I don’t know how many of you regularly read “Jesus Creed”. It’s a blog that comes out of the experience of trying to express classic reformed theology in an emerging (or fresh expression) church context. Scot McKnight has posted another article on Zealotry this morning. Here’re the first few paragraphs…

“Zealotry is the choice to protect holiness by living beyond what the Bible says, and it finds in that zeal a source of immunity from being wrong. I contend that zealotry reflects an absence of trust in God’s Word. Its motivation is the fear of freedom. Its implication is inevitable: judgmentalism and boundary-marking that together destroy, in separable ways, the unity in Christ. God’s people were not meant to be penguins, waddling all alike, but instead freed, separable, unique individuals who live in community.

I’ve never seen zealots who weren’t also judgmental; I’ve never seen those freed in the Spirit who were judgmental. The freed know the tranquility of where they belong in God’s society; zealots don’t know where they belong and therefore do not know where others belong.

The freed love others and, in so loving others, care for their moral development; zealots seek to control others, and therefore do not love others properly and do not lead others into moral development but into conformity.”

Funny how many people all across the spectrum in the Episcopal Church this seems to describe. (Including yours truly on a bad day…)

Read the rest here: Jesus Creed » Zealotry 3