16 Mar '05 18:34>
Originally posted by vistesdI'm was thinking 'Screwtape Letters' when I read that comment.
That’s interesting. Do you mean to say that if/when the devil exegetes/interprets the Bible, he is going to be sure that he does it correctly to prevent being challenged on that score?
Could you flesh that idea out a little more?
The message I got from that inspired text was that false piety (that is, piety
for the sake of being pious) is the greatest of sins. It echoes the passage in
the Bible with the Pharisee and the Publican.
The greatest danger for any believer of any faith is to assume that their
Sacred Text is a handbook with all the answers. Human faith, which is necessarily
imperfect because we have an imperfect understanding of the Divine, is always
going to be developing, always going to be a touch-and-go type of thing. In the
absence of omniscience, we cannot know what the right thing to do all the time is
and, as such, we are always going to be in sin (I sound like a Lutheran, here....),
but the process of repentance through sincere contrition ('Have mercy on me, a
sinner'😉 and striving to improve ('...from now on, avoid this sin'😉 is what true
faith is about.
Simply confessing to having a good faith is salvifically meaningless; from a Christian
standpoint, you are no different than a Pharisee.
Nemesio