N.T. Wright on the Church, Sex, the Media, and Hypocrisy

Over at The Guardian, N.T. Wright has an article on The Church Maybe Hypocritical about Sex, But No-one Else is Guilty?

He concludes:

The Christian has a particular angle on virtue. Some Protestant traditions have frowned on it: doesn’t it mean we are trying to earn salvation by “good works”? Answer: no – it is all based on God’s grace. But God’s grace doesn’t work “automatically”. Part of the “fruit of the spirit”, along with faith, hope and love, is self-control. That doesn’t come overnight, either; and while you’re practising the moral scales and arpeggios, and playing wrong notes, you are being, technically speaking … a hypocrite. Christians don’t (or at least shouldn’t) claim to have “made it” yet. We claim to follow Jesus. The church is composed of prodigal children who have discovered, to their astonishment, that their father still loves them. It was the older brother who thought the whole thing was a sham.