What's with all the insecurity?

Yesterday I claimed that the hostility of Jesus' hometown crowd was born out of insecurity.
What's with all the insecurity?
Don't you see it everywhere, and if you reflect on it, are aware of how it impacts your own behavior?

Insecurity - just normal, everyday insecurity  (not the kind that is born out of trauma or abuse) is one face of original sin.  Now, I know that Original Sin (notice the caps?) is a much maligned doctrine of the Church, but try this.

When you look at the world as one gigantic competition, where scores are being recorded and judgments made......then insecurity is a natural response.  Am I good enough?  Did I do that as well as could be expected?  Others are so much ahead/better than me.

Almost everyone is insecure; we simply differ in what we are insecure about.  Ask any preacher how daunting it is to preach for a congregation filled with other clergy, bishops, seminary professors, etc.  Makes the sweat break out! 

One of the ways that Sin manifests itself in this world is in the notion that everything is a competition and somewhere in the great beyond, someone is keeping score.

No one is keeping score (well, I can't answer for your spouse or mother-in-law or teenager, or even the mean girls in high school).  Remember John 3.16?  For God so loved the world.   Let it go.  Be the best you can be.  Live generously.  Trust in God's love.  Tuck this in the back of your mind, and hide it in your heart.

You know we won't remember this perfectly.  Our insecurity will well up.  We will participate in the score keeping.  That's when we will need to remember that God's love is first and there is nothing God doesn't already know about his children.

AMEN