Saturday, November 17, 2007

Flaccid Christianity?

Why is it that in talking to other Christians I'm much more likely to hear "Don't beat yourself up" than "Paul said that he beat his body and made it submit"?

I'm not advocating physical self-mutilation or flagellation or anything like that. I'm advocating the kind of attitude to sin that wants to get rid of it.

4 comments:

Tim V-B said...

Don't forget Hebrews 12:4
"In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood."

PamBG said...

I understand 'beating oneself up' to mean wallowing in guilt and not making the change that guilt is supposed to engender.

What sort of positive function can beating oneself up have?

The title of this post sounds like 'tough people beat themselves up and wimps don't'. I would ask, are we trying to be tough or are we trying to be disciples?

John said...

I guess I too often see the phrase used (or use equivalents on myself) to try to avoid reflecting on one's own guilt.

We should recognise our guilt, recognise that it is guilt, recognise that it's our fault, recognise that we have to do something about it, even and especially if that is painful.

I think that's part of what discipleship is.

Paul did say "I beat my body and make it submit", and as Tim points out, the author to the Hebrews seemed to think that we should struggle against sin even to the point of shedding our blood.

I think we go too easyt on sin sometimes.

PamBG said...

We should recognise our guilt, recognise that it is guilt, recognise that it's our fault, recognise that we have to do something about it, even and especially if that is painful.

I agree with this.

If 'beating yourself up' means simply 'recognising that I did X and it was wrong, so I'm going to repent and do what's right', then I agree with you.

That's not what the phrase means to me.

Perhaps you're talking about a specific context where the phrase meant 'Don't even bother recognising that you've sinned, let alone repent.'

To me, it means obsessing about what I did wrong. Which is fundamentally self-centred and - paradoxically, I think - sinful in itself.