There is a real danger for Christians as they assess many modern developments regarding the human person\u2014whether matters of sex and sexuality, abortion, euthanasia, or simply what we might call the generally self-centered nature of modern consumerist life. That danger is the one committed by the Pharisee in the Temple, the one who uttered the words, \u201cI thank you, Lord, that I am not like other men.\u201d That prayer immediately set him apart from his contemporaries and exempted him, at least in his own eyes, from the moral problems of his age.<\/p>\n
EXPRESSIVE INDIVIDUALISM IN CONTEMPORARY WORSHIP <\/p>\n
If expressive individualism is the typical way in which people think of themselves and their relationship to the world, then Christians must understand that they too are deeply implicated. We can no more abstract ourselves from our social and cultural context, and the intuitions that our context cultivates, than we can leave our bodies and float to the moon. Indeed, our first thought must not be that of the Pharisee but rather that of the disciples when Jesus told them that one<\/em> of them\u00a0<\/em>would betray him, \u201cIs it I, Lord?\u201d Such an approach will not only reflect and reinforce appropriate humility; it may<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a real danger for Christians as they assess many modern developments regarding the human person\u2014whether matters of sex and sexuality, abortion, euthanasia, or simply what we might call \u2026 keep reading\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":567,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/567"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45794"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45796,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45794\/revisions\/45796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}