. It frees us from allowing bitterness to write the next chapter of our story. Most importantly, it frees us to become the people God created us to be—people who reflect His mercy, His compassion, and His grace in a world that desperately needs all three.
Maybe that’s why Jesus spoke these difficult words in the first place. He wasn’t simply teaching us how to treat our enemies. He was showing us how to become more like Him, and that’s a lesson I’m still learning. Perhaps you are too.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, the standards of this world often feel more natural than the way of Christ. Give me the courage to live differently. When I’m tempted to hold on to hurt, teach me to forgive. When anger rises within me, remind me of the mercy You have shown me. Help me to bless those who have wounded me, pray for those who have hurt me, and trust You with the justice that belongs in Your hands alone. Shape my heart until it reflects Yours. Amen.
Scripture: “Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you.”
Luke 6:28 (NLT)
I want you to think back to the playground—say, first grade. Have you got that mental picture? The monkey bars. The swings. The squeak of the merry-go-round. The smell of fresh-cut grass. The excitement of recess after sitting in a classroom all morning.
Now imagine someone pushes you off the monkey bars.
How do you react? What’s your first thought?
If you’re anything like most of us, it probably isn’t, I hope they’re having a good day.
Last weekend I drove past an older playground, and suddenly a memory came rushing back. I remembered a fall I took at school. I remembered the feel of a hand on my back. I remembered hearing the laughter as I fell. I remembered the sharp pain as my back hit the ground, followed by my head. Then I remembered the rage as I climbed back to my feet and looked up.
Before I could react, an adult hurried over to check on me. My side hurt, and my head was beginning to throb as a goose egg slowly appeared. I answered their questions and let them make sure I was okay, but if I’m being honest, my mind wasn’t on my injuries.
In my heart, I was already plotting revenge.
I suspect there isn’t one of us who hasn’t experienced something similar. Maybe it happened on a playground, in your backyard, or on the neighborhood street while an intense game of kickball was underway. Somewhere along the way, someone treated us unfairly.
As children, we instinctively believed everyone should play fair. Everyone should be kind. Everyone should follow the rules.
But if they didn’t? Then we would play by their rules. We’d be just as mean.
Just as hurtful. Just as willing to get even. The funny thing is, we grow older, but we don’t always grow out of the playground. The playground simply gets bigger.
Instead of monkey bars, we have offices. Instead of kickball games, we have board meetings. Instead of classmates spreading rumors, we have coworkers, neighbors, family members, or strangers on the internet. The faces change. The settings change. But the temptation remains exactly the same.
Someone hurts us. Someone betrays us. Someone lies about us.
Someone takes something from us. Someone wounds us in ways that don’t heal nearly as quickly as a scraped knee. And our first instinct is often the same as it was in first grade.
Get even. That’s why Jesus’ words in Luke 6:27-36 are so startling. They don’t simply challenge our behavior; they challenge our instincts.
In this passage—often referred to as Jesus’ teaching on loving our enemies—we find some of the most difficult instructions He ever gave His followers. Here we encounter the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want them to treat you. We also hear His command to turn the other cheek rather than retaliate.
Beautiful words. Inspiring words, until someone actually hurts you. Then they become some of the hardest words Jesus ever asked us to live. Perhaps no sentence is more challenging than this:
“Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you.” (Luke 6:28, NLT)
Really, Jesus? Let me make sure I understand. I’m supposed to bless the boss who fired me without cause? Pray for the person who abused me physically or emotionally? Wish God’s best for the friend who spread rumors about me? Pray for the individual whose actions forever changed my family?
Those words don’t merely sound difficult. They seem impossible.
If we’re honest, every part of us cries out for fairness. We want justice. We want wrongs to be made right. Sometimes, if we’re honest enough to admit it, we want the people who hurt us to experience a little of the pain they’ve caused.
Jesus doesn’t ignore those feelings. He simply refuses to let them have the final word.
I often think about the observations of Matthew Henry, the eighteenth-century theologian, as he reflected on this passage. He reminds us that followers of Christ are not called to live according to the standards of this world but according to the values of heaven.
That’s easier to admire than it is to practice, because if we’re honest, many of us still resemble that child standing beneath the monkey bars, fists clenched, hearts racing, convinced revenge will somehow make things right.
Yet history—and our own lives—tell a different story. Revenge rarely heals.
Bitterness rarely comforts. Anger will not restores what was lost. If anything, they tend to deepen the wound.
We don’t have to look very far to see what happens when forgiveness disappears.
We see it in neighborhoods where lifelong friendships dissolve over a disagreement.
We see it in families divided by words that were spoken years ago but never released.
We see it in workplaces where resentment quietly poisons relationships.
We see it online, where outrage often spreads faster than compassion and where extending grace is sometimes mistaken for weakness. Sadly, we even see it in our churches.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve begun to believe that strength belongs to the person who wins the argument, gets the last word, or settles the score.
Jesus tells a different story. According to Him, true strength isn’t found in revenge. It’s found in mercy. Not because mercy denies justice, but because mercy refuses to let someone else’s wrongdoing determine the condition of our own hearts.
Forgiveness is often misunderstood. It isn’t pretending evil never happened.
It isn’t excusing abuse. It isn’t saying justice no longer matters. Forgiveness doesn’t erase consequences. Rather, forgiveness is choosing to release our right to personal vengeance while entrusting justice to God.
That may sound simple, but it isn’t! In fact, it may be one of the hardest acts of courage a person will ever choose.
During a high-profile criminal case that began in 2025 and concluded in 2026, the father of the victim publicly shared that he forgave the person convicted of causing his child’s death.
His words caught my attention because he later clarified something important.
His forgiveness was not an attempt to excuse the crime.
Nor was it intended to remove accountability. Instead, forgiveness became the beginning of his own healing. He refused to allow hatred to become another victim. That is the heart of Jesus’ teaching.
Radical. Unexpected. Undeserved grace. The same grace God has poured out through Jesus.
I sometimes wonder if, from God’s perspective, we still look like children on a playground.
Not because we’re childish, but because we so often cling to the things that hurt us while overlooking the freedom He offers us. C. S. Lewis once wrote,
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us… We are far too easily pleased.”
That phrase has stayed with me for years.Far too easily pleased. I don’t believe Lewis wasn’t suggesting that we settle for small pleasures. He was saying that we settle for far less than God desires for us. We cling to resentment because it feels justified. We rehearse conversations we’ll never have. We replay old wounds as though doing so somehow gives us control over them. In reality, all we’re doing is allowing those moments to continue shaping our hearts. God desires something better.
That doesn’t mean life will suddenly become easy. Following Jesus has never been a promise of comfort or a guarantee that we’ll avoid suffering. We will still experience betrayal. We will still grieve. We will still carry scars from words spoken and actions taken against us.
The difference is that we do not carry those burdens alone.
Through His Holy Spirit, God walks with us. He comforts us in our grief, strengthens us in our weakness, and slowly reshapes our hearts to look more like His. The obstacles don’t always disappear, but they no longer have the power to define us. As we learn to love, forgive, and extend grace as God has done for us, those obstacles begin to lose their grip.
That doesn’t happen overnight.
Forgiveness is rarely a single moment. More often, it’s a journey.
Sometimes the deepest wounds require us to forgive the same person more than once—not because our first forgiveness wasn’t genuine, but because the pain resurfaces. Old memories have a way of finding us when we least expect them. A familiar place. A song on the radio. An anniversary on the calendar. Suddenly, emotions we thought we’d left behind come rushing back.
When that happens, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve failed.
It may simply mean we’re being invited, once again, to place that hurt into God’s hands.
So how do we begin? Jesus gives us a place to start, even when our emotions haven’t caught up with our intentions.
First, forgive the person—or the people—who have hurt you. Write it down if you need to.
Say it out loud if that helps. There is something surprisingly powerful about giving words to a decision you’ve made in your heart. It doesn’t have to sound eloquent. It doesn’t have to be perfect or polished. Simply say, “I forgive Joe for what he did to me.”
Be as specific as you can or need to be. God already knows the details. You’re not informing Him of anything He doesn’t already know. What you’re doing is choosing, by an act of your will, to release your grip on the offense. You may not feel different immediately.
That’s okay. Forgiveness is a choice before it becomes a feeling.
Then take a second step. Pray for them, not because they’ve earned it. Not because what they did was acceptable, but because Jesus asked us to.
Think about something you would genuinely ask God to do in your own life and pray that for theirs.
“Lord, let them know how close You are.”
“Father, bring healing where there is brokenness.”
“Grant them wisdom.”
“Lead them to Your peace.”
At first, those prayers may feel awkward. They may even feel unnatural. Don’t be discouraged by that. Our hearts often need time to catch up with the decisions we’ve made. Keep bringing that person before God. Keep choosing forgiveness. Keep praying.
Little by little, you’ll begin to notice something remarkable.
The prayer that once felt forced begins to become sincere. The bitterness that once occupied so much space in your heart begins to loosen its grip. The anger doesn’t disappear because you’ve ignored it. It begins to fade because you’ve surrendered it.
I’ve often heard bitterness compared to drinking poison and expecting someone else to become sick. It’s a vivid image because it’s true. The person we refuse to forgive may never know the battle taking place inside us. Yet every day we hold on to resentment, it quietly shapes our thoughts, our relationships, and even our capacity to experience joy.
Jesus offers another way.
He invites us to lay down what we’ve been carrying for far too long. When I think back to that first-grade playground, I still remember the sting of the fall. I remember the laughter. I remember wanting nothing more than to push back. Looking back now, I realize the greatest victory wouldn’t have been getting even. It would have been becoming the kind of person who no longer needed to. That’s the invitation Jesus extends to every one of us.
Not to pretend we haven’t been hurt.
Not to deny injustice.
Not to excuse evil.
But to refuse to let someone else’s worst moment become the defining moment of our own lives.
That kind of forgiveness isn’t weakness.
It’s freedom.
It frees us from carrying burdens we were never meant to bear. It frees us from allowing bitterness to write the next chapter of our story. Most importantly, it frees us to become the people God created us to be—people who reflect His mercy, His compassion, and His grace in a world that desperately needs all three.
Maybe that’s why Jesus spoke these difficult words in the first place. He wasn’t simply teaching us how to treat our enemies. He was showing us how to become more like Him, and that’s a lesson I’m still learning. Perhaps you are too.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, the standards of this world often feel more natural than the way of Christ. Give me the courage to live differently. When I’m tempted to hold on to hurt, teach me to forgive. When anger rises within me, remind me of the mercy You have shown me. Help me to bless those who have wounded me, pray for those who have hurt me, and trust You with the justice that belongs in Your hands alone. Shape my heart until it reflects Yours. Amen.
Scripture: “Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you.”
Luke 6:28 (NLT)