Christianity is not about risk mitigation

In fact, it’s probably not even primarily about sin mitigation.

God wants his children to be holy, and he hurts when his children experience pain.  But if God’s ultimate goal for us was to avoid the risk of pain and sin as much as possible, it might be more efficient to skip community, friendship, dreams, striving, relationships, marriage, kids, ambition, hard work, the great commission, and all these things altogether.  After all, we all know that conflict and hurt feelings inevitably happen when people start caring about each other, and that all the goals and achievements we gain can turn into idols.  So why do any of that at all?

Well, God does command us (objectively or subjectively) to do those things.  Why does he do that? It’s because God’s goal for us in this life is not primarily to keep us from all pain and prevent us from making any mistakes.  He knows that he’s metaphorically asking us to handle fire and explosives- things that have the potential to hurt us, even spiritually- when he calls us to engage in relationships and vocations and even missions.  But these things are also the things that can uniquely help us experience the love and power of God, and that is God’s primary goal for us- to know him and love him.  So let us be careful, but let us not be afraid.  We were made for this.

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9. schweewu reblogged this from mrsaturn101 and added:

   This is oddly, or not oddly, encouraging, thanks :)

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