I just read the account of Lazarus in the New Testament today. On this reading I made an important spiritual application. We all know that Christ is our savior, that he saves us from sin, but how often to we feel crushed by our sins? Overcome by the difficulties of life? Killed, spiritually, because of the wrongs we've done? That is when we need the Messiah the most, yet perhaps ironically it's when we give up the easiest. We tend to be very good at convincing ourselves that we're to far gone, that our ship has sailed, that we're already spiritually dead.
Martha and Mary both said to Jesus, "If You had been here, my brother would not have died." Today, I realized this is a backward looking attitude which plagues many of us. After the fact we lament our wrong actions (which we should to some degree, after all we're not repentant if we're thinking "Man, I'm so glad I shot that hooker"-that's right I'm talking to you GTA fans) and we think, "If only I had kept the Spirit with me, if only I had been Christlike then, I would not have sinned." While we need to take every effort to avoid sin, when we fall we need to remember that Christ can bring us out of our spiritual death, just as He brought Lazarus out of physical death.
2 comments:
Obligated to make a defense of your ambiguous implication that video game violence (or in this case, sinning) is equatable to the real thing. Despite the fact I find the series utterly tasteless, I'm not willing to say they are a cause of any sort of actual moral failing (though I don't believe that was your intention either). And believe it or not, following the plot in GTA4 is quite engaging.
As for the rest. I find it an interesting feature of human nature that we are so quick to write ourselves off as beyond the help of others. I feel as though the phenomenon there is that we impose our own limitations and failings on Christ - we question whether we would even save ourselves after all we have done, so why would He choose to? I like your presentation of that story for the reminder of the power of the Lord. Where we are weak, He is not. And to bring that even further into mundane interpersonal matters, perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to write ourselves off as beyond the help (of whatever kind) of our friends and family, either. Our weaknesses are not theirs. Things like that are good to think about.
I must say I quite enjoy reading (and then responding) to your posts.
Thanks for your comment, Tom. I should say, I of course don't equate them but I would say both are...well wrong. I think that playing GTA is the cause of a very slight moral failing, because one is taking pleasure and having fun essentially by doing evil to others. While of course this is better than actually doing evil to others, I see it somewhat like pornography. One should overcome one's more base desires and drives, rather than placating them with milder or simulated forms of the evil they crave.
Thanks for reading! It's good to know someone is. Your comment about looking to friends and family for help even when we think we're beyond it is definitely an important part of this post.
Post a Comment