Principles teaching does a great job in highlighting right or wrong beliefs, attitudes and patterns of thinking. However, it serves only to highlight them and does nothing to resolve them. As such, teaching on principles could be potentially harmful in that it continually shows a person what is wrong with them and the good things they should do, but find they are unable to do.
It is just assumed that a person knows how to implement these principles in their life. But if a person could implement principles in their life as a means of living right, then they would not need God working in their life.
Most people, who try to follow a moral code, find that they do not have the ability to live like that in a way that is natural and effective. The result is that they end-up repressing desires and emotions to the point whereby they not being true to themselves and not living an honest life. Jesus used to call the Pharisees, who lived by religious rules, “hypocrites”, which means “play-actors”.
Fit For the Kingdom
A good example of Christian principles teaching is a CD box set by John Bevere called Fit for the Kingdom. In this teaching series, John Bevere explains the importance of honouring those in authority. He uses examples from his own experience in which people have respected those in authority and it has caused their life to go well. He also goes on to show that in every case were someone has argued against those in authority, they have suffered in their life in some way.
This is great teaching and it seems obvious how we can apply these principles in our life. Perhaps we don’t really have to do anything at all – just be mindful of these things and the subconscious mind will take over? That’s what I began to think. With this mindset, we don’t appear to be trying to live according to a set of rules.
But if God is guiding us and enabling us to make decisions that will affect our lives – why do we need to be told to honour those in authority? Or any other principle we can get from a book? If we have to have a book to cover an area of life in order to live effectively – we could end-up with a whole bookshelf full of books!
What I find is that when I read a book, I tend to only retain that information for a short period of time. I might even find that when I come to pick the book up the next day to read it again – I have forgotten what I read about the previous day! One could argue that the knowledge is retained subconsciously – but is it? And will it be easily accessible in a way that will benefit our lives?
0 comments:
Post a Comment