These days I'm listening to the audiobook for Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make -- and Keep -- Friends by Marisa Franco. She talks a lot about vulnerability and testing out how much to take risks with revealing our true selves to those around us. Her words, and a comment I heard last night by Joel Burnell on Bonhoeffer, reminded me of an extended quote from Jean Chauvin (John Calvin in English).
In the following excerpt, Calvin makes an important point about vulnerability overcoming fear and perfectionism as we realize that we are God's children. I would paraphrase it as, "God takes even our most pitiful works and puts them on his fridge." (I think this paraphrase itself may be borrowed from a sermon by Gregg Harris.)
See how our works lie under the curse of the law if they are tested by the standard of the law. But how can unhappy souls set themselves with alacrity to a work from which they cannot hope to gain any thing in return but cursing? On the other hand, if freed from this severe exaction, or rather from the whole rigor of the law, they hear themselves invited by God with paternal levity, they will cheerfully and alertly obey the call, and follow his guidance.In one word, those who are bound by the yoke of the law are like servants who have certain tasks daily assigned them by their masters. Such servants think that nought has been done; and they dare not come into the presence of their masters until the exact amount of labour has been performed.But sons who are treated in a more candid and liberal manner by their parents, hesitate not to offer them works that are only begun or half finished, or even with something faulty in them, trusting that their obedience and readiness of mind will be accepted, although the performance be less exact than was wished. Such should be our feelings, as we certainly trust that our most indulgent Parent will approve our services, however small they may be, and however rude and imperfect.Thus He declares to us by the prophet, “I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him,” (Mal. 3:17); where the word spare evidently means indulgence, or connivance at faults, while at the same time service is remembered. This confidence is necessary in no slight degree, since without it every thing should be attempted in vain; for God does not regard any sock of ours as done to himself, unless truly done from a desire to serve him. But how can this be amidst these terrors, while we doubt whether God is offended or served by our work?
