Among non-Christian and nominal Christians alike, there exists a misconception regarding Christians that is as pervasive as it is erroneous.\u00a0 In fact, it is downright invidious.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Christians, according to this falsehood, are morally unassailable\u2014if, <\/em>that is, their faith is genuine.\u00a0 <\/em>To the extent, then, that self-avowed Christians reveal themselves to be susceptible to the same flaws as all other human beings, they are so many \u201chypocrites\u201d and \u201cfrauds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This line of thought is beyond a misconception.\u00a0 It is nothing short of a lie.\u00a0 <\/em>And like any other lie, it is a function of rank ignorance.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is precisely because of the Christian\u2019s painful, even agonizing, awareness of his many vices that he is <\/em>a Christian.\u00a0 It is for the sake of the ill that Christ the Physician came to Earth.\u00a0 Each and every Christian church the world over is a hospital, an emergency ward, where those who are sick can seek nourishment any and every day of the year.<\/p>\n As my own beloved pastor has often put it, the Christian Church is a church of sinners.\u00a0 <\/em>It is most emphatically not <\/em>a church of saints. <\/em><\/p>\n Of course, none of this means that Christ doesn\u2019t summon His disciples to Godliness.\u00a0 The Christian has no option but to render his life a standing repudiation of evil in all of its guises.\u00a0 And he knows, although he not infrequently forgets, that the one instance of evil from which he can never escape, the one he sees every time he retreats from the world into himself, is the most difficult for him to counter.<\/p>\n But at least the Christian <\/em>knows as much.\u00a0 His secular counterpart who spares no occasion to participate in one demonstration or other, the activist <\/em>who never tires of trying to drag the world, kicking and screaming, as it were, into the Promised Land of his own imaginings, is utterly blind to his own conceit: he actually believes that so great is his virtue that he can \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d the planet.<\/p>\n The activist sees evil.\u00a0 Yet it is always\u2014and only\u2014the evil of others <\/em>upon whom he sets his sights.\u00a0 This, though, is what we should expect, given that by his own lights, the activist is a bottomless fount of virtue: he is free from all vice.<\/p>\n The Christian, in stark contrast, knows just how ridden with sin he is.\u00a0 The doctrine of Original Sin to which he subscribes isn\u2019t just <\/em>a doctrine: it is a concrete reality with which he has to live day in and day out.\u00a0 Utterances and deeds of which non-Christians, and possibly even nominal Christians, will think nothing, the Christian recognizes for the instances of evil that they are.\u00a0<\/p>\n Take, for example, the desire for popularity, for fame, that lurks within most of us\u2014and especially within those of us who aspire to be commentators.<\/p>\n Recently, I met up with some new friends in New York City.\u00a0 They asked me what I expected to gain from working within this profession\u2014the writing profession.\u00a0 The question hit home.\u00a0 Of course, not unlike any other aspiring commentator, it is fame that I seek. Yet I also know that the desire for fame for fame\u2019s sake, or for the sake of gratifying the ego of the fame seeker, is forbidden by my Christian faith.<\/p>\n As they say, fame is fleeting.\u00a0 The person who anchors his happiness in fame is like the captain of a ship who tries to dock his vessel in quicksand.\u00a0 People may be interested in you today, but being the fickle creatures that they are, they will <\/em>lose interest in you tomorrow.\u00a0 Granted, the fame of one person may last longer or shorter than that of another, but in any and every case, fame is finite. <\/em>As such, it is corruptible.<\/p>\n Fame is corruptible in the sense that it will not last.\u00a0 But it is also a source<\/em> of corruption.\u00a0 The person who craves fame is in danger of corrupting his own character, for he is constantly tempted to do anything to achieve or maintain it.\u00a0 And when fame depends upon satisfying the prejudices of people who are cognitively and\/or morally challenged to begin with, there are no lengths to which the lover of fame will not be tempted to go.\u00a0 That ours is the Age of Reality Television and Social Media should alone suffice to dispel all doubts regarding the truth of this observation.<\/p>\n While the pursuit of fame is a morally hazardous affair, one may object, the fame seeker need not necessarily compromise either his intellect or his virtue to secure his prize.\u00a0 This is, of course, correct.\u00a0 Yet to this objection there are three quick replies in the coming.<\/p>\n First, that the seeker of fame may <\/em>emerge from his engagement unscathed is indeed a possibility.\u00a0 But this is the point: it is only <\/em>a possibility.\u00a0 It is far more probable that in winning the contest to which he set himself, he will lose goods\u2014like integrity\u2014of far greater value.<\/p>\n Second, there is a reason for why the ancients numbered wisdom <\/em>among the cardinal human excellences.\u00a0 The wise man recognizes that while every choice is a gamble of a sort, there are certain courses of action to which the man of wisdom won\u2019t look twice (or even once).\u00a0 Any choice that stands a better chance than not of reducing him from a good man to a bad man is one that he will labor mightily to avoid making.\u00a0<\/p>\n Finally, whether pursuing fame will corrupt his character or not is ultimately beside the point for the person of Christian<\/em> faith.\u00a0 <\/em>Insofar he pursues fame for his own sake, <\/em>he acts as immorally\u2014as impiously\u2014as he would be guilty of acting had he pursued any other thing for his own sake.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n For that matter, if the Christian pursues anything for the sake of anything other than God, he acts impiously. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n This, then, is the point to which it all boils down: it is permissible for the Christian\u2014it is permissible for me<\/em>\u2014to pursue as wide a hearing as possible\u2014i.e. \u201cfame\u201d\u2014for my ideas as long as it is for the sake of glorifying God.\u00a0 The commentator\u2019s enterprise is certainly not a questionable one; in fact, ideally, the commentator contributes greatly to the health of his society.\u00a0 But if it is for the sake of exaggerating his own sense of self-importance that he does his thing, then, from the Christian\u2019s standpoint, he stands condemned. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Among non-Christian and nominal Christians alike, there exists a misconception regarding Christians that is as pervasive as it is erroneous.\u00a0 In fact, it is downright invidious.\u00a0 Christians, according to this falsehood, are morally unassailable\u2014if, that is, their faith is genuine.\u00a0 To the extent, then, that self-avowed Christians reveal themselves to be susceptible to the same…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n