Addisonrd's personal testimony

I found this posted at www.addisonrd.com under "why I believe what I believe". It's a great post and personal testimony. Read on...

Nobody needed to tell me that I was profoundly broken. I saw it in the intent and motivation of every action. A persistent understanding of how I ought to be, of the perfect instantiation of myself, stood in sharp contrast to the person with whom I was well acquainted, the person whose every action was motivated by subversive intent and consuming appetites.

Willpower failed to overcome and correct the self-failings. Whatever brokenness I had inherited extended to my self-control, and made me a thoroughly ineffective authority over my own self.

Community failed to overcome and correct the self-failings. Whatever brokenness I had inherited extended to those around me, so that our common efforts to correct it became the well-meaning but fumbling efforts of untrained children, blind to their goals and unskilled in their methods.

Institutional religion failed to overcome and correct the self-failings. It offered a measurable standard of conduct, and a well-constructed worldview standing in support of that conduct, but failed to affect the heart, the emotional center of the broken desires and consuming appetites. It promoted a tension between the internal reality and the external forms that could only yield exhaustion and failure.

I lived in the growing tension of a certain knowledge that I was created to be a better sort of person, a more perfect example of human experience, a completed expression on the part of the creator, the certain knowledge that the goal of my existence extended well beyond simple self-subsistence and self-gratification, and yet the certain knowledge that I had failed on every account to exemplify those things. I was built to be a part of a greater project, but my brokenness made me unfit to discover it and participate in it.

In the person of Jesus Christ, that perfect example of human experience found perfect expression. In his life, I found the evidence of the person I knew I ought to be. In his death, I saw the tragedy of my own brokenness carried out to its inevitable and inescapable conclusion. I saw in his teaching the expression of that great project that made human experience worthwhile.

I was made to be perfect as he was perfect. No manner of self-discipline, community support, or institutional religion was sufficient to allow me to live out that example. His death assumed the consequences of my brokenness, and in some profound and mysterious way repaid my irreparable debt to my creator. His resurrection gave proof to his promise of my own renewal, my future escape from the current tragedy of my own brokenness. His kingdom, his great project of transforming the world to a place of justice, compassion, mercy, wisdom, and truth gave shape to the project of great consequence that I knew with certainty I was created to participate in. His ongoing communion with me gives real and present confidence in the reality of this new life.

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Thoughts or comments?

Athosxc