Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Guilt Is Good
I wrote last Friday about our willingness to so readily accept global warming with assuredness, despite a paucity of evidence, is based on our sense that things are just not quite right. I based this on Paul's claim in Romans 1 that "...His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made,...."
There is another word for this phenomena -- GUILT. Face it, we feel guilty about our plenty. If it's not global warming, it's save the animals, or it's save the wetlands, or it's.... We are blessed beyond our wildest imaginings, at least materially, and we have an inherent sense of our unworthiness for such blessing - We must have done something wrong to get all this, because we certainly do not deserve it. Sounds like guilt to me.
Of course, "guilt" is a dirty word these days. See, it makes people uncomfortable so we don't talk about it much. We ignore the subject, or we use euphemisms, but we never really get right up to it. Which is a huge problem.
If we were to actually talk about guilt in any substanitive sense, I think global warming gives the church a really genuine opportunities to change the world, precisely in the way the church is supposed to change it. You see, guilt recognized is, at a minimum, the opportunity for grace received. I have written about that fact on this blog time and again. And the beauty of guilt recognized through something like too ready an acceptance of global warming is it does not require the sort of personal conviction of turn-or-burn evangelism.
But there is another point that I think can be taught from this phenomena, and that is the all important attribute of gratitude. No, we don't deserve the plenty in which we find ourselves, but shouldn't the response of those within God's church to that fact, be gratitude, not guilt?
From gratitude comes generousity, and from generousity comes things like feeding the poor which seems to be the bottom line motivation for the things like the Evangelical Climate Initiative.
God has not chosen to "guilt" us into things like caring for widows and orphans, no He has chosen to bless us into it. We need to recognize His blessing for what they are and respond not with guilt, but with gratitude.
THANK YOU LORD!
Related Tags: Christianity, global warming, guilt, grace, gratitude
There is another word for this phenomena -- GUILT. Face it, we feel guilty about our plenty. If it's not global warming, it's save the animals, or it's save the wetlands, or it's.... We are blessed beyond our wildest imaginings, at least materially, and we have an inherent sense of our unworthiness for such blessing - We must have done something wrong to get all this, because we certainly do not deserve it. Sounds like guilt to me.
Of course, "guilt" is a dirty word these days. See, it makes people uncomfortable so we don't talk about it much. We ignore the subject, or we use euphemisms, but we never really get right up to it. Which is a huge problem.
If we were to actually talk about guilt in any substanitive sense, I think global warming gives the church a really genuine opportunities to change the world, precisely in the way the church is supposed to change it. You see, guilt recognized is, at a minimum, the opportunity for grace received. I have written about that fact on this blog time and again. And the beauty of guilt recognized through something like too ready an acceptance of global warming is it does not require the sort of personal conviction of turn-or-burn evangelism.
But there is another point that I think can be taught from this phenomena, and that is the all important attribute of gratitude. No, we don't deserve the plenty in which we find ourselves, but shouldn't the response of those within God's church to that fact, be gratitude, not guilt?
From gratitude comes generousity, and from generousity comes things like feeding the poor which seems to be the bottom line motivation for the things like the Evangelical Climate Initiative.
God has not chosen to "guilt" us into things like caring for widows and orphans, no He has chosen to bless us into it. We need to recognize His blessing for what they are and respond not with guilt, but with gratitude.
THANK YOU LORD!
Related Tags: Christianity, global warming, guilt, grace, gratitude
