Wednesday, July 26
I'm reading "What's So Amazing About Grace?" by Philip Yancey, and I was struck by this passage."...although the church of my childhood had taught me the proper way to behave, and a Bible college had given me more advanced knowledge, neither had cured the deep illness within. Though I had mastered the external behavior, inside the sickness and pain remained. For a time I cast aside the beliefs of my childhood, until God wonderfully revealed himself to me as a God of love and not hate, of freedom and not rules, of grace and not judgement.
To this day some of my friends who rebelled along with me remain alienated from God because of their deep distrust of the church. Amid all the distractions of subculture, somehow they missed the ultimate goal: knowing God. The church, says Robert Farrar Capon, 'has spent so much time inculating in us the fear of making mistakes that she has made us like ill-taught piano students: we play our songs, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch.' I have now heard the strains of grace, and I grieve for my friends who have not."
[ posted by Chel on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 ]
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