I saw a quote on 22 Words that struck a chord. Father Richard John Neuhaus nailed it when he said,
“In the Christian tradition, being true to yourself means being true to the self that you are called to be.”
We humans tend to justify sin. Lately, the hip way to do it is to bring in the trump card of being “authentic”. It goes something like this, “if I don’t do ____ (insert sinful choice), then I won’t be living an authentic life”. This thought pattern is everywhere, from pluralistic sources like Oprah to conservative Christians. I’m not slamming Oprah, she’s not a Christian and you can’t expect anything less. I am concerned that we as Christians have accepted this type of thinking.
A former pastor once told me that he couldn’t go back to his wife of 15+ yrs because he would only be doing so out of “duty” which, he said, would be hypocritical to his “true” desires. So, even though his wife was willing to reconcile, he continued to pursue another woman and lost his family.
We’re using our desires to justify disobedience to God. This completely fails to recognize the dramatic effect of the fall upon our will. Of course you want to do ___ (insert sinful choice)! Your will, heart, mind, and emotions are bent toward sin! That doesn’t make it ok!
We need to recognize our falleness and use it not as an excuse for sin, but as a catalyst to cry out for help.
We’ve got two choices:
- Frame our view of reality and our daily life around the Scriptures.
- Frame our view of reality and our daily life around our own desires.
The first choice recognizes God as the source of Truth. The second choice recognizes man, in his fallen state, as the source of truth.
One Comment
Indeed, it is the air we breathe. I read some piercing insight from Paul David Tripp yesterday explaining that two fundamental characteristics of the fallen heart is the desire to repudiate that we are not autonomous creatures and not self-sufficient. How we seek to define truth according to our whims seems right in line with such an assessment.
It should make the Christian all the more grateful that when are buried with Christ, we die to the self and the sin that keeps us captive. Let the fallen world cause us to more glory in the grace of the Savior!