Don't swallow the blue pill
Speaking of epiphany...how's this for a new year's awakening?
theResurgent: [native Iowan reporter & self-avowed liberal, Robert] Leonard quoted Baptist minister J.C. Watts:
“The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans believe people are fundamentally bad, while Democrats see people as fundamentally good,” said Mr. Watts, who was in the area to campaign for Senator Rand Paul. “We are born bad,” he said and added that children did not need to be taught to behave badly — they are born knowing how to do that.
“We teach them how to be good,” he said. “We become good by being reborn — born again.”
He continued: “Democrats believe that we are born good, that we create God, not that he created us. If we are our own God, as the Democrats say, then we need to look at something else to blame when things go wrong — not us.”
Upon hearing Christianity 101, “we are sinners,” Leonard described it as an “epiphany.”
I thought, no wonder Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on things like gun control, regulations or the value of social programs. We live in different philosophical worlds, with different foundational principles.
It hit him like Neo swallowing the red pill. Most liberals swallow the blue pill and remain in their safe, self-affirming bubble where everyone agrees with them. But Leonard swallowed the red pill and achieved self-awareness.
Reading Leonard’s account is like me swallowing the red pill for conservatives. Who actually wouldn’t know this? Who wouldn’t know that Christians–even lapsed, social, shallow Christians–believe that we are born sinners, with no good in us? Who would think that conservatives believe what we believe because we agree that man tends toward good if left alone?
As we are born into the sin of the world, we can't help but be sinners. It's just the truth of daily life in a fallen world. But contrary to our blue-pill brethren, those of us who've taken the red discover freedom in the acknowledgement of this truth & make allowance for the joy that follows our confession...
ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those, O God, who confess their faults. Restore thou those who are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.
Related link: The Three Boundaries of the Christian Faith
