[Functional Saviors]- The Gospel

   Functional Saviors might sound confusing at first. We understand Functional God's kind of immediately. Functional Saviors, on the other hand, is like what? A Functional Savior is a lot like a Functional god. They both take away something and replace it with God. Personally, funtional savior is more discreate. Rather, its harder to notice than a blatant idol thats out there.
   JD Greear starts this section with Adam and Eve. He says, "The first sensation Adam and Eve had after the thrill of eating the forbidden fruit was the sense of their own nakedness..........The early church fathers (guys like Gregory of Nazianzus and Athanasius) explained that prior to their sin Adam and Even had been clothed in the love and acceptance of God........So what did Adam and Eve do about that sense of nakedness?..........They made themselves "coverings of fig leaves" and hid from God. Their clothes mad them feel more acceptable..........We have all been on the same quest ever since. We try to cover the shame of our nakedness by establishing our worthiness in some way."
   Don't you agree? We have been trying to cover our mistakes ever since! WE are using THINGS to make us feel worthy so that people might forget what we really are. Remember, God never forgets, and He is never in the dark. He knows everything. Yet still, as sinners, we tend to think he doesn't so we are okay living normally.
   Here's some quick examples of functional saviors. "....:we're smarter; we got into a certain kind of school; we have a good job and make lots of money; we're a good parent; we're more faithful in our religion than others." These are just precious few that he names. But listen, this goes on naturally in our heads. I think deep down if everyone really looks, there is a sense of this inside them. We just feel such pride in our accomplishments we forget our helplessness. I know I'm in the guilty party. I can recount hundreds of times when I saw someone, I was jealous, and I said 'well I can do this, and they can't' I'm sure we all do that sometimes. But thats just a functional savior that takes the place of our own unworthiness.
   I like the point he made here, "For most of us, life is like one big Survivor episode where we are trying to convince God and everyone else why we are not the ones who should be thrown of the island. The things we use to esablish our worthiness, can be called "functional saviors"."
   As sinners, we want to see ourselves as a success. Functional saviors just add to that. Functional saviors can also be looked at as pride. We never want to be at the bottom. As long as there is someone lower, we're okay.
   With God, we don't need to establish our worthiness. That's what Christ did, and to rob Christ of that glory is a horrible tradgey. We can be worthy WITH Christ. So let us not have functional saviors. Let Christ be our ONLY savior as he truly deserves. When we KNOW that we are worthy before God IN CHRIST we will have a rest from this functional gods and functional saviors.

   In Christ there is nothing I can do that could make you love me more, and nothing I have done that makes you love me less- JD Greear


   ~Hannah