A year and a half ago all of that changed when our first child, Addy, was born. While my husband and I were thrilled to settle in as a family of three, bringing a child into the world dismantled any sense of routine I had previously set. That early alarm sound that used to be an invitation into a warm, slow start to the day had suddenly evolved into a siren signaling my own demise. Now, the joys of parenting are many and nearly impossible to put into words, but the inconvenience paired with the sleeplessness is not. In fact, I think most of the words on that list are four letters. 

Routine interruption brought with it a sense that I was somehow letting God down because I didn’t know what it looked like to spend time with him now that a newborn was in the picture. Due to the exhaustion that came with the transition, when Addy napped I felt like I had to spend time with the Lord when all I really wanted to do was rest or sleep. I wasn’t being gracious or kind to myself, and I felt like the pressure was on me to maintain my relationship with God, because after all, relationships require time, right? Oddly enough, this narrative (and my false understanding), appeared to come from the Bible itself.

Philippians 2:12 says, “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” What does it mean to work out our salvation? What is it that I need to do in order to maintain my salvation or secure God’s love for me? It’s a daunting thought because what if I don’t “work it out” right? What if God isn’t pleased with the way I pursue and love him? 

Then add 1 Peter 1:14-16 to the mix: “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.”’ Be holy in all we do? Oof! But, again, I have a kid now, and I’m just so…tired.

Left to my own devices, these passages can work together to shape an unhealthy narrative in my mind. They make me feel that it’s on me to please God and if I take a wrong turn, my relationship with him is on thin ice. For me to be holy I need to spend 30 minutes a day in Scripture and journal afterward. Or in order to work out my salvation, I need to serve in three areas at my church and make sure to always be there when a friend is in need, no matter the cost. 

But here’s the thing: while none of these things are bad pursuits, they put me at the center of my spirituality, and not Jesus.

Earlier portions of Philippians 2 frame the context of what it means to “work out our salvation.” It reads, “[Jesus,] who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”

Working out our salvation involves accepting a gift we did not earn. This is easier said than done. It comes with accepting all that Christ has done for us and trusting that the work that he completed on the cross is sufficient, since Christ is the one who has, ultimately, worked out our salvation (Phil 2:13).

A friend recently reminded me that good works aren’t even meant to be thought of. They’re something that come from a place of love, out of our belief in the gospel and our orientation toward his sacrificial work for us. Good works belong in the “left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing” category. That’s been a balm for me, now just days out from meeting our second daughter, and having renewed fear over what my relationship with God might look like during those first few months. But, his love for me will not change. Afraid or not. Anxious or not. Tired or not. Routine-centered or not. His side of the relationship does not ebb and flow based on my participation. I have no category for this! 

Even during the times it doesn’t feel like God is at work, or we don’t feel like we’re “working out our salvation”, the Lord is working in us. His grace is new in the middle of the night when I wake up to feed and care for this new baby. He’s at work when he reveals to me my lack of patience towards our daughter or my husband due to the sleepless nights. When friends and family come to help or bring a meal, he reminds us through their gracious acts that he loves and is caring for me through his people. And when fatigue gets the best of me, he’ll be the one to quiet my heart and remind me that he is for me (and for you), always. 

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One of the early relational obstacles they experience, though, is Hermione’s incessant judgmentalism. She is the smartest of the three, by far. Her work ethic and her attention to the rules help her ascend in her classes above the rest. But it doesn’t come without a little snobbery and a lot of self-righteousness along the way. She is born of muggle (non-magical) parents, which may have led to a desire to prove herself, but her rule-following, intelligence, and pride all coalesce, like they tend to do in all of us, and it drives a wedge between herself and the people she cares about most. Even Harry and Ron keep their distance.

But there’s a moment in the first book when all of this changes. It doesn’t come from a class textbook or a spell on how to acquire humility or conjure likeability. Rather, it comes from love — a love manifested in an act of deliverance on the day a mountain troll is set loose inside the school. That day, Hermione is doing what she always does: showing off in class and making her classmates look bad. Hearing Ron ridicule her to others — “She’s a nightmare; it’s no wonder she doesn’t have any friends!” — Hermione runs away to the bathroom in tears. But when news breaks of a troll roaming the halls, Ron and Harry immediately dash to her rescue.

After some genuine luck, the troll is defeated and Hermione is forever changed. Rowling summarizes the outcome in a seemingly passing sentence: “Hermione had become a bit more relaxed about breaking the rules since Harry and Ron had saved her from the mountain troll, and she was much nicer for it” (Sorcerer’s Stone, 181).

I remember reading this for the first time years ago and marveling at how well it epitomized the New Testament. When our focus is taken off of the rules and put onto something else outside of us — especially an act of love — our hearts begin to soften, and we stop needing to win all of the contests life throws our way.

In the Bible we read, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1), and elsewhere how it’s not through wisdom that we know God (1 Cor 1:21). I also think of the woman who loved much because she was forgiven much (Lk 7:47). For her, like Hermione, a loving disposition came from first being saved and forgiven, not from being told to be more loving. This is precisely the lesson Jesus is trying to teach. His interaction with her doesn’t happen in a vacuum but is witnessed by pious religious leaders who sneer at the woman’s actions and at Jesus’s kindness and who fail to understand that a mountain troll is standing right behind them as well.

The rules actually preclude true heart change because they point us back to the desert of “self” where no life-giving water flows. They addict us to playing comparison games and to the never-ending task of one-upmanship. But Jesus invites us to himself for the water (Jn 7:37-38) and not the law. The law can’t breed love; there’s no magic in it. Only love breeds love. And not just any love, but a Love that set out to forgive and reconcile his enemies to himself by being pinned to a cross by the troll of our sin.

Christianity’s approach to life transformation is utterly unique. It happens, as J. Gresham Machen says, “not by appealing to the human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of an event.” Hermione’s story is a small window into this greater truth. Transformation is not really our work at all. It needs to happen to us, from outside of us. It needs to surprise us, apart from the rules, through a felt sense of how we can’t save ourselves, but how someone else graciously has. It’s only then — in the shadow of the loving work of someone else’s hands — that we find that maybe we’re a little nicer than we used to be.

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This post originally appeared on mbird.com

The post How Do We Become Nicer People? appeared first on Red Tree.

If the trope is true, then if the second season of a show you love passes muster, we are often filled with a surprising sense of relief (see: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Crown). But if the second season somehow transcends the first, we’ve encountered something truly worth talking about.

Ted Lasso has (miraculously?) bucked the trend to become that latter beacon of hope.

Season one caught us off guard during the worst year in recent memory. In our burdensome era of complaining and outrage, which was only accelerated and magnified during a global pandemic and the 2020 presidential election, the show was dropped into our locked down living rooms and became one of the few sanctuaries to breathe the fresh air of grace. The writers gave us several, emotionally persuasive pictures of one-way love toward undeserving human beings.

Critics deemed the show a shining light of kindness and decency and a triumph of can-do optimism. Coach Lasso became a role model, a counterpoint to toxic masculinity. For many, the show promised that if we can only embody the resilience and grace of Ted, then we will finally breeze through life’s many challenges and hurdles like we’ve always imagined (even professional coaches are joining in our folly). This portrait of grace became an aspirational ideal.

We are afflicted with the belief that we can heal ourselves. This is why we love what theologians label “the law” – the prospect of self-improvement by gaining more knowledge.

The only and main problem is, the law doesn’t work. The time between season one’s release and season two has shown us that none of us actually are Ted Lasso in our nine-to-fives. Rather than laugh at ourselves with the crowd, forgive the ones who wrong us, and celebrate the names of the janitors, we defend our decisions until we’re out of breath and nurse our bitterness towards others. More often than we care to admit, we resemble “Led Tasso,” Ted’s neurotic split personality.

But then along comes season two.

Now, in order to leave the magic of this season untarnished for first time viewers, we can broadly say that the second season shows us in bright, brilliant colors that we are, in fact, not ok. We all suffer from an inability to love those we care about most, little-man syndrome, known and unknown father wounds, or neglect.

And in addition to bundling your favorite rom-coms into an episode about how love motivates, persuades, and influences our decisions more than logic, the whole second season resembles the mystery of the gospel, that the way up is down. Joy is found through confession, strength arises through vulnerability, and life springs forth from what feels like death.

Roy Kent’s path is paved by several deaths to his self-protected tough-guy image. His rage and militant independence can only be undone through the crucible of self-awareness. It’s coming to terms with the wake he is leaving behind that opens his eyes, and his relationships with Phoebe and Keely respectively reveal the dark parts of Roy Kent that are being brought to an end.

Ted’s own not-ok-ness is disclosed in new ways this time around, seen in particular through his fidgety exchanges with the team therapist, Dr. Sharon Fieldstone. After watching Ted blame, hide, and humor his way out of confronting the unfunny, painful parts of who he is, Fieldstone says to Ted and (ultimately all of us) “the truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.” The truth harms before it heals. The order of operations is significant.

Season one gave us an ideal version of who we ought to be, while season two is showing us our need for the type of healing that addresses our unseen selves.

This “two-season” story is beginning to resemble the Bible’s own two testament narrative. Like Ted Lasso, God’s second season wasn’t a betrayal of the first, but a deepening of its themes in new directions.

Far from flopping, season two (i.e. the New Testament) consists of God’s best material. On the other side of Jesus’ cross and resurrection, our little “d” deaths through the hard, frustrating parts of confronting ourselves and lives are the only true pathway to healing. We do not become who we ought to be by grit and smiling determination, but by admitting who we actually are. Deeply flawed, and wounded — yet loved to hell and back by the Truth who put on human flesh to bleed for us. By his wounds, we are healed.

God’s second round of wine at the party exceeds the first, leaving everyone both dumbfounded with surprise and satisfaction.  The second season of God’s story reveals how life has always been cruciform. It may not have been what anyone expected, but it was precisely the plot twist we needed.

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This post originally appeared on mbird.com

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