原文|Bishop Barron
翻译|Carrie

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣治好了枯了手的人。正如我多次说过，我们有俗化基督的倾向，把祂仅仅看作是圣人或教师，众多精神导师之一。但这是歪曲福音的，因为福音里描绘的耶稣不仅是导师，还是救世主。

我知道世俗文化在这一点上与基督教相抵触，因为当代文化不断教导世人要有自尊和自信的思想意识。“你好我也不赖。你凭什么教我如何待人处事？”

但是，这种观念与圣经基督教完全格格不入，无论它在政治上或心理上如何有价值。圣经的观点是我们由于滥用自由而陷入一种无法自拔的困境。罪恶从根本上把我们摧残得遍体鳞伤。除非我们真正感受到迷失和无助是什么样的滋味，我们就无法充分领会耶稣是谁以及祂意味着什么。

耶稣是我们的拯救者，我们在本质上就永远无法自救，是祂解救了我们。
 

Friends, in our Gospel today Jesus heals a man with a withered hand. As I've said many times before, we tend to domesticate Christ, reducing him to a guru or a teacher, one spiritual guide among many. But this is to do violence to the Gospel, which presents him not simply as teacher but as savior.

 

I realize that the culture militates against Christianity at this point, for it steadily teaches the ideology of self-esteem and self-assertion. "I'm okay and you're okay. Who are you to tell me how to behave?"

 

But this sort of thing—whatever value it might have politically or psychologically—is simply inimical to a Biblical Christianity. The Biblical view is that we have, through the abuse of our freedom, gotten ourselves into an impossible bind. Sin has wrecked us in such a fundamental way that we have become dysfunctional. Until we truly feel what it means to be lost and helpless, we will not appreciate who Jesus is and what he means.

 

Jesus is someone who has rescued us, saved us, done something that we could never, even in principle, do for ourselves.