"How Did We Get Here?" by Bennett Acuff
When did honesty and "being real"
supplant repentance as the reaction to sin that Christians should strive for?
What I mean is that at some point
down the line, a lot of Christians have subscribed-tacitly or not-to the idea
that our sins and our struggles are excused so long as we are honest and open
about them. And while honesty is extremely important, it should only be the
precursor to repentance, and not the first and final reaction to sin.
To figure out how this happened,
we've got to consider exactly how our parents' generation acted as stewards for
the Church. And while I don't have the quantifiable data on hand to support
this, I'm pretty sure that they did a fairly terrible job. Sure, that is a
broad generalization, and some people in the Baby Boomer generation were incredible
stewards and helped the Kingdom tremendously. But for the most part, I think
the state of the Church today, and especially the tendency for younger
Christians to place an unreasonable amount of significance on transparency is
due to how our folks mismanaged the Church.
I think that South Carolina
Governor Mark Sanford is the epitome of a large swath of older Christian's
behavior, and a just source for the label of hypocrisy by non-believers. If you
have not watched the news in a few weeks, Governor Sanford, a professed
Christian, projected an image of having everything together. He was a staunch
conservative, railed against immorality, and was one of the loudest voices
against Bill Clinton for his infidelity. There's only one problem. Governor
Sanford is human, and thus fallible. His life was a wreck, and he was
constantly cheating on his wife. Of course, his lies are exposed, he gets
caught cheating, and enormous fodder for non-believers is created...Christians
are all hypocrites...blah blah blah. Sanford
is just one example of many. Ted Haggard was another one; well-known pastor,
huge mega church, ultra-conservative, but he was also smoking meth and having
sex with a male prostitute. There are many more, but you get the point.
So in response to our parents'
Christian walk, i.e. putting up a façade of having it all together while their
lives crumble, non-believers saw right through it and stereotyped all
Christians as hypocrites. Then comes our generation, and in a reaction to how
we are viewed by non-believers, suddenly honestly and transparency are
paramount to repentance. We now see honestly as the only source of credibility
in the eyes of non-believers. It's almost en vogue as Christians to declare
what a wretch you are. And while, again, honesty is important, it is an
inferior precursor to repentance.
Jesus didn't say, "Now go forth and
keep sinning, but just be honest about it and tell all your friends at Bible
study about who you slept with last weekend and then we're cool." He tells us
to repent and sin n
o more. And while we gain legitimacy when we are open about
our sins and struggles, it shouldn't end there. As believers we should strive
to sin no more. It is an unobtainable goal, but we should struggle for it
nonetheless.
