Sunday, October 23, 2005

To whet your appetite...

"We're getting so good at doing "the christian thing," that it's no longer christianity."
~Brian Phelps

9 comments:

Daniel Mann said...

OK! Is this suppose to be an antinomy or a paradoxical statement or something altogether different?

No! I not be critical
just analytical :)

Julianne said...

Okay, you analytical person you,

What is going to follow my dear friend's quote is a post about how us Christians can hide our sins from others and pretend that we are perfect and forget what the Gospel is all about. More to come...

Unknown said...

Julianne, I'm assuming this post will be yours. I'll look forward to reading it.

A little longer way of saying this (for the sake of our dear analytical friend) is that we easily get off track in living the Christian life - so off track that we may possibly stop and realize that what we've been doing is actually opposed to real Christianity. For example; we all (ought to) agree that our right standing with God is completely 100% brought about by His sovereign grace alone, and yet there is a danger of then living the Christian life as if it were maintained by a formula of our works. Connected to this is an assumption of what we ought to look like, which causes us to hide our sins from each other instead of being honest, confessing to one another, encouraging one another, and glorying in God's rich mercy and grace. We are so competitive that we even become so in living the Christian life, whereas instead we ought to be real, absolutely dependant upon God's continuing grace in living as He has called us, and encouraging other believers to do the same.

An example of this un-Christian Christianity (or false gospel) is something I'm hearing more and more of from the likes of Joel Osteen (for one). And that is a connection of Christianity with that of "living to your full potential". Christianity is not God helping us to live to our full potential; Christianity is recognizing our non (self)potential and falling completely at the feet of Jesus not only for our justification, but also for our sanctification.

Julianne said...

Nicely said, Brian. Need I say more???

stephen said...

I liked the comment better.

Unknown said...

Careful Steven, or I'll sick the peein' theological book-dog on you.

Julianne said...

Enough about the dog already!!! Peeing is a sign of love...

Unknown said...

Well then I feel extremely loved!

stephen said...

Brian, its stephen with a p-h.