A perfect man

I just added a new category to the blog called “Jesus Talk.”  It’s basically the category that I’ll put all my spiritual (thoughts, ideas, findings, etc.) in.  This post will be the first one in the category, but hopefully I’ll do this a little more often.  We’ll see.

A perfect man would never act from sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people) like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own. (C.S. Lewis)

I don’t always think of the reality of this truth, but it is so true.  I find myself trying to be good so often, and trying to do what’s right, but when I’m doing that, things just don’t work out.  It’s like trying to be a Christian without Christ.  I still struggle with this, and sometimes I can feel good about doing good for a few days, but then soon it will catch up to me, and I just won’t enjoy doing good things or being encouraging to people.

Last semester I did a devo at one of the club mixers for PTP.  I still have the notes around here somewhere–I remember that it was about making the most out of your time here at Harding.  I told the story of how freshman year was mostly all fun, and sophmore year was a lot of the same thing, but then lately I had been realizing that fun things were good, but you have to make a difference and serve God with your life, your relationships, et cetera.

I still don’t think that I wasn’t leading people astray or anything, but I kinda disagree with that talk that I did way back then.  Life isn’t about earning your salvation or doing good things, it’s about having a relationship and love for God that far surpasses any love that you have for others, for material possessions, or for any feelings that you might be able to obtain.  Loving others like crazy and doing good will follow, but the way that you do it makes all the difference.  And this is why that quote means so much to me–it’s one of my problems.

Here’s the video: [found here]

Also, the other quote that John Piper mentioned…and I’ll leave you with this.

In reality Tyndale is trying to express an obstinate fact which meets us long before we venture into the realm of theology; the fact that morality or duty (what he calls ‘the Law’) never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others. It is shocking, but it is undeniable. We do not wish either to be, or to live among, people who are clean or honest or kind as a matter of duty: we want to be, and associate with, people who like being clean and honest and kind. The mere suspicion that what seemed an act of spontaneous friendliness or generosity was really done as a duty subtly poisons it. In philosophical language, the ethical category is self-destructive; morality is healthy only when it is trying to abolish itself. In theological language, no man can be saved by works. The whole purpose of the “Gospel,” for Tyndale, is to deliver us from morality. Thus, paradoxically, the “Puritan” of modern imagination—the cold, gloomy heart, doing as duty what happier and richer souls do without thinking of it—is precisely the enemy which historical Protestantism arose and smote. [via]