Tag: Way

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Doing Justice

There are many cries for justice in 2026, many hateful governments, groups, ideologies, and -isms in the world today. As hateful events happen closer to where we live, we feel anger, frustration, and perhaps even sometimes conflicted about the reassurances of the Bible, such as “…do not be afraid” (Mark 6:50). In high school, I participated in a protest against the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. That was my first real taste of the efforts for justice on an international scale. The situation was horrific, and yet as a teenager it felt far enough away to not feel threatened that the same would happen at home.

Since then, genocide that did stop 20 years ago in Sudan has recently resurfaced. I felt unsettled because I knew that the underlying problem of hate was not replaced with love. Hearts were not changed. Those protests and efforts that lasted a little while didn’t result in lasting peace. This same pattern tragically continues in many places in the world. So, what do we do when we realize that human interventions prove unsuccessful to stop acts of hate in the long term?

We can easily feel powerless to stop hate. There are hateful things even in our own circles of friends and family members that we can’t change. Jesus promised that those who believed in Him would be hated, “and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22). That we understand; Jesus is confronting and can be triggering to many; He warned those who believe in Him of this.

Yet, Jesus is the only way to find True peace. He is able to change hearts filled with hate and turn even the most hopeless situations around; and we can pray with faith that He will! “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me‘” (John 14:6). As much as the world likes the idea, the Truth is that there are are not multiple ways–Jesus is the only way to life. To follow His way is to love as He loves, and to trust that He will help us expel hatred from our own hearts.

Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). After seeing human efforts to stop hate fail for over twenty years now, and going through many times of feeling powerless, I can take heart in the difficult words of Jesus, to “love our enemies” (Matthew 5:44). Now I see loving our enemies as a way to do the justice that human efforts to stop hate cannot do. Doing justice can be to earnestly love the hearts of those who do evil things in obedience to Jesus’ command, and pray for Jesus’ blood to cover them too.

Paul wrote, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). To love our enemies we must humbly remember that in the face of God’s holiness and righteousness, without Jesus we are no different than those who act in hate. We are all in desperate need, for the covering of Jesus’ blood to pay our debt before God, no matter our sin or the state of our hearts.

We give the fight for justice over to God when we choose to love in the face of hate. This involves letting go of what the world is telling us to hold tight. God desires to avenge evil Himself; He is the only True Judge. Paul wrote, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). Jesus prepared us for this present hate, and He knew it was coming, saying, “And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another” (Matthew 24:10). In preparation for this time, Jesus taught His followers to love.

We don’t get what our sin deserves when we are in Christ, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). How is this just? Though we all deserve the responsibility for our sin, we could not pay the price for it. Jesus came because He could make a way to pay for it on our behalf. Because of His love for us, His blood payment is now available to cover anyone’s sin debt who believes in Him, even those who have perpetrated hate and done injustice. Justice was served by Jesus’ blood. He took our place. He was and still is a God of justice. Trusting Jesus’ fulfillment of justice for our souls and the grace provided by His sacrifice allows His love to reign in our hearts, which we are commanded to share.

God is looking to partner with us and the love He’s given us through the Holy Spirit to transform and change even the hardest of hearts with love. God is after human hearts. He doesn’t operate the same way as this world of threats and fear-based consequences. It’s when we follow Him and learn to operate in His way, the way of the Kingdom of heaven, that we are free from fear.

May Jesus reign in our hearts. He is the only Way to a truly just world.

“The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:14, NIV).

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8)?


“They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 1:19, NIV).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

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Human Goodness: Why We’re Worth It

If you’ve ever thought that you’re not worth saving, I can relate. 

There was a time not so long ago when I thought 100% that I was doomed to fail. I had examined my patterns of thought and behavior long enough to recognize I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do or even wanted to do all the time, even when I tried. I was selfish, rude, prideful, impulsive, and I couldn’t stop. I thought, 

“The way I’m made, I just naturally do wrong things, and choose ‘bad,’ so what is the point of trying to be so ‘good’ all the time? Why would we need Jesus in the first place if there is nothing about us worth redeeming?”  

Lately I’ve been learning about Christian perspectives of mental health, and I was disturbed to find that some counselors assume that humans are not good. Their perspective would have lined up with this hopeless thought; I’m so glad I didn’t know this back then! It is true that some parts of the Bible seem to teach that humans are not basically good, when read at the surface level and the context is not taken into account. The Bible isn’t shy about admitting that humanity has messed up a lot. But I want to set the record straight. The Truth is that we were made good, meaning we have goodness within us as given by God our Creator. The Bible totally backs this, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good…” (Genesis 1:31). We humans have goodness in our very beings.

We are inherently good.

To ignore this is to ignore the very essence of our humanity. Origin stories matter. Especially if you’re a fan of superheroes, we love a good origin story; “all he had made” includes humankind, male and female (Genesis 1:27). God’s intention and original purpose for us still matters today, and should not be written off as an obscure detail or overlooked because of the messes that have followed, but instead remain a powerful source of great hope. 

While we all have sin in our hearts and are not all good, the battle between the flesh and the spirit ever-waging within us, God did not make us bad. To believe that we are all bad—where is the hope in that? This is not what the Word of God teaches. The Truth is, His intention was for us to be fully capable to choose goodness, righteousness, and self-control.  

God’s intentions for all humanity were good. No matter what happened afterward, we must remember that He set humanity up in our place of origin and called us good. How amazing! Today, we are still capable of choosing good. God did not intend for us to be dead in sin, but instead to be raised in life with Jesus (Romans 6:11-12). 

Goodness is part of our origin story. 

If God had truly made us entirely “bad” (not good), He would have set us up to fail, and you would have found me today in a hopeless state still thinking my hopeless thoughts. It would have been our ultimate death sentence of doom and despair. Not only is doing that to His Creation not in His loving nature, but what would ever make us able to choose good, to choose the way of His Spirit within us, if we were inherently bad in the first place? How could anyone choose the goodness of Jesus if nothing in our being recognizes, longs for, and cries out for it?

This mirror image effect brings me to my next point, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). If we were created in God’s image as this verse says, and we know He is good (Psalm 116:12, 2 Peter 1:3), Biblical counselors, Christian psychologists, and the like need to take great care. We cannot say to anyone, especially someone seeking help with their mental health, that humans are not at all good. It’s simply untrue.

We were made in God’s image.

It is important to note here that this does not mean that we can redeem ourselves. We still cannot choose only goodness and holiness if left to our own facilities; that story is also illustrated in Genesis. We all still have sin to wrestle with, for we all have a sinful nature. We need God to overcome what is not good in us. Even so, there is still hope for us because God saw the value in us and made a Way to save us through Jesus. Jesus brings us back to the goodness we lost so that we can be found again in the family of God. Jesus acknowledged that we are worth saving by His work on the cross. Our origins in Genesis 1:31 show that we were intended for good. Our original identity, no matter what you choose thereafter, is in the family of God. 

Jesus makes a Way back to the family of God. 

Particularly for those of us who struggle with mental health, we must remember that God provides hope. The beauty of God’s intention for us and the identity of goodness He gave us need to be recognized in the field of mental health, both from Christian and secular practitioners. We all desperately need hope, particularly those who seek psychological help for disorders that perpetuate unhelpful thoughts about ourselves and our identity. Mental health practitioners cannot afford to overlook the hope found in God’s character and what He’s given each one of us. To do so actually means putting their vulnerable patients at risk.

God created us to have hope and created reason for hope.

How hopeful is it that our Creator created us in His very image of goodness! Evil could not fully erase it from us, for God and His goodness is above all things.   

Finding a source of hope that doesn’t depend on a treatment, medication, or doctor is everything. To have hope you do not have to behave a certain way or think a certain way. You simply are worth saving because God made you so, and He made you good. 

“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.” -Romans 6:11-12

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