Thought of the Day 02.16.09

In my ethics classes, I always taught my students a concept called the excellence model. The short idea is that all behavior is either good (A), bad (C), or neither good nor bad (B). But because we are so interested in showing that we are “not wrong,” we spend most of our effort clarifying the boundary which divides B- from C+. Yet, in admitting that we are somewhere near the B/C line, we have also admitted that we’re nowhere near the A+, or real moral excellence.

I see the same problem in Christianity. We spend so much time fixated on precisely what is and is not required for someone to move from damnation into salvation that we almost totally neglect the much more significant question: what does full-blown, radical, world-transforming Christianity look like, and how do we get there?

Yes, it’s good to cross over that line and know that it’s happened, but the Gospel is the power of God to reach that highest goal, not merely to barely qualify for heaven.