I am so frickin' perfect, who wouldn't want to know my God?

Back in college I had an atheist friend who was somewhat disillusioned with relationships. He told me one day, "Every friend I have ever had has let me down." This initiated the expression of my fix-it gene that I inherited from my mother. I made a vow to myself that I would never let him down. I figured in this way he would see the love of Christ and be moved to accept Jesus and then we could spend eternity in heaven together being BFFs. You can probably guess how this turned out. I disappointed him and as a consequence of my imperfection Jesus could not save him. Just kidding. I did let him down, but he wound up coming to Christ later on when he met his future wife. He now has babies and is happy, or so I hear. I figure we'll catch up as BFFs in heaven.

Anyway, you would think that with time I would grow in wisdom and maturity and recognize the naivete in such quests. You would think.

I recently found out a (former?) friend has been telling people that I am lousy. That I hurt her (which is true) and therefore no one should trust me or believe anything I say (I hope that's not true). I did hurt her, more than once. Each time, when I realized what I had done, I apologized and asked her forgiveness, hoping we could still be friends despite the fact that I can be a twit. Each time she assured me that we were cool and everything was fine. So finding out that she has been telling people I am a creepizoid really upset me. But maybe not for the reason you might think.

My fear is, what if she's right? I mean, she's got a point, I screwed up more than once. I have a long history of really hurting the people I love most. Why should anyone trust me? Worst of all, what kind of Christian does that make me? In Christian circles we like to complain about the bad hypocritical Christians that give us a bad name. The whole,
"The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." - Brennan Manning

Yeah, that bad Christian, that's me. I'm the jerk. Even worse, I've participated in the bad Christian bashing. That makes me like a double hypocrite, which has gotta be the worst kind. Why should my friend want to follow Christ when, instead of showing the love of Christ, I'm letting her down? Over and over again.

But maybe (probably?) there is a flaw in my philosophy. What brand of Christianity am I trying to sell here? I pretty sure that, "Once you get saved you will be perfect," is not in the Bible. The Bible does tell us to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16), which kind of implies there will be sinning going on.

So maybe it's not about being perfect so that others will be saved. We know we don't get saved because we are good enough, no one is. So why should someone else's salvation be based on whether I am good enough? Maybe it was small-minded of me to think that God's ability to impact people's lives would be limited by my flaws. Maybe I should look back at what happened 10 years ago and learn something (i.e. grow in wisdom and maturity): God saved my friend because of who He is, not because of my foolish attempt to earn someone's salvation.

So where does this leave my dear friend? Well, I'm sorry she feels so hurt by me. I didn't mean to hurt her. I do still want to be her friend, but I get the distinct impression she doesn't want to be mine. And that's okay. I just have to trust God to take good care of her. Maybe she will come to Christ in spite of me. And then we can be BFFs in heaven together.