Thought of the Day 04.20.09

In Plato’s Republic, one character (Glaucon) claims that otherwise decent people will all behave badly if they have the ability to get away with whatever they want by becoming invisible (wearing the Ring of Gyges). Since only fear keeps us from doing what we shouldn’t do, we need as many layers of external accountability as possible to deter us from acting out our evil desires.

But what if God doesn’t merely want us to behave better, but to actually become better? And what if the only way to get there is by forsaking every fear-based and external form of restriction we’ve ever known and embracing the total acceptance of God through Christ?

See, the Gospel isn’t terrifying because it asks bad men to become good, but because it asks good men to give up all the false forms of self-control we’ve always relied upon to make ourselves good so that we can instead become what God really wants us to be: the sort of people upon whose behavior that ring would have no effect whatsoever.