Better to be free than good

Jesus does not come just to make us 'good people'. His demands on us reach much further than that. He comes to set us free from any law of prescriptive behaviour, from any moral code which we might wish to chain ourselves to. He comes to make us 'people', real human beings who love the world into existence. The Christian claim is that without his help we fall short of what it is to be human and we will fail to fulfill this mission of re-creation and redemption. It won't happen in us and so it won't happen through us either.

Yet there is a great deal of confusion over this issue both within and without the church. Within it we act as if everything will be OK as long as we behave ourselves, quit our drinking, stop smoking, stop swearing and having sex with the wrong people. Although these things aren't good for us, this approach of dealing with symptoms stops pitifully short of the truth. Outside the church people often reject the good news Jesus brings on the grounds that they are 'already a good person'. Both of these attitudes miss the essential purpose of Jesus' mission on the earth. The Christian one simply enslaves us to another master - moral perfection and a corresponding pride - and the outside perspective fails to realise that 'moral goodness' is not the goal, but true freedom and humanity.

So why this perception outside the church? I feel it must have something to do with the fact that the church spends much of its time harping on about whether this or that behaviour is morally acceptable and not enough time loving the world in spite of its behaviour, which is exactly what Jesus instructed it to spend its time doing. This has led to a misunderstanding of the good news of Jesus in the world and many have rejected it on this account.