Tired of Trying to Measure Up - part 2

The second half of this book deals with breaking free from shame and learning to find value, acceptance, and life in what Jesus has done for us and in who we are before God. I'm just going to point out a few things that really jumped out at me and hope for some good discussion. :)

First, VanVonderen discussed the purpose of the Law of Moses - that it was to point out our complete inability to keep it and to drive us to grace. He says that when Jesus claimed to fulfill the Law (Matt. 5.17), what he meant was that "When a person comes to faith in Christ, and makes Him the basis of life, value, and identity, it means the Law has done its job." (p.91) That was very freeing to me. I know that I am not "under Law" anymore, but have been a bit hazy about the meaning of that phrase. To know that the whole point of the Law was to show how desperately I need grace is amazing. "God's law was given to drive us to grace and hold us there." (p.92)

He goes on to talk about who the "enemies of the cross" (Phil. 3.18) really are. We tend to think they are atheists, humanists and so on, but he points out that in the context of Paul's letter to the Philippians, the enemies "were those who said the cross was not enough! ...For a person to assess his life as victorious based upon how well he has followed the Law...is idolatrous..." (p.92) So according to this, those who are actively and obviously opposed to Christianity are not the real enemy; the real enemy is much more subversive and hard to see - the danger to our faith lies in believing that what Jesus did for us is not enough, that we must still earn God's favor. Obviously this is impossible, and leads us straight back into a performance-based, shaming system.

Second, he points out something I would never have thought of on my own and I thought was profound: "you and I do not sin because we want to make life worse for ourselves. Rather, we sin because we believe it will make life better." (p.101) I've put a lot of thought into this, and I believe it is true. Even people involved in sins that make the rest of us shake our heads in wonder ("what on earth are they thinking?!") honestly believe that this is somehow going to work out for them and make them happy. I would never have put that thought together, and it is revolutionizing the way I view both "dead" people (more on that later) and Christians caught in sin. Basically what it comes down to is that we are doing whatever we can to make ourselves more acceptable. "In short, Satan has the whole world on a self-improvement course." (p.104)

About those "dead" people: this is VanVonderen's argument against the idea of the "sin nature". He says that this phrase has been around since Augustine and is completely mixed up. The fact is that the idea of a "sin nature" minimizes the real catastrophe, which is that we're DEAD. "...death is what was passed on, not an evil nature." (p.127) He also mentions the idea of "giving your life to Christ" - which he says is impossible, since dead people don't have a life to give. (p.137) What happens in fact is that you receive life from God when you accept His gift of salvation. We have nothing of our own to give. "A new creation (2 Cor 5.17) is something that wasn't there before." (p.129)

Finally, I was floored by the idea that "people are being shamed in the name of God and taught to walk by the flesh under the guise of spirituality." (p.139) He bases this idea on the fact that even within the church we are taught to how to look good, to pretend that we have it all together, and to ignore and not talk about problems. Our "effort to deny self... actually results in focusing on self." (p.130) In our desperate attempt to earn God's favor - since we still can't grasp that we already have it - we are making the same mistake that Paul argued with the Galatians about. "The Galatians were not going to movies, reading dirty magazines, or dancing. They were getting circumcised! Religion was the fleshly indulgence of Galatia!" (p.144)

I really enjoyed this book and have come away with some pretty astounding new ways of looking at relationships. Am I shaming those around me? Am I looking at myself as someone who is inherently unlikeable? Am I finding my value from God or from somewhere else? Am I sinning by trying to earn God's approval or am I doing what I do out of love for Him?