In denial. Nero, who apparently fiddled while Rome burned, would be the classic example of it. Jesus faced it while here on earth. And the disease is still with us. What are its symptoms? Diagnosis is the first step to finding a cure.
Don't Worry! Be Happy!
May 15, 2009
Wikipedia says that denial "is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead.
The Bible is a mirror that doesn't lie, telling us with no sugar-coating that outside of Christ, we are a mess, hopelessly lost, unable to fix things for our selves, and desparately in need of a Savior.
P.T. Forsythe, to an audience of pastors at Yale in 1907, spoke of man's ability to put the best human spin on life, and how we in essence tell God, "I'm doing fine without your help, thank you very much. If I need you - which I probably won't - I'll let you know."
Our moral eyes still have scales, he contends. It is a sign that "sin still has not bitten" when there "is not yet resistance unto blood; that the holy has not yet outgrown the homely; that grace is untasted still, however the heart takes its fill of love.
The holy has not become the one reality. It indicates the ethical amateur brisk in his studies, though at times abashed; but not the broken man, the broken and contrite spirit, shamed, desperate, and delivered, lost and found.
In such a Gospel as that of man's natural and indelible sonship we not only have no need that God be reconciled to us, we hardly seem to need to be reconciled to God.
All we seem to need is to be reconciled to our inner truer selves. Be true to yourself, is the note of this youthful Gospel, and stir up one another to love. Cultivate the Spirit of Jesus. Believe and work for spiritual progress.
Meet with a shining face the dawn of God who loves to see His children happy. Yes, but in the meantime, where is the anguish of the new birth? And where the stricken confession 'God be merciful to me, a sinner?'"
When the crowd that had gathered heard this, they were pierced to the heart. They asked Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what should we do?" Acts 2:37