Thursday, January 18, 2007

Pride

At Between Two Worlds there is a link to this observation at Reformation21 about Christians engaged in self-promotion.
How do we attract others to what we have that is good without drawing attention to ourselves rather than to Christ? To describe ourselves in any sense as the greatest, the soundest, the most faithful or, most self-defeating of all, the most humble, is surely to rob ourselves of the very thing we should have in this world and culture: the prophetic voice, the voice of the cross, the voice that exposes the values of this world by bringing them into collision with those of God's world, the world of the kingdom that is not of this world. In promoting ourselves, we too often give up the spirit of Christ for the spirit of this age.

We can be Emergent and puff ourselves as the church's most trendy and influential thinkers; we can be Reformed and puff ourselves as the world's greatest and most eloquent preachers; we can be confessional and puff ourselves as the soundest and most theological church leaders around; but in doing so, indeed, in the very moment we do so, we can be sure of only one thing: we are not what we claim to be; rather, we are in fact the very opposite.
Source: Reformation21 » What is a prophetic voice?

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