I was just reading a theological article that I found at an interesting website. It's entitle Up With Legalism! The interesting question posed here was this:
"As a parent, what would I do if I were offered a choice between two (and only two) outcomes--(1) a daughter who, though an unwed mother, had come to thoroughly understand her own sinfulness and had thereby come to a true faith in the gospel; or (2) a daughter who was a self-righteous virgin, completely confident of her own inherent goodness and virtue? As a parent, which outcome would I prefer?"
Wow, what a question. One of the basic ideas of this article that I found extremely interesting, and a rather good point, is that the people that even bother to make the effort today to strive for "goodness", strive for a wordly goodness. We are more concerned with looking good and living a blameless life. Now, honestly, it is not wrong to want to live the best life possible, but to believe that one is able to do it on his own is outright foolish. Jack Crabtree, the author, makes to to say that the goal in itself is a truly upright cause, however it will be a humbling for one to realize he cannot make it on his own. This article makes a few good points, and those are the ones on which I am concentrating, however I encourage you to read it for yourself using the link I posted about. I found this question extremely interesting, a question I had never heard before, so I hope you all enjoy the prospect as much as I did. I think my own opinion is obvious. I am in agreeance with our author.
1 comment:
While I totally agree with this message, it's one I see a lot. While reading "When Heaven Invades Earth" (again) today, I found that Bill Johnson said it better than I can:
"...The message is greatly needed. Hidden sin is the Achilles' heel of the Church in this hour. It has kept us from the purity that breeds boldness and great faith. But as noble as that target is, the message has fallen short. God wants to do more than just getting [sic] us out of the red. He wants to get us into the black!..."
Not to belittle the proper search for purity at all. But it seems that most Christians (including me for many many years) don't know what to do beyond that. We think the growing we need is just removing what sin remains. We're so focused on the removal of the negative that we're blind to the positive we need.
Not that I know much about that positive. I've only just started to know better, and I've got a long ways to go. And maybe I see things incorrectly. Maybe this error is less common than I think, and it's only that it was my error that makes it seem so common. One can only hope. :-)
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