"Being good is an adventure far more violent and daring than sailing round the world." ~Basil Grant a character invented by G.K. Chesterton
"Karl Barth defines wisdom as 'the knowledge by which we may actually and practically live.' [...]
And so we arrive at last at the biggest paradox: Christians, the very people who claim that man can do nothing to save himself, expect more goodness of themselves than any other adherent of any other worldview. 'Christianity is strange,' writes Blaise Pascal. 'It bids man to recognize that he is vile, and even abominable, and bids him to want to be like God.' [...]
The irony is profound: men who deny their sinfulness and posture as gods-in-the-making stay 'mere men,' while men who acknowledge their sinfulness become, by Christ's power, sons of God! 'For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it' (Luke 9:24). Broken vessels can only be used when they recognize that they can accomplish nothing on their own--then suddenly these broken vessels find that they are expected not only to live well, but to be holy. 'Man,' as Chesterton says, 'is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution'--a being called from death to life, from blindness to sight, and from sin to heroism.
Please understand: this is not hyperbole. Heroism is a big word, I know, and it conjures images of firemen rushing into burning buildings and mothers quietly going hungry so that their children can eat. We think of heroes as people in stories or on television, not real people in our neighborhood--and certainly not us! But [...]
Make no mistake, the Christian is called to lead a heroic life [...]
The world cannot account for heroism. Properly understood, heroism is synonymous with selflessness--and the world calls only for selfishness [...]
Every other worldview says we should help others because in the long run it will help us. Only Christ provides salvation first, and then demands that we die to ourselves every day [...]
When you think of the body of Christ, the tendency is to picture Charles Colson as the eyes and James Dobson as the mouth and yourself as the big toe or the armpit. We think that better men may achieve great things by the grace of God, but that we are just lucky to get by. Such an attitude is unbiblical. There are no better men, only men who have made themselves more available to be used by God [...]
That's all heroism is: getting out of the way and letting God lead.
George Roche says it best: '[W]e are all asked to be heroes, each in his own circumstances. We are mislead by our perspective. In seeing the heroic as too large for ourselves, we have been deceived and cheated by man-made philosophies that see human purpose as far too small.' Our purpose is none other than to glorify God, and every Christian has been set free to do exactly that.
Naturally we don't like to think that God expects us to be heroic, because it means a lot more work; it means dying to ourselves and letting God be in control; it means being uncomfortable and sometimes even persecuted. 'Every man,' writes Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 'always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.' And each of those excuses comes from the flesh. When we listen instead to God, we will find that He is calling us to sacrifice everything."
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