7295	Forums / Main Forum / Faith = Works?	on: June 27, 2007, 06:52:10 PM
It depends upon your world view. There is this mentality going around that the Christian life is very practical and so its kind of like a smorgasbord of responsibilities. Christ sets the example. So we follow His example. We then list our priorities God first, wives second, children third, and then the job. So that instead of a spiritually minded approach it is a practical obedient approach. They even say that the Christian life is not really single minded. That there are these horizontal relationships that are equally important as loving Christ. In a sense there is this tension between the practical and the spiritual. So that they are equal. Its like a\" how to\" life. They measure their growth by how they treat others. One of their favorite slogans is \"You are so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good.\" Or you must do the next rite thing in order to be growing in Christ. What happens is that when we make the commands of scripture equal with the indicative voice we become works oriented. Our minds become cluttered with a lot of \"how to\" ways to accomplish a certain responsibility so that we say that we believe in Christ and we acknowledge that He has forgiven us, but we are so filled with the integration philosophy that we place that above the indicatives of scripture. We become like the Martha s of the faith. Or the good son in the prodigal story. We live by the rules of relationships rather then the promises of scripture. Forgiveness becomes something we earn by going through the steps. Christ becomes the task master even tho we acknowledge that He is who we should follow. We give people the guru position in our lives and we hardly ever sit at Christ feet and worship.