Felix Culpa
“The world is louder than it is accurate, and the truest things are often the most quiet.”
Brad Montague wrote that in his Manifesto for Stubborn Optimists, and I can't stop thinking about it. Because right now, injustice screams. Fear accuses. The desperate stampede shouts a single message: Save yourself! But underneath all that noise, there's this whisper that reorients Christian Hope…the world we know as normal is not the one God intended.
Mea culpa is a familiar refrain confessing, “my fault.” But have you heard of the lessor known, Latin phrase “Felix culpa”? It’s not a confession as much as it is a recognition. Similar to the wisdom of hindsight, felix culpa see past mistakes and stumbles as - get this - “A happy fault,” perhaps even “a fortunate fall.” It's the idea that brokenness and shortcomings and disappointments and regrets can lead us somewhere we'd never otherwise go: Into the depths of grace, into the mystery of redemption, into the shocking reality that God can resurrect what we thought was only wreckage.
This isn't cosmic lottery-ticket spirituality, scratching off silver panels hoping the odds swing our way. It's relational. God doesn't just tolerate our pain from a distance—He grieves it. Inexplicable violence, cancer, racism, tragedy, all the fractured love and loss we carry—He never meant for any of it. But here's the quiet truth: He's in it anyway, redeeming what was stolen, making something new from what we thought was only ruins.
In his research, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman discovered we don't remember duration—we remember peaks and endings. Maybe that's why looking back, we can sometimes trace God's fingerprints through seasons we swore were only darkness. Redeemer. Comforter. Healer. Not because we learned a lesson, but because we encountered a presence.
Biblical knowledge isn't cognitive—it's autobiographical. It's the intimacy of experience, like knowing someone's character because you've walked through fire together. So I won't tell you God is present or good or has a plan. Instead, I'll ask: What do you know? Not from a classroom, but from the an incarnational encounter with truth God keeps whispering? Don't take my word for it. Take yours. God is with you.
