From his book ¨The Smallest Part of which I feel”(1973) under the chapter titled: “A View of Morality,” Neal A. Maxwell wrote:
Psychologist Allen Bergin has written perceptively about a view of life and morality in the gospel context: ¨The ideal of self-control is supreme. This life is a test—is a test—is a test. You have not past until you have endured to the end and are dead. You will be tried every day of your life, whether you know it or not. Today we are bombarded by stimuli toward the loosening of moral controls. The provocation is enormous. You must practice self control and have a strong repertoire of such abilities, so that when the stress comes you can cope. Mercifully, the Lord permits us small doses of evil to practice our controls on before we are hit with real temptation, but then it comes.
Those who note the failures of believers in meeting some of life´s tests are not facing the real issue. As Lewis observed:
¨. . .any man who becomes a Christian will be nicer than he was before. . . .Christian Miss Bates may have an unkinder tongue than unbelieving Dick Firkin. That, by itself, does not tell us whether Christianity works. The question is what Miss Bates tongue would be like if she were not a Christian and what Dick´s would be like if he became one. (Mere Christianity.)
A sage Chesterton said, ¨the Christian is only worse because it is his business to be better.¨ True morality moves us into the role of witness and model, not because the Christian has status needs, but simply because the lights have a way of being seen in the darkness.
. . . . When the light of the gospel was bent by processing it through a pharisaic prism, it lost its fullness as Jesus so often noted during his mortal ministry. When the light of the gospel was processed through a labyrinth of legalism, it was not only less illuminating, it was distorted. In the case of the Pharisees, scribes, and lawyers the lessened illumination and the distortion in perspective resulted in a tragic inversion of values.
In the incident chronicled by Luke, the diminished light of the gospel was serious by itself, but when this diminution also combined with the failure with those who were supposed to be models (the Pharisees, scribes, lawyers) this cruel confluence resulted in both the models´ and in other men´s being hindered from entering the kingdom of heaven. When a model falters and enters not the gate he not only ceases to play a positive role, and thus fails his followers—who might still make it, even without him, if they were not hindered by his personal obstruction. The faltering or fallen, model has done just what Jesus decried: he has ¨shut up the kingdom of heaven.¨ (Matthew 23:13.) ´A Pharisaic Prism´
Lest the above, to some, smacks of hypocrisy . . . I often share posts that are a reflection upon my own current or past difficulties or short comings, that may be perceived by others as hypocrisy. I suppose, if I were ´more perfect,´ I would have far less to write about. (I have lots of built in weaknesses that has me finding great posts!) k
