“In the minds of most of our contemporaries, Christianity primarily means morality…We have to recognize that Christians themselves have done all they can to create this confusion. God’s revelation has nothing whatever to do with morality. Nothing. Absolutely nothing…There are no moral precepts that can exist independently in some way, that can have universal validity, and that can serve the elaboration of a moral system. Not only is is impossible to derive a moral system from the Gospels and Epistles, but further, the main keys in the gospel – the proclamation of grace, the declaration of pardon, and the opening up of life to freedom – are the direct opposite of morality.”
Now, before you completely freak out and lose your cool (or not your head emphatically and shout “yes!”)…let me tell you why I love this. I love it because its a great reminder that today we struggle with consequences. We are quick to talk about what we believe, or what we think, and yet we have a weakness in that we often do not realize the consequences of our believes. Or we deny them wholeheartedly.
So first up, decide now if you agree with the premise above. Got it?
Now…
Are you ready to have the world turned upside down? You’ve read the premise, now read the consequences that follow naturally from it. Because if you believe that, then you also must believe this:
“For they imply that all conduct, including that of the devout, or the most moral, is wholly engulfed in sin. As Genesis shows us, the origin of sin in the world…is the knowledge of good and evil. In this context, knowledge means decision. What is not acceptable to God is that we should decide on our own what is good and what is evil. Biblically, the good is in fact the will of God. That is all. What God decides, whatever it may be, is the good…We construct a morality when we say (and do) what is good, and it is then that we are radically sinners.”
I’ll leave further conclusions (and consequences) to your own personal exposition. (-:
If you are wondering who this is from, you could ponder which of my theological favorites is the most radical, and combine that with which of those theological favorites is most likely to have fun yanking your chain this hard. And if the answer you came up with was Jacques Ellul, you win a cookie!
