I don't want to be rescued

Having recently blogged on films such as The Wrestler I decided it was time to show that I was a modern man and in touch with my sensitive side etc by blogging about the period drama 'Upstairs, Downstairs'.

I am a bit behind and so am just currently watching the first season. In it you see the sister of someone (who is welsh) who has married into money talking about how her sister with her new found money wants to rescue her. She responds to this as follows,
'I don't want to be rescued. If I'm to be rescued I have to admit how ghastly my life up to now has been' - Or something equally posh but with the same sentiment.

I have no doubt that the people who wrote this knew how true this was. None of us like to admit that we have failed at anything never mind at life itself. To admit that we have failed to live the kind of rewarding, meaningful and enjoyable life which everyone is telling us we should have is basically impossible. To accept rescue is not only to say that we can't help ourselves but in this context to say that we have not been capable to live the sort of life we hoped to. It is to admit to having been a failure at life.

The heart of Jesus' message was that all of us make a failure of life. All of us fail to live the lives we ought and as a result fail to find the satisfaction and meaning we desire and fail to build the kind of relationships and world we long for. The problem is that to admit this is to write off huge portions of our life (10,20, 50 years) as a failure. As us failing to find what we were looking for and achieve what we wanted. Jesus offers rescue for all people. He offers the relationship with God we all long for and with it life in its fullness. However, in order to accept this we have to first recognise that we need rescuing. The problem is that like the woman in Upstairs Downstairs we don't want rescuing because to do that we have to admit that we have failed to do life adaquetely ourselves.

I wonder how many of us refuse to admit this and so refuse to turn to Jesus for rescue. Of course the problem with this is that denial doesn't make the problem go away. In fact it just makes us incapable of accepting the solution. It makes us incapable of accepting the rescue.