This is referring back to the blog on April 20.
In a world in which college students need crying time and safe spaces, adult coloring books and stress relieving animals when Republicans win elections, what we are talking about here may seem strange. We have been talking about the pure Gospel or the Gospel rightly taught. We need to understand that the Gospel is about Christ and His death being our death to self and His rising is creating us to be new people. The new people created are not about self assurance or self justification, but about Christ. The Gospel is meant to make us unaware of self and aware of Christ and neighbor. The college students seem to be non self assertive if they need to be locked into a room where they can cry and color and hug animals, but it is the opposite. The need for those things, and the demands for those things is all about self- actualization and assertion. The world is about them. Here is an interesting statement by F.A. Hertwig Jr way back in 1957.
“Have faith! Have faith!” is the advice offered to people who are weary of life. Another way of saying: “Get a hold of yourself, pull yourself together.” Like shaking hands with yourself, talk to yourself, have faith in yourself. Believe what you tell yourself with complete faith, and you have the answer to what you need. This is a popular religion, the doctrine of self-assertion, heathenism in modern form, idolatry. Idolatry advises faith but offers nothing to have faith in. If I’m floundering in the sea, you yell, “Hang on, hang on!” I expect you will throw out something to hang on to, reach for, have faith in. Do not mock me with self-assertion, to pull up my feet with my two hands. This is religion, but not the Christian religion”.
This is not the rightly taught Gospel. It is again the strengthening of an inherited idolatry. When ever someone advises you to have faith they are sending you to sinking sand. “Have Christ” is even a problem. “Christ has you” is best. Katy Luther’s famous statement that she “held onto Christ like a burr on a dress” is spoken only from someone who trusts that Christ held onto them first and will never let them go.
