{"id":50184,"date":"2018-09-02T05:18:05","date_gmt":"2018-09-02T09:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=50184"},"modified":"2018-08-30T13:08:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T17:08:00","slug":"coloring-outside-the-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2018\/09\/coloring-outside-the-lines.html","title":{"rendered":"Coloring Outside the Lines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Morgan Guyton<\/a> recently offered a helpful challenge to a widespread conservative Evangelical way of thinking about sin. He writes:<\/p>\n

No evangelical will ever admit to being a legalist because it contradicts our theology of justification by faith, but if your only understanding of Christian morality is \u201cThe Bible says\u2026\u201d then you have a morality of coloring inside the lines. Even if you think that our faith in Jesus\u2019 sacrifice saves us from God\u2019s legalistic authoritarian expectations, you still think that God\u2019s expectations are fundamentally legalistic and authoritarian (as opposed to being based in something like a benevolent concern for our wholeness, in which case Jesus\u2019 atonement would have a different function)\u2026<\/p>\n

Jesus doesn\u2019t save us from a monstrous God who damns people to hell for coloring outside the lines. Jesus saves us from being monsters who draw normative lines that make life hell for others. The lines that matter are the boundaries required by human dignity. Those who truly know God\u2019s mercy have no reason to prove their \u201cbiblical holiness\u201d by damning people for coloring outside the lines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That last part is so memorable, so succinct yet powerful, that I thought that it deserved to be turned into a meme.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

See also Fred Clark\u2019s post<\/a> on why Evangelicals should be disturbed that, when it comes to issues such as refugees, they are not even \u201cjust like everyone else\u201d (which would be bad enough in the context of their theology), but actually\u00a0worse<\/em> than others. That suggests that their theology, rather than being correct and transformative, is in fact toxic and diabolical in character. And so Fred\u2019s words in his post<\/a> seem apt:<\/p>\n

Anti-refugee attitudes are not due to a gap in American Christians\u2019 \u201ceducation\u201d or to some bit of information they\u2019ve unwittingly overlooked. They\u2019re due to a fundamental failure of spiritual formation.<\/p>\n

No amount of information or education is going to persuade these anti-refugee folks to follow Christ. They must be born again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morgan Guyton recently offered a helpful challenge to a widespread conservative Evangelical way of thinking about sin. He writes: No evangelical will ever admit to being a legalist because it contradicts our theology of justification by faith, but if your only understanding of Christian morality is \u201cThe Bible says\u2026\u201d then you have a morality of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":50187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,61],"tags":[7682,7693,10121,11329,12508],"class_list":["post-50184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evangelicals","category-morality","tag-morality","tag-morgan-guyton","tag-refugees","tag-sin","tag-theology"],"yoast_head":"\nColoring Outside the Lines<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Morgan Guyton recently offered a helpful challenge to a widespread conservative Evangelical way of thinking about sin. 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