"For freedom that Christ set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." -Galatians 5:1
Rules, laws, guidelines...I don't think Christians are supposed to follow any of them. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm just going to say it: we're beyond that. We're beyond right and wrong. We're beyond good and evil.
This sounds shocking. It sounds heretical. It sounds like I want the world filled with a bunch of Christian hedonists. I know.
All the same, I think what I've said it makes a lot of sense. Sure, the law helps society function, makes the cogs of human living function smoothly. But it is limited.
You see, rules simply hold us in place, only keep us from transgressing. Make us feel happy when we're "good" and guilty when we're "bad." But while they often rescue us from excess and keep us in line, they don't really make us better people. Just better trained animals.
And that's a problem.
Rules and laws often make us live in fear as much as they offer real guidance. And a lot of times, we can spend so much time trying to live up to them that it just drives us nuts.
It was Jesus who came along to free us from all these rules....and He did. As Christians, we are now free from the Law, free from rules that hold us down, free from worrying about whether we're evil or vainly trying to show others that we're good.
Finally, we can just live.
It's not a random and reckless kind of selfish living--to be sure--but a live lived in Christ. A new life lived in the Spirit. A life lived in love.
Which, I'm convinced, is a life that is much better than one that spends all its time concerned about things like good and evil. Yes, it is a life of good...but it's much more than that. It is the way we were always meant to be.
Sound scary? Ya, it does. Scary because we don't have the safety net of right and wrong anymore, just our trust in the power of the Spirit and the grace of God. But I'm convinced--no matter how hard it might be for me to actually live out--that it is the way of the Christian.
7 comments:
Do you really think Christians could do "right" without hell at their door? I don't, but then I am an atheist, I do right because it is the right thing to do.
Onanite
My friend, it sounds suspiciouly like you've been reading Luther!
Onanite--
I really do think that. Hell often only keeps us doing what is necessary to avoid it. The fear of Hell? That's the opiate of the masses. It's a way to keep everyone in line, but not inspiring real greatness. Real "good."
The love of God at work in a person's life can...must do more than that.
Anna--
Guilty as charged. I just like those Germans!!!
Julie--
I don't know if I'd say obedience to the Law is "evil" so much as it is simply a pale shadow of what real living is supposed to be, a life lived in God's spirit. In God's love.
Human words probably fail to describe what God intends...which is why it is so easy to fall back upon the somewhat applicable (yet again woefully inadequate) words "good" and "evil."
Regarding community...I think, and really believe, that a community of people united in God shouldn't need to establish rules. They should be able to live in the love of God and follow that path.
Is it idealistic? Ya. And maybe it can't be accomplished in this life. But it is the calling.
Josh, I wonder too if you're just redefining good and evil, not getting so much beyond it, or perhaps I'm just playing a game of symantics. What if I told you to go one town over, and kill all the men, women, children and animals in it? Would that strike you as bad if I told you to do it in and of my self? What if God told me to tell you to do it? Could we just say that doing the 'right thing' only comes about from doing what it is that God told us to do? And, then, what has he told us to do? I don't know about you, but the heavens havn't ripped open for me any time lately. Maybe, instead of a pale shadow of what the christian life ought to be, the "Law" is a guidepost to help us out when we have to use some of our own discretion. Because I don't think God would have given us the Law if it was a bad thing. It's just that we no longer need it for foregiveness of sin, again, whatever that is. I think that, as christians, we aren't necesarily beyond good and evil. And we weren't supposed to be beyond it. I think we were supposed to be ignorant of it for a time, until God got around to explaining it to us. But alas, we grabbed hold of if prematurely, and we took something we were not yet prepared to wield. So the law was a guidepost to not going so far astray that we could not come back. But now, we just don't need it to bridge that gap anymore. make sense? Perhaps "good and evil" exist somewhere outside of sin and sinless, which we were really intended to be beyond, and now we are. Good and Evil might be a different ball feild entirely, and perhaps, not until the end of all things will we really understand how to use them, what they are, and where the line between them is drawn.
ps: What has an atheist to do with hell?
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