Egotism and Faith

A great many Christians are firmly and absolutely convinced that they are right - not simply right when it comes to being Christian, but right when it comes to how they understand Christianity, right when it comes to what is required for Christianity, and right when it comes to all sorts of political and social issues which they think can be decided by their Christian values. Why do they feel this way and is such an attitude legitimate, even from a Christian perspective?

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams argues that it really isn't. According to an article published in Sojourners, he writes that "we cannot have Jesus just on our terms":

There is a clinging to Jesus that shows itself in the longing to be utterly sure of our rightness. We want him where we can see him and manage him, so that we know exactly where to turn to be told that everything is all right and that he is on our side. We do it in religious conflicts, we do it in moral debates, and we do it in politics. We want to stand still and be reassured, rather than moving faithfully with Jesus along a path into new life whose turnings we don't know in advance. To have an absolute reassurance of our rightness somehow stands in the way of following Jesus to God. It offers us an image of ourselves that pleases and consoles, instead of the deeper and harder assurance of the gospel - that whether or not we have a satisfying image of ourselves, we have the promise of forgiveness and of a future.

This is not simply about how we conduct controversies (though it has some relevance to that, to the barbarous superficiality of some of our public arguments). It is about that odd and not very pleasant tendency in our hearts to ignore the mixture of motives and the uncertainties of understanding that lie behind our own decisions, to deny the elements of chance and hidden prejudice, temperament, and feeling that make up our minds, even on the most profound matters. We fear that if we admit this sort of mixture in ourselves we fail to distance ourselves clearly enough from what we believe to be evil.

Clearly, a great many Christians "cling" to Jesus in the sense that they use him in order to validate their own beliefs and prejudices. Jesus is a convenient shield to use in order to evade accusations of bigotry - after all, aren't they only doing what Jesus and God desire?

Read More:

• Fundamentalism
• Religious Right
• Religious Intolerance & Bigotry