My best friend and I were trying to master a challenging skateboard maneuver. The goal was to dip down from the shallow end of an empty pool into the deep end, shoot up for a split second of air, grind along the top edge, and then dip back down the vertical wall. It was always difficult to detect who was better between the two of us. Our skill levels tended to track neck and neck. On this particular occasion I was getting nervous, because he was doing better than me\u2014until he overcorrected, lost control, and came crashing down. In that moment, a sinister joy arose in me at his failure. His confidence was lost. I now had the edge and mastered the maneuver before he did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sick me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sick, you, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Protestant Reformer Martin Luther defined sin with the Latin phrase, incurvatus in se<\/em>, which means, \u201ccurved inward on oneself.\u201d That\u2019s the core of our problem. We\u2019re all bent in the direction of self-centeredness rather than other-centeredness. Part of the twisted psychology of the sin problem is that we tend to gloat over the failures of others, because then we can feel superior to them and avoid facing our own failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026love is not happy when others fail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Once we have defined sin as a bent toward self and away from others, we can better understand what Jesus came to save us from, for Scripture testifies of him, \u201cHe will save His people from their sins\u201d (Matthew 1:21). To be saved from sin (which is self-centeredness) is to be saved into God\u2019s love (which is other-centeredness).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul tells us that one of the characteristics of love is that it \u201cdoes not rejoice in iniquity\u201d (1 Corinthians 13:6). This means that love is not happy when others fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our current highly charged political climate, we are witnessing humanity at its ugliest. Politicians, with no small amount of help from a self-serving media, specialize in pointing out and capitalizing upon the failures of anyone who’s not in their camp. As followers of Jesus, may I encourage us to intentionally refrain from partaking of the popular political climate that rejoices in the failures of others? Let us love like Jesus, who urged us to love even our enemies, which necessarily includes those on the opposite side of politics from ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Love Does Not Rejoice in the Failures of Others. My best friend and I were trying to master a challenging skateboard maneuver….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devotional"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Love_Matters_Most_pt10.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paAh8r-3u7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13399"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15522,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13399\/revisions\/15522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}