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In my church (Episcopal) I used to be flabbergasted at how many people would volunteer to do something and not do it. Alas, I started doing it myself. It was as though a Christian promise was somehow less -- less in need of being accomplished -- than a promise at work. At work if you don't do what you promise to do, you're fired. But I guess God was considered in comparision to be a softie or even a patsy.
In a volunteer environment, you never actually know whether something will be done or not.
In my more judgmental state, I used to assume that the problem was the paradox of too much forgiveness. If someone felt automatically forgiven for a transgression, what's to stop them from transgressing?
Paul, I think, faces the same problem in his Epistles. I think his response is that the authentic Christian doesn't do good from obligation but as a sort of emanation from his or her faith -- a natural outgrowth of it. So then if someone declares faith but goes on to behave badly... there must be a bad connection somewhere in their faith?
Many of the Episcopalians that I know profess their faith and, I am sure, feel that faith, but its expression in conduct is hard to see, hard to measure (not that it's my business to measure anyone but my own pitiful self -- of course!).
More on this later.
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The prayer about conduct -- "Lead us not into temptation" -- became changed to an inscrutable concept: "Save us from the time of trial". Well, I know what temptation is, but the time of trial, not really. So the cutting edge of conduct somehow got dulled. At least in that prayer as it was reworded.
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And we go to church as if to the theatre.
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