Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Two Ways

From Tim Keller's The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith...
The person in the way of moral conformity says: "I' not going to do what I want, but what tradition & the community want me to do." The person choosing the way of self-discovery says: "I'm the only one who can decide what is right or wrong for me. I'm going to live as I want to live and find my true self and happiness that way."

Our Western society is so deeply divided between these two approaches that hardly anyone can conceive of any other way to live. If you criticize or distant yourself from one, everyone assumes you have chosen to follow the other, because each of these approaches tends to divide the whole world into two basic groups. The moral conformists say: "The immoral people -- the people who 'do their own thing' -- are the problem with the world, and moral people are the solution." The advocates of self-discovery say: "The bigoted people -- the people who say 'We have the Truth' -- are the problem with the world, and progressive people are the solution." Each side says: "Our way is the way the world will be put to rights, and if you are not with us, you are against us."...

...the message of Jesus' parable is that both of these approaches are wrong.

2 comments:

Robert said...

Isn't this an awesome book!

Mark (aka pastor guy) said...

Oh, yeah... I'm almost through & trying to keep myself from figuring out "how do I teach this?" Instead, I'd like to approach it with a "what's God saying to me?" mentality and then let Him show me where to use it once it has trickled down into my life.