Sunday, September 18, 2005

AN IMPORTANT LESSON FROM ALBERT ELLIS

"Woe to all of you moral police, to all of you guilt motivators, and to all of you so called Christians who put heavy burdens upon God's people. Woe to you who try to take the Holy Spirit's place in the life of the believer and project your own neurosis and guilt upon them and try to make them like you. You think you are doing the Lord's work but you contribute to a person's misery and bring death unlike Christ who came to bring life. You are so concerned about your definition of "holiness" and about people's dress, clothing, language, and other external factors that you miss the heart of the gospel. Look at you, look at how unhappy you are. Where is your joy? The only joy you get is when you point out flaws in other people to make yourself feel better. Maybe Christ, in today's language, would call you a bunch of hypocritical bastards. A bunch of assholes whose father is the devil."

4 Comments:

Blogger lee said...

is it any less wrong to attend church so that that'll serve as some sort of moral compass for those with no personal sense of conviction or discernment? if we as believer's, have fallen that far our of relationship w/our Father, i'm afraid that we'll be capable of nothing other than giving people this false sense & picture of christianity. i'd hate to think of myself as anything close to the surplanter of the holy spirit...

i'm not so sure why folks are so afraid to let God be God...

proclaim the good news...

that yeah, in His presence you may feel bad or like a maggot on a pile of goat poop, but you know what...?...He died for you, took your place all the same, in spite of all of that...

if anybody had the right or opportunity to make people feel this way more than any other it was Jesus...

He saves His harshest words for the religious leaders of the day that Albert Ellis accuses today's leaders of & that's heaping guilt on top of guilt in some cheap masquerading of the Holy Spirit...

His job is accomplished by not 'making them feel bad', but rather showing them the Father thro His unbelievable compassion & love...

THEN...

He tells them to go & sin no more...

i wish that i could live this example better than i do today...

i can't think of the good news in any other way than to be saved to my heavenly Father & His kingdom (& work included), rather than just being saved from something...(hell)

let God be God...

& His goodness will bring all the conviction that we need...

5:09 PM  
Blogger Bar L. said...

just ordered Velvet Elvis....thanks for the tip, I love the books you read!!!!

10:22 AM  
Blogger lee said...

dude,

all i can say, is that i was never motivated by fear not to do something & i'm still not...

my kids are the same way...

they still do things that they know...THEY KNOW...beyond any shadow of any doubt that they're not supposed to, yet they still do it...

this system only propagates trying harder not to get caught...

kinda silly w/an omniscient, omnipresent God...

couldn't the goal be...

by some small chance...

to act out of obedience to a heavenly Father that loves us w/a love that we will never understand this side of eternity...?

perhaps this is wisdom...

that He longs, (as i do for my own kids...promise) for our obedience to Him rather than our sacrifice of not doing something wrong...?

could this transformational living...?

i've gotta say so...

3:23 PM  
Blogger lee said...

i fear (pun intended) that you assume just because i say let God be God or that love of Him should drive our desire for obedience that we are totally ignorant of sin & a reverence (fear) of Him...

that's sad...

i'm saying...

that fear is not/should not/could not/will not ever, ever, ever be an effective deterent to behaviour &/or should not ever, ever, ever be our prime motivator for our love of God (period).

you say:

If you tell Cameron, "I love you, son. Please don't do that." The reason he decides to obey is because he knows there will be consequences which he fears. He does what you ask because he loves you with a love that comes from fear (respect) of the consequences.


if the above is my goal as a father, i will have failed...

this may be cam's intitial response to behavior modification, but the ultimate goal is for his obedience driven primarially by love w/the cognizance of consequences not the motivation thereof...

victims of katrina were saved from the superdome or n.o. convention center, surely a hellish situation, but do you think that for 1 sec that they are totally consumed & in awe of being saved to another shelter, sports arena or whatever...?

knowing what we are saved from narrows the gospel so, that it makes it saltine crackers compared to the glory & magnificence of the true feast that awaits...

to think that you could be saved to a kingdom of this magnitude w/out a healthy respect of the Almighty & a working knowledge of what we are saved from is borderline ludacris...

i don't cheat on amy because the very last thing in the world for me to want to do is to hurt her...

sure i'd stand to loose all my stuff, kids, whatever, BUT & this is the point, i'd rather die than to hurt her like this, because of my relationship w/her...

fear of consequences...

love of God...

i'll take love of God everytime...

3:31 PM  

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