Our inmost self is good and true. We are not totally depraved. But we are deeply confused. And sin is there to confuse us.

Self-acceptance can healthily lead us to a realistic appraisal of who we are, and reveal what is and is not changeable within us.

“Mercy” is the usual translation for the Greek eleos and the Hebrew hesed. Both eleos and hesed are also rightly rendered as “loving-kindness.” Both also imply “grace,” in the sense that this love is undeserved. It is pure and voluntary on the part of the bestower. The Greek eleos also calls to mind “oil” (in Greek elaion), which carries its own sc

Reinhold Niebuhr famously remarked, “Original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith.”

It also denotes wholeness, or whole-mindedness, because our goal not to further fragment ourselves (“here’s my good self, here’s my bad self”) but to be whole persons. It is this whole person—and not some kind of pious created persona—who presents himself before God in prayer.

That means that we might reduce by at least one person—ourself—the number of judgmental and resentful Christians, which is surely a worthy goal!

If we preserve, as we should, that purity of heart, the watch and guard of the intellect . . . this will not only uproot all passions and evils from our hearts; it will also introduce joy, hopefulness, compunction, sorrow, tears, an understanding of ourselves and of our sins, mindfulness of death, true humility, unlimited love of God and man, and a

Humility is effectively a genuine, proportionate sense of oneself before God and others.

Living with and living into another’s total love—especially God’s—is painfully humbling.