"We must reject the gospel of sin management, and embrace the gospel of grace."

Though I wish I were the author of the above quote, sadly I am not.
It comes from Michael Mangis' book Signature Sins.

I am loving it...

He's a Christian Psychologist, which I think is pretty much the coolest job ever.
If you've heard my rant before, forgive me.... buttt quite a few Christians look at the field of Psychology as a joke. I've heard one too many times, "Who needs Psychology when you have the bible?"

It baffles me when I hear this.
Is some psychology whack? Sure.
Has history proven that the scientific method is sometimes wrong (in many fields)? Of course.

I mean the earth IS round after all...

But, in my mind it's just as ignorant to put aside scientific findings in Psychology as it would to ask a medical doctor (who's about to perform a life saving surgery) not to go through with it... we'd rather just pray.

Do I believe God could perform that miracle? Certainly.
But I also believe that God has given us dominion over the earth to learn from His creation.
So why shouldn't we hold God's truth as sovereign, and our findings as icing on the cake?

Now that I'm done with my soap box .... grin. On to the real reason I'm blogging tonight.

The author really gets to the heart of the matter of sin. He discusses how we all have our own sin patterns, and how environment and "nurture" aspects play into our "thorns in our side".

Check out this quote, "when we abandon the idea of sin as failure to manage external behavior and look at sin as failure of our soul to be fully attuned to God's soul, we can let go of the compulsive practice of speck spotting." Man that's good.

Often times our internal pride and effective "sin management" (only one glass of wine, no sex before marriage, quiet time...check!, etc.) make it easy to (whether spoken or unspoken) look at "poor sinners" who have not reached a level of righteousness that we have. When in reality our own sin to combat may be pride- and we are failing right along our brother or sister who we so easily have labeled as below par.

ouchh... reality hurts.

Anyways, I've just really been challenged by this book and encouraged by the integration of Psychology and Christianity.

To sum up the importance of integration" Until I become familiar with the distortions of my own perceptions, I cannot even hope to understand God."

Just my thoughts :)