How do we look at God? Like a mystery we canny understand!
The worst among us are the best in God’s eyes!
How easy it is for anyone to look at another person with disdain if that person appears to be less than yourself. Take any addictive substance that floods the world we live in and once we have removed it from our own weakness will become scandalized when another person still uses its attraction. There is an old thought that an addictive person never wants to appear weaker than someone else with the same weakness. Somehow that would only add to his own failure.
A person who has been a smoker for years then is able to throw off this addiction will become an advocate against anyone who still smokes. They seem to be threatened by the smell of tobacco others are using and will do whatever possible to avoid them. That is good since they realize how devastating tobacco use can become.
However, it is the remnant of addiction to anything we become attracted to that soothes our desperate need for satisfaction. But once we learn to side step that call to pleasure in our bodies, then we join the crusade to eliminate it from our society. That, as I alluded to above, is a step forward to recovery. What becomes the worst from which we escape is when our process of avoiding a return to it is seen as a demon in anyone else who hasn’t stopped. In them we see a failure and shun their very presence.
If these people who cannot stay away from the call to fulfill their need to satisfy their deepest yearning for self-destruction, physically and emotionally, we mustn’t throw them away as something evil, but try to comfort them in a way of love.
When God looked at all he made was good, it was not to belittle that portion who allowed the attraction of sin to take over. His first and only decision was to send his Son to become the very Way to bring the fallen back to the Truth and find Life within his Presence. This is where in God’s eyes the worst became the best.
Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life was manifested to us as he went to the Cross, willingly, to save all of humanity from the very addiction of rejecting God and reaching for pleasure through sin. Because of our sin, we have become the remnant of God’s unending mercy through his eternal forgiveness. The words of the Exultet at the Easter Vigil Mass
Isn’t it a paradox that our addiction to sin is the reason God sent his Son to die as the payment for our waywardness? On the cross, Jesus thanked his Father as he said, “It is finished.” The salvation of all humanity was finally completed!
Consequently, the worst, which is all of us, became the best of God’s creation, the very remnant that all the angels constantly thank God for.
Ralph B.Hathaway