jamie r hart

The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself.

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. - Matthew 16:16-17

If you believe that, the same benediction that Jesus pronounced on Peter is your benediction. He says, “Blessed are you,” because this is not something you learned in kindergarten, from the newspaper, or from the TV news. Flesh and blood do not reveal this kind of information. If you believe in your heart that He is the Christ, you are blessed above all people because God has allowed you to see this truth. If you ever are downcast, if you ever are jealous of someone else’s status or possessions, if you ever cry to God, “Why me?” in the midst of affliction, hear these words: “Blessed are you.” You have been enabled to recognize the pearl of great price, and if God never gives you another blessing for the rest of your days on this earth, you will have no reason to do anything else but proclaim His glory and His mercy to the whole world, because the greatest blessing a human being can ever receive is the blessing of knowing Him.

An idea is held to be true when it turns out to be useful and good, when it serves its purpose in making life better at that moment and for that individual.
One saw this phenomenon in the nineteenth-century age of the transcendentalists, and one sees it today in the age of Oprah. What is most absolute is not truth and falsehood, virtue and vice; what matters most absolutely is the advancing self. The individual is perpetually moving toward wholeness and completion, and ideas are adopted as they suit that mission. Individual betterment is the center around which the entire universe revolves.

This is a brutal form of narcissism. The weight of the universe is placed on the shoulders of the individual. Accordingly, in modern American culture, the self becomes semidivinized. People feel free to pick and choose their own religious beliefs, because whatever serves the self-journey toward happiness must be godly and true.

This means that each individual must be the locus of values. It means that the central question of life is not “What does God command and love?” but rather “What is my destiny and fulfillment?” It is not our duty to humbly obey God’s law and submit to the universal order. It is our duty to create and explore our self, to realize our own inner light. It is up to each of us to justify our own existence.