Should our Sining cause Guilt and and Shame
I wish that at the age of 15 when I became God conscious I was introduced to His grace and love instead of grace plus works where my spirituality was measured by religion by my adherence to the rules and regulations, where after my entrance into his kingdom trying not to sin was paramount. Trying to live up up to the 10 commandments was the order of the day and when you failed you were made to feel condemnation, shame and guilt because you because you failed to live up to God's standard.
This coupled with the fact that your relationship with God was fractured by your sin whereby God to turn turn His back and disfellowshiped Himself from you because He being God cannot look upon sin. This false teaching along with the false teaching that God became angry with us and punishes us when we sin was the cause of much confusion, frustration, guilt and condemnation that led to much stress and a false view of our loving, and merciful God.
Along with the false teaching above was the misunderstanding of the Grace of God although identifying myself as a child of God, yet, my actions portrayed few of the characteristics that the Bible uses to describe a follower of Jesus, all the while believing, because of the religious way of thinking, that I was following in the foot steps of Christ when in reality the characteristics that I exhibited were diametrically opposite to the Character of Christ portrayed in the New Testament.
Observational and statistical reports seem to indicate that this phenomena is quite common in the modern religious world, where many who describe themselves as a "follower of Christ" adhere to a belief system that has little in common with the teachings or character of Jesus. Why does this disparity exist?
I believe this phenomena is the Judeo-Christian pre-cross system that instead of ending when Christ cried out it is finished, was transferred as the post-cross system with the change that the gaining of salvation is through grace but, the maintaining of that relationship is still by the keeping of rules and the doing of works. This Old Testament way is entrenched in the religious heritage and accepted as the norm on this side of the cross. Western believers have been raised in this traditional heritage, reverence for God, trying to live good by law keeping, living by the Golden Rule and the celebrating of holy days. For this reason people's sense of connectedness is not as much with the person of Jesus as it is with law keeping.
The pre-cross system was a system that was concerned with moral living by trying to be a good person and that good people were "God fearing" people. In the religious system of today, the accepted way to demonstrate reverence to God is through "church" attendance because going to "church" is what 'good people' do on Sundays and it lets their friends and neighbors know they are a moral good living believers in God kind of person.
This coupled with the fact that your relationship with God was fractured by your sin whereby God to turn turn His back and disfellowshiped Himself from you because He being God cannot look upon sin. This false teaching along with the false teaching that God became angry with us and punishes us when we sin was the cause of much confusion, frustration, guilt and condemnation that led to much stress and a false view of our loving, and merciful God.
Along with the false teaching above was the misunderstanding of the Grace of God although identifying myself as a child of God, yet, my actions portrayed few of the characteristics that the Bible uses to describe a follower of Jesus, all the while believing, because of the religious way of thinking, that I was following in the foot steps of Christ when in reality the characteristics that I exhibited were diametrically opposite to the Character of Christ portrayed in the New Testament.
Observational and statistical reports seem to indicate that this phenomena is quite common in the modern religious world, where many who describe themselves as a "follower of Christ" adhere to a belief system that has little in common with the teachings or character of Jesus. Why does this disparity exist?
I believe this phenomena is the Judeo-Christian pre-cross system that instead of ending when Christ cried out it is finished, was transferred as the post-cross system with the change that the gaining of salvation is through grace but, the maintaining of that relationship is still by the keeping of rules and the doing of works. This Old Testament way is entrenched in the religious heritage and accepted as the norm on this side of the cross. Western believers have been raised in this traditional heritage, reverence for God, trying to live good by law keeping, living by the Golden Rule and the celebrating of holy days. For this reason people's sense of connectedness is not as much with the person of Jesus as it is with law keeping.
The pre-cross system was a system that was concerned with moral living by trying to be a good person and that good people were "God fearing" people. In the religious system of today, the accepted way to demonstrate reverence to God is through "church" attendance because going to "church" is what 'good people' do on Sundays and it lets their friends and neighbors know they are a moral good living believers in God kind of person.
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