Intellectual Defenestration

On Unity, the Gospel, and Cynicism (Revised)

Originally this posting was slightly different. Although I still believe what I originally said, I've attempted to revise this to better highlight that the point of much of this is reflection on lessons I hope I've learned over what has been a difficult past couple of years. That is all.

I believe that one of the hardest tasks in the world is receiving criticism. Any time someone points out a failing, real or imagined, the initial response is to raise the drawbridge, call out the guard, and engage in a systematic exposition of why the attacking person is, in fact, dead wrong.

But such a reflexive approach is in stark contrast to the gospel, and to the life and pattern to which Christ calls us. To me, at least, it seems that an attitude informed by the gospel recognizes that we are all screwed up far worse than we can begin to imagine and that most likely there is at least some way we are not living in a manner consistent with Christ.

To put it bluntly and personally, if someone comes up to me and says that I am in sin, odds are that he or she is probably right. Said person may not correctly identify the sin, but there is probably something I need to repent of and bring before Jesus.

I am not saying that the gospel entails perpetual self-flagellation, merely that our default posture should be one of humility, not of immediate defensiveness. Paradoxically, a strong grasp of the gospel recognizes that we (I) have an extraordinarily weak grasp of the gospel, and that it is solely by grace that we have a hope of being righteous.

On a slightly different note, something I read recently by J.I. Packer in Knowing God has stuck with me. Packer writes (p. 106):

Among the seven deadly sins of medieval lore was sloth (acedia) - a state of hard-bitten, joyless apathy of spirit. There is a lot of it around today in Christian circles; the symptoms are personal spiritual inertia combined with critical cynicism about the churches and supercilious resentment of other Christians' initiative and enterprise.

Behind this morbid and deadening condition often lies the wounded pride of one who thought he knew all about the ways of God in providence and then was made to learn by bitter and bewildering experience that he didn't .... For the truth is that God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, had hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives.

Packer's point, as I understand it, is that often we become cynical about failure in the church when we think we have all the answers and know the "right" direction a church should go. What is needed is not more people (i.e., me) playing God and throwing a fit when things don't go the way they think they should, but the humility and grace to trust that a loving God is still at work.

July 31, 2006 03:41 PM
Trackback URL for this entry: http://baltiblogs.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/9150