Performance centered vs. Gospel centered…
Jul 21st, 2010 by ljkim
Ever notice that we HATE being corrected? The person doing the correcting or giving advice will often say something like “I’m just trying to help” “don’t you want to do it right?” “how will you ever learn if no one tells you?” And all these reasons can be true, but we still hate it…and we don’t even know why. So New York has some of the worst drivers in the world, and yet no one thinks they’re bad drivers. How is that? I think the reason is that we’re really, deep down, performance centered. We don’t like to fail or admit we do things wrong when we do them. Sure we’ll admit “I’m not perfect” in THEORY, but we don’t like picking at real life examples of this. Anyway – the reason I’m bringing this up is – how then can we accept the idea that we’re sinners…saved by grace? To be a sinner means admitting failure…
One (wrong) way is to say I “used” to be sinful, but now I am not. Once they get the hang of it, people love talking about how bad they were in the past. To admit something from a long time ago can even elevate us – give us (or make us feel like it gives us) the right to tell people what to do: “a long time ago I was like you…and this is what happened, so now you should listen to me.”
But the Jesus life is something completely different. It’s believing that I am sinful right now. Not only am I quite possibly bad at things like cooking or driving – but I am bent in a way that makes me (sometimes) bad in ways that really matter… I am prone to blame others unjustly, to make bad decisions, to start with the wrong assumptions… But though my sins are real, they’re paid for by my Savior, and I am holy, blameless, and righteous because of him. To a performance-centered person this doesn’t seem very appealing, but to a Gospel centered one, it holds the key to a new perspective.
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