should friday

The one line Christians latch onto in the song, Something Good, in the Sound of Music is “nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could”. Julie Andrews has become the unwitting poster child of the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God (or maybe it’s Sister Maria).

But there is a far more poignant (and important) line in this song for those who would have Christ. Our Sister sang,

For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should

And this is the way Christ comes to me.

This is the way God loves. Whether or not He should. God didn’t send his only begotten son because he should. It wasn’t the right thing to do. He did it whether or not he should. It wasn’t right for Christ to lay down his life for me. He did it whether or not he should.

This is the way love works. You really can’t define it in terms of what you should do. And if whatever you’re promoting can be defined in terms of what you should do, then it’s not love. Not how God defines it anyways. And God does define love. And the way he defines it is “whether or not you should”. He defined it in the way He gave Jesus.

God didn’t owe us anything. Sending Christ was not justifiable. He did it out of his love, not out of duty, not out of a sense of what is right or what is wrong.

No matter why God actually sent Jesus, and no matter why Jesus actually laid down his life, it wasn’t because He should.

Try to imagine standing at the foot of the cross, looking up at him, pierced, torn, bleeding, and suffocating to death, and saying to him, “You should love me like this.” I can’t. What I imagine saying is, “Here you are, standing there, loving me, whether or not you should”.

And this is why some people call today Good Friday, not Should Friday.