Mistaken Identity

I think was Archbishop Fulton Sheen that said, "Atheists are not atheists because they don't want to believe in God, they are atheists because they don't want to believe in sin."

We just don't want to acknowledge that there is a claim on our lives. Our culture has gone so far as to try and have it both ways; have our cake and eat it too, if you will. We have concocted denominations and religions that seek to deny sin. In this way we can have all the comforts of God without having to actually do anything. In essence, we want Christ but without all that gruesome cross business. We want freedom without responsibility. If this mentality were expressed in any form other than religion we would say a person was childish or immature. Because it is spirituality we excuse it. We are in a state of spiritual arrested development; the Peter Pan Syndrome of the celestial realm.

Let's say you've got a friend who got a job by making all sorts of promises to his employer about the things he was going to do and then made his agreement to show up and fulfill his duties to the best of his ability. Not too long and he starts showing up late and when he gets there he doesn't do anything. Eventually, he hardly ever even shows up, does no work, and even talk bad about his boss and company to others. And the kicker, he fully expects the company to continue to pay him. He would raise hell if they told him he was fired. That's our cultural spirituality: childish and immature. We expect our pay even though we don't do anything. It's not that I'm a bad employee, it's that the boss is a jerk.

Imagine a how a child operates. Why did you get punished? Is because you did something wrong? No, it's because Dad is mean. But why did Dad get mad in the first place? Is because you disobeyed? Perhaps on the surface, but there (hopefully) is something deeper. When I tell my 3-yr old not to touch the hot stove I don't explain the physics of heat transfer and what effect high temperatures have on human tissue; she wouldn't understand. But she does understand "Don't touch the stove; it will hurt you". As she matures she come to understand why and how the stove can hurt her. If she continues to try to touch the lit stove I don't say "Well as long as you believe that it won't hurt you...". I tell her she will will get a time-out (I feel stupid just typing that). She isn't punished because I'm mean. She is punished because her safety and future happiness depend (in part) to her learning that a hot stove will burn you, so don't touch it. In raising a child, freedom without responsibility would get you a dead child pretty quick.

So why do we get so upset at the idea that God has set out directions for life that He expects us to follow? Shouldn't we give Him the benefit of the doubt that, like the stove, we are a spiritual 3-yr old and He is trying to keep us from killing ourselves (our souls)? And, maybe when we mature, we come to understand why. We mature by accepting responsibility, not by shirking it or running from it. We mature by drawing nearer to Truth.