#absolute depravity

[vintage-tigre]

[suzycreamcheeze]

bolstering my Mochi tag with this incredibly important short/silent film

[bensblownup]

Befriending the Stranger: Is there good in us?

Jesus is going to reveal to her that she will find the waters to quell her thirst...within her inner "well", her own heart, her deepest self [p56]

He was revealing to her the deep hidden source of life in her...we are often unaware of the deep well, the sanctuary of love, within us and our capacity to love with the very love of God [p59]

As I've been reading Jean Vanier's book Befriending the Stranger, I find myself tense up at the suggestion that within each of us there is a spring of life. While rejecting much of reformed theology - I do not believe we are "evil" beings with nothing good in us - I also struggle with the other end of the spectrum - that there is good within us all. I'm not sure which way to think. We are like sheep who have gone astray. It's fairly obvious not just from Scripture but from the mess that the world is in, that something's not right. We find the image of the creator is so marred in us. 

Perhaps I'm blinded by the sense of my own failings, inadequacies and brokenness to see and hope for the possibility of love in others who do not "have Christ". I certainly don't understand how it "fits" into a theological framework of humanity and salvation.

Vanier directs us to meet Jesus not only in the other, but in the estranged, within our self: The place where we are deeply wounded and broken. This is not something to deny in our attention to our consciousness. It is where we are to meet Jesus, the despised and rejected suffering servant.