Short and sweet as a green persimmon:
There are Christian Pharisees in the church today.
A Christian Pharisee probably started young, being
indoctrinated into ‘proper’ conformity, acceptable
rules and behaviors from birth.
Acorns from oaks and little Pharisees from big Pharisees.
Raising up a child in the way they should go is great,
wonderful and Scriptural.
But.
But that child so easily imprinted with proper behaviors and
attitudes concerning God and Christianity
Is a pagan at heart.
They may be brow-beaten into ‘making a decision’ for Christ
at an early age…but what many are actually taught is how to BE a religious pagan
and get away with it.
You see, kids don’t have the capability of understanding
Spiritual matters, but they DO understand
Rules and right and wrongs and do that and you will be punished
or do a good job with this and you will get a prize.
It’s called Legalism, the ‘cause and effect’ simulacrum of
true Righteousness.
So the little pudding heads full of legalism grow up to
believe that they can make God happy by being good, can make God sad by being
bad.
They have two paths ahead-recognizing the futility of a
legalistic religion, “IF THEY ARE NOT CHOSEN BY GOD FOR SALVATION, they will be
turned off to Christianity and go live their pagan lives.
The other path, “CHOSEN BY GOD FOR SALVATION” is wonderful
and good but they might find it hard to leave Legalism behind, as that is all
that they have understood about God from an early age.
And so oaks from acorns, big Pharisees having little
Pharisees.
So, how can the religious be saved from their religiosity?
God’s Holy Spirit does it all-convicts a person of sin,
establishes that there is no hope apart from Christ, and brings the sin struck
soul to realize that only Christ’s Righteousness is acceptable to God.
Pray for your kids and unsaved loved ones. Pray that God
will work in their lives. Give up on Legalism for their sake and for your own.
1 comment:
I have no children, so I know that I have no LEGALISTIC right to tell others how to raise kids.
But I am a Christian, and I see what I see and I write FDW as commentary on what I see.
Sometimes I'm even halfway pleasant.
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