Today I want to continue to our series on sin by looking at the impact it has on our everyday lives. We have defined sin as being more than just doing something wrong...it is allowing good things to become ultimate things. Obviously when that happens the consequences are serious and far reaching.
Tim Keller said:
"Defining sin this way, we can see several ways that sin destroys us personally. Identity apart from God is inherently unstable. Without God, our sense of worth may seem solid on the surface, but it never is--it can desert you in a moment. For example, if I build my identity on being a good parent, I have no true "self"--I am just a parent nothing more. If something goes wrong with my children or my parenting, there is no "me" left. Theologian Thomas Oden writes:
"Suppose my god is sex or my physical health or the Democratic Party. If I experience any of these under genuine threat, then I feel myself shaken to the depths. Guilt becomes neurotically intensified to the degree that I have idolized finite values....Suppose I value my ability to teach and communicate clearly....If clear communication has become an absolute value for me, a center of value that makes all my other values valuable...then if I [fail in teaching well] I am stricken with neurotic guilt. Bitterness becomes neurotically intensified when someone or something stands between me and something that is my ultimate value."
If anything threatens your identity you will not just be anxious but paralyzed with fear. If you lose your identity through the failings of somone else you will not just be resentful, but locked into bitterness. If you lose it through your own failings, you will hate or despise yourself as a failure as long as you live. Only if your identity is built on God and his love, says, Kierkegaard, can you have a self that can venture anything, face anything."
In what ways have you sought to find your identity in someone or something other than God?
I know for me, when I am still before God, this is a very humbling question. It is a question that I need to ask all the time!
Will
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2 comments:
Needed to say thank you to you and Pastor Gilbert for Sunday's messages! It's so important that we hear from the pulpit at critical times like these and I appreciate what was said both Sunday morning and evening!!
Awesome quotes. Thanks Will.
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