I Hope You Get What You Deserve

Somewhere along the way, Christians started singing, preaching, and declaring a mantra that sounds pious on the surface but is actually deeply destructive: “We don’t deserve God’s love.” I hear it regularly in worship services. But let’s pause and ask the obvious question:

Why don't we deserve God’s love?

If we’re made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), then baked into our very existence is worth, dignity, and value. To declare that we don’t deserve God’s love is to deny that image. It’s like God carefully carving us as living icons and then muttering, “Well, this turned out to be garbage.” But that’s not the gospel. In fact, the creation account in Genesis makes the opposite point: "Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!" (Genesis 1:31)

Someone is reading this and thinking, "Yeah, but what about sin?"

What do we do with the idea of God's grace then? Grace itself is absolutely unearned. You can’t buy it, hustle for it, or rack up enough Sunday school points to cash it in. But unearned doesn’t mean undeserved.

Think about it this way: I don’t “earn” my kids’ love. They don’t hand me a paycheck for being Dad. But I deserve their love simply because I’m in relationship with them. You wouldn't say "Wow, you don't deserve that" to a mother welcoming her child's embrace. This love is an extension of a sense of belonging. Sadly, this doesn't always go both ways. I know of many parents who do, in fact, treat their kids as if they are undeserving of their love when they make life choices (or more accurately, embrace their authentic selves) in ways that contradict what the parent would choose for their child.

When churches implement this undeserving language, they cultivate a system that leaves people with lifelong self-esteem issues. And do you know who thrives in environments where people believe they’re inherently unworthy? Abusers. Manipulators. Institutions that want to keep you small so they can stay big.

Coincidentally, I've noticed that most people I've met who passionately argue the doctrine of original sin tend to share a similar personality. And if they happen to be reading this post, they are likely thinking of how they need to call me out for my false teaching. Doesn't my inbox sound fun? 

If you start from the assumption that you don’t deserve God’s love, then every bad thing that happens to you can be spiritualized as “probably what you had coming.” And every controlling or toxic leader (even leaders in the church) can leverage that narrative to say, “Who are you to question this? You don’t deserve anything anyway.”

I've watched this play out in countless people's journeys for years. In our online community, we've been reading the book "Freeing Jesus" by Diana Butler Bass. She describes her own journey of experiencing God in a church community that told her she didn't deserve it.

Worship became an exercise in rehearsing sin, begging for mercy, listening to a doctrinally correct sermon, and singing hymns to an all-powerful God who deigned to save. I collapsed into darkness, intellectually convinced that humanity was evil, so far fallen that there was no remnant of good in us, utterly dependent on a God who may—in wisdom—choose to save a few, among whom I fervently prayed to be counted.

As you might imagine, this took a heavy toll on her. It also distorted her understanding of God and how to connect with God in a meaningful way.

As my theological estimation of human beings fell, so my theological vision of God rose. God became more and more distant, untouchable in glory, surrounded by angels, and dwelling in complete holiness. With a low view of humanity and a highly exalted view of God, a huge gap opens between us, brute beasts that we are, and God. Of course, this is a fundamental problem of Christian theology—how a wayward people can be saved—but it was exaggerated in ways that took on the shape of sin porn.

I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Or as the disciple John wrote, "See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1)

Jesus spent his ministry elevating people who had been told by religion they were undeserving: lepers, women, tax collectors, foreigners. He didn’t affirm their shame. He affirmed their value. He reminded them of what had been true all along: they bore the very image of God.

To live as if you don’t deserve God’s love is to miss the entire point. You do deserve it. Not because you’ve nailed the Christian life. Not because you finally figured out how to pray the “right” way. But because God made you in God's own image. And this remains true even when you make a mistake (or lots of them).

Even after the horrors she experienced, Anne Frank said it beautifully:

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

Anne Frank, a teenage girl hiding from Nazis, believed people were good at heart. Meanwhile, twenty-first-century Christians in air-conditioned sanctuaries sipping pumpkin spice lattes are still unsure whether the people around them are deserving of love.

The next time you’re in a worship service and someone proclaims, “We don’t deserve God's love,” I hope something in you bristles. Because what’s actually true is far more liberating: grace is unearned, but love is deserved. As Diana Butler Bass reminds us, "It is very hard to imagine Jesus’s way as a way of love if you do not love yourself."

Everyone deserves to be loved.

So maybe it’s time we stopped singing songs that shrink us down and started living into the truth that God’s love is the most natural thing in the universe. Not backhanded. Not reluctant. Not in spite of you. But because of who you are, made in God’s image. 

I hope you get what you deserve.

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