Why Wear Rags?

Today while Justin and I were sitting in Starbucks studying, I came across a Facebook argument. Interested, I scrolled through the different points people had made and became very sad. Some participants in the debate advocated a position of moral rigor that forbid Christians from reading certain things and watching certain movies. I completely agree with the idea of abstaining from most of the stuff that's out there in the media, I think the majority of it isn't worth the time, but what struck me about the way these Christians articulated their argument was that it seemed to come from a place of moral superiority.

I identify with this stance well. For a long time in my life I thought that being a Christian meant simply adhering to God's moral standards laid out in Scripture. I found a lot of self worth in the fact that I had not committed the sins that many of my peers around me had. I built up a portfolio of righteous deeds, spent time contemplating how the world is slipping into darkness, and my underlying purpose for ministry was to help other people become as good as I was. When I talk about it this way its easy to see my narcissism, but during that time I sincerely believed in my own self justification. I didn't realize that the cross was very small to me. Jesus' sacrifice, at best, was the way for me to attain a righteous and holy life through obeying Scripture and the Holy Spirit.

For me, this mindset quickly lead to moralizing and correcting others because I didn't want other people's opinions to challenge the moral imperatives that were proving my righteousness. Perhaps this is why some people react so strongly when other Christians are doing things that they find wrong. While we may be right about our moral imperatives, why do we need to come down so hard on our friends? The ultimate result of thinking that we can achieve righteousness is that we begin to think we are they only ones who are righteous and we end up alone.

Obeying Jesus should come from love. It should come from recognizing how scummy we really are, how even our best actions are motivated selfishly, and how much we need grace. The Bible isn't a book of rules that will validate you if you perform them all perfectly, its the story of people epically failing and God's gracious rescue. Scripture also tells us how covenantal people live in light of the fact that Jesus has made us holy. We give because we don't need our stuff, we have everything we need in Jesus. We abstain from porn and sex outside of marriage because we believe that Jesus will fully satisfy our desires with his deep, deep love. If we're doing these good things to prove ourselves, it becomes like checking off a box, and in reality we aren't doing as good as we think we are.

I don't want to wear my own righteousness. Its not that great anyways. How overwhelmingly gracious is our God, that He would clothe us with His righteousness through Jesus!