The importance of being a miserable sinner! Part 3

The importance of being a miserable sinner!

Part 3: The call to live up to a standard

Society’s current difficulties partly arise because of the identity politics movements’ insistence that it is the categories of type of person that count rather than individual attributes of the person. So, against a historical backdrop of women, black people or gay people being deemed not acceptable, it is quite right to say, “This is who I am: I am black or female or gay and that is fine!”. However, in a just society, that should always have been taken for granted. It is just the start of the process. As a Christian, I am not particularly interested in the fact you’re gay or black or female, what I want to know is: “What are you like as a person?”. Are you kind or selfish, gentle or aggressive, a person of integrity or not?

Then, modern ideologies’ weakness is exacerbated by rejecting the concept of a standard to live up to, in order to justify that however I happen to be, must be right. I think this is one source of the spirit of our age, which is instant outrage at any challenge to the individual that there is something not right about what they do. If it is my human right to be myself, then any criticism of me at all is deemed to be an infringement of those rights. And, within the law, we do indeed have the human right to be exactly me. We do not have to be good people, nor altruistic, unselfish, compassionate – we just have to avoid breaking the law. The difference is that the Christian wants more than this. Of course, many secular people want more too. The point of contention seems to be the conflict between those who call people to live up to a standard of goodness and those who want to be free of all standards.