Viewing entries tagged with 'perspective'
The Need for Perspective...
As we close 2008, I realize God is dealing with me in a good and gracious way by revealing to me my sin in new and fresh ways. It seems I am so eager to sin and so reluctant to pray. I am in love with myself, and careless towards others. I am ambitious for me and apathetic towards others. Frankly, I’m a bit disgusted with myself right now- which, in itself, is evidence of tremendous pride (because my disgust implies I’ve failed a standard I think I was good enough to achieve…).
I need perspective. Not perspective in the sense of being able on my own to comprehend my place in the world. Not perspective in the sense of being able to just lighten up- as if taking a more uncaring attitude towards evil is ever the answer. No, I need the perspective of faith in Christ. I love how the great 20th century theologian Carl F. H. Henry once described the perspective of faith:
"If knowledge is what remains when myths are stripped away, and if both the pretentious absolutes of secular philosophy and the tentativities of empirical science are in question, then what is there but nihilism? Christianity has a ready answer: the revelation of God. The scientific myth of objective consciousness lacks the transcultural ... Read Morestatus of a revelational methodology that stands uniquely in touch with ultimate reality and eternal truth, and the mythical absolutes of conjectural philosophy lack the persuasive permanence of the theology of transcendent revelation. Although the Hebrew-Christian view insists that every human being lives by some hidden faith, it questions the faith by which many persons live, and resists the modern reconstructions of revelation, whether inflated or dwarfed, as distortions of revelation. The Bible exhibits its own irreducible view, and ventures to explain every alternative to and denial of revelation from its own perspective."
Rather than the “philosophy” of me first, I pray 2009 will be lived with the perspective of “transcendent revelation” in the Word of God. Rather than trust in my own objective consciousness, I pray 2009 will see me marked by a profound humility and dependence upon the revelation of God. That is the perspective I need. It’s the perspective we were all made for and are all dying for whether we see it or not…