Jolt Quote XXIX

As I was preparing for a new series for the Men's group Bible study in my Church, I came across this quote which blows me away. It is a hard-hitting, no-holds-barred indictment on our culture's warped understanding of goodness. Taken from DA Carson's daily meditations on Scripture, this quote is from the January 23rd page.

"One of the most striking evidences of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues. But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience, and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations."

Now get ready.....

"People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.

- We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance;
- we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom;
- we drift toward superstition and call it faith.
- we cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation;
- we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism;
- we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated." 

(D.A. Carson, For the Love of God Vol 2, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999, Jan 23rd page, paragraphing mine)

I am floored.

conrade