{"id":1033,"date":"2010-05-18T12:50:27","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T12:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2010\/05\/morality_is_not_the_baseline.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:44:39","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:44:39","slug":"morality_is_not_the_baseline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2010\/05\/morality_is_not_the_baseline.shtml","title":{"rendered":"Morality Is Not The Baseline"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jared Wilson once again skewers<\/a> the idea that the aim of Christianity is to produce good people, or better people. The bottom line is lots of folks do good stuff and are ‘good’ by any worldly standard and do so with no help at all from any church or from Christ. Jared writes:<\/p>\n

… the still persisting message of the American evangelical church, that of “Be a better you thanks to God” or what-have-you, is a powerless, un-compelling message. Aside from the fact that “Behave!” is not the message of the gospel or the concerted call of Scripture, it is not something that will appeal to millions of Americans who think they’re doing pretty well already, thank you very much. They love animals, provide for their families, give to charities, cry when “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” ends, and aspire to justification by recycling. And see the dangers of p*rn and the moral bankruptcy of many modern films. Why add the baggage of church when they’re managing moral just fine?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As long as ‘Church folk’, or at least the politically vocal ones, connect Christianity to good behavior, the church will continue to loose the attention of the population. Christianity is all about how we cannot become good people until we fall at the feet of the only true good man to ever live.
\nIf anything, Christianity is about demonstrating the truth than people are incapable of any meaningful goodness at all so that they may see that they must turn to Christ’s goodness if they wish to be rescued.<\/p>\n

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!<\/p>\n

Romans 7:21-25<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jared Wilson once again skewers the idea that the aim of Christianity is to produce good people, or better people. The bottom line is lots of folks do good stuffRead More Morality Is Not The Baseline<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nMorality Is Not The Baseline - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2010\/05\/morality_is_not_the_baseline.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Morality Is Not The Baseline - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jared Wilson once again skewers the idea that the aim of Christianity is to produce good people, or better people. 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When life is overwhelming, be it self doubt, family stress, work stress, church stress or anything that overwhelms my abilities, the best remedy is a good time of prayer to remind me of how God loved and desired me so much that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BlogWalking"","block_context":{"text":"BlogWalking","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/blogwalking"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":868,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2008\/10\/jareds_95_theses.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":1033,"position":2},"title":"Jared’s 95 Theses","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"October 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The soon-to-be-published Jared at the Gospel Driven Church today launched a 5 day series in which he posts his own 95 theses for the American church, 19 per day. Today's theme was discipleship and here are a few of them: 5. 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Via Jared, at The Gospel Driven Church","rel":"","context":"In "BlogWalking"","block_context":{"text":"BlogWalking","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/blogwalking"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":864,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2008\/10\/between_us_and_god.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":1033,"position":4},"title":"Between Us and God","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"October 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Another goodie courtesy of Jared: Your badness is not as great a barrier between you and God as your goodness. -- Ray Ortlund Mull that over for a while.","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1139,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2013\/02\/do_not_underestimate_the_power_of_the_gospel.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":1033,"position":5},"title":"“Do Not Underestimate the Power of the Gospel.”","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"February 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"HT: Jared Wilson","rel":"","context":"In "BlogWalking"","block_context":{"text":"BlogWalking","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/blogwalking"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1255,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions\/1255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}