My generation has experienced a revival in grace. We cling to grace and we celebrate it. Reacting to the fire and brimstone preaching that has dominated American culture for far too long, we have admitted our brokenness and have begun to foster a new religion based on relationship. What a beautiful movement towards God we have made.
However, I see the pendulum swinging, yet again, to the extreme. Forgive me if you feel as if I am putting words into the mouth of my generation, but I'm speaking from my 22 year old heart alive and thumping in the year 2007.
I forgot about sin.
I have celebrated a relational God and a God so full of grace that I forgot all about the sin issue. Also, I have fallen so in love with the positive commands such as giving to the needy that I have chucked out all the "Thou Shalt Not’s." Freedom in Christ has become an excuse rather than a privilege. Let’s face it, our generation is reacting to fire and brimstone by dancing in the streets daring it to fall, shouting, "Oooohhh...God doesn't do thaaaat."
I'm a youth minister, and I love teaching kids about the relational God and freeing them from the adolescent legalism they buy into early in their Christian faith. I so often quote the verse where Jesus says, "If you love me you will obey my commands." I make the point that it is our love for Christ that makes us behave, not a mere duty we must fulfill.
However, in my personal life, I have clung to the first part of that verse and ignored the second. It's all about the love and with my mouth as I drink coffee during my quiet time I moan, "Mmm, yes Jesus I DO love You." Then, my spiritual amnesia kicks in and I forget about obeying the commands.
We are writing books and giving talks and we're getting angry when the positive commands are ignored. There are all these people being hurt and Christ's love is not being expressed. Therefore, we throw our fists in the air and call the Church to obedience. However, when a sermon is preached on sexual purity, we scrutinize and make darn well sure it is being preached in love, lest we feel our toes are stepped on.
We forgot about sin. There are things that we are not supposed to do, and we will be separated from God if we do them. God's grace is enough, but our foolishness is still enough to slowly cast us into Hell.
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4 comments:
good booge boogenig...Did you ever listen to my senior sermon?...I really could have used this stuff when trying to write it...jerk.
Sin was a concept to me in college, and perhaps only a concept, but the past few years I've been seeing clearly the fact that "sin kills." Nothing kills life and community faster. And sin is not just looking at porn--sin is anything that is not done of faith! Ouch!
Ron Wheeler said something in his sermon the other day that makes me hurt inside because of all of this. Preaching on Psalm 23 he said: "We must learn to trust God's acceptance." Life is becoming a matter of 'what does trusting his acceptance look like?' Anyway, good post man. Thanks for being real.
hiiii, welcome back! so we are busy all week and next weekend and that stinks because we miss you, but maybe next week we can spend each and every day together? i thought you'd love that idea!!! ok, well maybe just a couple of days instead??
THANK YOU!!!!!! I don't know how you feel about this, but I am starting to hate the words "seeker sensitive". how long are we/am I going to blend in with this world? it's time for all of us Christians to live as strangers in this world...to make decisions that are contrary to the norm as the world sees it, and let our new man live.
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