Renouncing Guilt and Shame as Means to an End

We have renounced secret and shameful ways. 2 Corinthians 4:2

All week we’ve looked at the parable of the Pearl of Great Price. One of the challenges of this passage and so many others is that sometimes Christians use an unhealthy means to justify a good end. That happens, for example, when we use emotional manipulation to get people to say yes to Jesus. Perhaps we berate them about going to Hell or we shame them for not being good enough for God. These means may produce a ‘conversion’ but they wound the heart and wreck the soul.

Fear-mongering is another approach used to get people to modify their behavior to make it what religious people want. We regularly hear of people who were told they would go to hell because of the person they fell in love with, because they didn’t pray the right way or didn’t dress the right way or didn’t give enough money. Scripture teaches us to renounce these shameful approaches to spirituality.

In the end, it means we have less control over others. Love lets people go. Love lets people make up their own mind. Love waits. It’s a lot like how God treats us, after all, isn’t it?

Are there approaches to how you seek to ‘impose’ your Christianity on others that might need to be renounced?