Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Achieving Humility
Bluefish Quotes C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller on humility and then concludes:
A couple of weeks ago, the United States inaugurated a new president, and everybody was "happy." It struck me while watching the festivities that the nation had so violently rejected George Bush and so overwhelmingly claimed Barak Obama, at least in part because Obama made them feel good and Bush told them about problems and then solved them. People just want to feel like everything is okey-dokey.
In such an emotional milleau, how will people respond to the word of grace? Will it be with an appropriate sense of the source of grace? I think not, I think instead it will be with a sense of the entitlement. Scripture says:
God save us from our sense of entitlement.
Technorati Tags:humility, contrition, grace, preaching
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator
I guess this amounts to saying, that humility will follow when we start putting the emphasis on God rather than on us. Grace is about salvation, and salvation is from the Lord and not from us.I agree that true humility grows from emphasizing God and not ourselves, but I disagree with Keller's formulation of how to achieve that:
So let us preach grace till humility just starts to grow in us.Historically, that may have been a good formulation, but we are in an age unlike any before it when it comes to personal emotional and psychological make-up. People are now obsessed with "feeling good about themselves" and they have no genuine sense of their own failings.
A couple of weeks ago, the United States inaugurated a new president, and everybody was "happy." It struck me while watching the festivities that the nation had so violently rejected George Bush and so overwhelmingly claimed Barak Obama, at least in part because Obama made them feel good and Bush told them about problems and then solved them. People just want to feel like everything is okey-dokey.
In such an emotional milleau, how will people respond to the word of grace? Will it be with an appropriate sense of the source of grace? I think not, I think instead it will be with a sense of the entitlement. Scripture says:
Isa 66:1-2 - Thus says the LORD, "Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? "For My hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being," declares the LORD. "But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.Humility without contrition is as empty of the Holy Spirit as vainglorious boastfulness. Contrition cannot be achieved if one feels worthy of the grace that God so sacrificially offers. The Psalmist says:
Ps 51:16-17 - For Thou dost not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; Thou art not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.In this age, grace preached without some sense of our own failings can create a heart that God will despise. This culture does not allow us to rely on an implicit understanding of our own failings. We feel entitled to too much.
God save us from our sense of entitlement.
Technorati Tags:humility, contrition, grace, preaching
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator
