In my kindergarten class, when it’s time to clean up and I ask a student to help with a certain area, the most common response is, “But Mrs. Satterwhite I didn’t make that mess!” Six year olds want life to feel fair. I think maybe we all do. We feel indignation at the idea of being responsible for a mess we didn’t make.
Recently I have been wondering… what can I do with this mess that I didn’t make? When I choose to do something that I know will pull me away from being close to God, I know that the response is to turn back to God in humility and repentance. But what about when something I didn’t choose pulls me away? What if, like this year, the thing that makes me doubt and even sometimes despise God is depression? Depression takes away the possibility in a fragile mind that anything could be good. Even God. Doubting God’s goodness has pulled me far away from the close relationship I used to enjoy with God.
Here’s the part that I have been feeling confused about… when I have turned away from God and made a mess of my own life, an appropriate posture of my heart has been repentance… but what about when I didn’t make the mess? What about when the mess found me and I was a victim of the mess? Do I repent because I was depressed? Surely not.
Recently I brought this question to a friend. He nodded and sighed in understanding. He said, “it takes a great deal of humility to bring before God sin you didn’t choose.”
The answer had been right in front of me the whole time. When a kindergartener plays the blame game for a mess, I say “In our classroom we are a family. We are a unit. That means we all created the mess together. The mess belongs to each one of us. We all had a part in messing up this room.” We all have a part in the mess.
This time in my life is the most fully I have ever understood the difference between sins and Sin. The condition Sin…the mess we all have a part in making. The mess that was started in the garden of Eden. No, bipolar disorder is not my fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s the fault of the fall of Sin. Nobody chose it. And like my friend said, “it takes a great deal of humility to bring before God the sin you didn’t choose.”
“But God, I didn’t make this mess.” Unlike a kindergarten classroom, the world is such a mess that we can’t just work together to clean it up and then pack our bags and go to carpool. The good news is we don’t have to. All I need is the humility to bring the mess to the ultimate cleaning company in the sky. Just like in the classroom, it was never about who made the mess in the first place, it has always been about who is going to do the cleaning.
My Meandering Mind 