What Did Jesus Do With The Mess? - Matthew Kelly - Life is Messy Interview

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Video Transcript:

Jack Beers:
“So when you look to the gospels then, and you look to Jesus, what do you see Jesus doing to contend with the mess of humanity?”

Matthew Kelly: 
“Well, firstly, he affirms the major promise of the book, which is the mess isn't going anywhere. And he affirms it most specifically in his line, "The poor will always be with you." It's arresting, right? It's like "No, hold on that can't be true." We must be able to do something about that. And of course, what does he mean? We don't actually know, but we do know that he speaks about poverty, not exclusively as a material experience. We all have forms of poverty. You go to the wealthiest neighborhoods on the planet and these people have deep levels of poverty in some aspect of their life.

But he does affirm that the mess isn't going anywhere, it is here to stay, in the book. But I think the other thing that is perhaps most poignant to the conversation is that, God could have saved humanity any which way. Could have clicked these fingers, and that would have been salvation. How did God choose to bring salvation to the world? He chose to come as a child, helpless and to place himself right in the middle of our mess.

I think very often when someone else has created a mess, which we tend to do, we do create messes for ourselves. Sometimes messes just happen. Natural disasters, all sorts of things, messes just happen. And they can bring devastating heartache and sadness and suffering to our lives. But we do create some of the messes in our lives. Sometimes as human beings, when we encounter someone who's made a mess of their life, I think we do have a tendency sometimes to say, "All right, well, that's your mess, you made it, you clean it up." And that is not the mind of God.

God, places himself... The Christmas moment is God placing himself in the middle of our mess. Doesn't try to avoid it. Doesn't come in such form that he could be closed off from certain aspects of the mess. Places himself, right in the middle of our mess, and I think that's beautiful. When you really stop and think about your own mess, to understand that God wants to place himself right in the middle of your mess. To understand that, God wants to place himself right in the middle of your mess. Okay.

He's not waiting for you on the other side of your mess saying, "When you've taken care of that mess, let's resume our relationship." And I think that, that is an incredibly hopeful... In I Heard God Laugh, one of my favorite lines in the book is, you can't live without hope that things will change for the better. And what happens when we get in the mess is we lose hope. Not that things will change for the better, but even that things can change for the better, and that becomes a devastating downward spiral I think.”

Jack Beers:
“For sure. You correct me if I'm wrong. I think my working assumption is that, many people are actually afraid to bring their mess to God. Afraid as to how he might respond. Do you think that's true? And if you do think that's true, how do you think God does respond when we bring our mess to him?”

Matthew Kelly:
“I think that is true. We're not taught how to deal with shame, which is a useless emotion. Guilt is a massive advancement from shame. Of course, guilt requires taking personal responsibility for your part of whatever happened, not for everything that happened, but for your part of whatever happened. But once you're in guilt, we can do something about that.

So I think our shame stops us from bringing the mess to God. Okay. But that's like having a unique disease, an incredibly rare disease. There's only one doctor in the world, who's an expert in that disease. And refusing to g