"Fine-tuning............................"

The above Charlie Brown quotes have been so positioned on this site for nearly fifteen years now, expressing sentiments entertained by me throughout my life. In class last night we discussed, out of 2nd Peter, “self-control”, one of the building blocks noted by the apostle whereby, in accessing such quality of character, we might “make our calling and election sure’ and “never fall”. A lot of history was shared wherein all of us admitted that owning this gem was not something we had yet totally conquered. When you think of it, though, isn’t “self” control what made us such a mess in the first place? When the reins are entirely in our own hands, our own thinking, our own “flesh”, the results can be devastating. The journey, as it is “in” Christ, is yet a stumble down the path, me yet being me, but at least now I’ve an “anchor-line adjustment”, a “paternal umbilical cord” that supplies loving correction if the old man will just listen and stop by enough to renew the reality of what being a “new creation” actually means. The Church, as a whole, it seems to me, fails greatly in teaching the Gospel this way, leaving people either under the notion that conversion somehow suddenly translates them into “super saint”, weakness, error, and “the old man” having been eliminated altogether, or else thinking divine forgiveness eliminates all need to struggle with the matter anymore, His love blind to our condition and not requiring us to attempt change. Is it any wonder, all these centuries down the road, that our witness to the world around us is seemingly lost, its declaration a mixed interpretation of our identity rather than an undeniable anointed flow of who He is within us………