Saturday, March 8, 2008

How to acknowledge evil


Stanley Hauerwas asserts that, as disciples of Jesus, we "are not to judge because any judgment that needs to be made has been made. For those who follow Jesus to act as if [we] can, on [our] own, determine what is good and what is evil is to betray the work of Christ. Therefore, the appropriate stance for acknowledgement of evil is the confession of sin." (Matthew 85).

From this and other premises, in the next chapter of his book, he arrives at this conclusion, which I think quite brilliant: "The church's safety comes through the confession of our sinfulness, which is nowhere more apparent than our refusal to live in accordance with who this man, Jesus, says he is. It is only through the confession of sin that the church becomes for the world what the world cannot be for itself" (97).

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