The Conversions of Peter and Paul

Mark Shea makes an interesting point:

American culture — immersed as it is in Protestantism and a post-Protestant world view — tends to have a model of conversion that is Pauline: “I was a sinner, sinking down to the depths of degradation. Then Jesus knocked me off my horse, saved me, and my life was radically transformed! Now I am walking in victory over sin and I go from glory to glory! Hallelujah!”

It’s a real model of conversion and the good thing about it is that it demands a lot of us and produces a lot of heroes (like Paul). The bad thing is that it can create people impatient with failure — and failure is our middle name. That’s why there is also the Petrine model of the Long Slow Schlep Toward Holiness Over Time. And indeed, for most of us, this is how it goes. The average Christian is average : part of the big family of cowards, shufflers, snobs, hypocrites, and general all-around mediocrities. That’s us, homo sapiens , the species Christ came to save.

This really shows for me in the way we often criticize in others the things we see in ourselves. It is so easy to condemn our neighbor's sins while ignoring our own, in fact I think we probably do it so that we can ignore our own. The whole culture of watching broken people make mistakes on TV just demonstrates how desperate we are to escape from our own brokenness.