the manner of our faith

I don't normally quote passages from books here, but I found this one particularly convicting and timely in my own life.  How easily I excuse my "bad mood" towards my family when I'm "stressed"... but here, Gary Thomas helps us see it for what it really is.

In his book, Devotions for Sacred Parenting, Gary Thomas writes of the value of the manner of our faith.  Specifically, he speaks to the harm that an "ill temper" or spirit of irritability can do in our family, reminding us that the manner of our faith is just as important as the methods of our faith.

In a quote from Henry Drummond, he writes:

"The peculiarity of an ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous.  It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character.  You know men who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered or 'touchy' disposition.  This compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics.

No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper.  For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood; in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence stands alone."

Thomas goes on to write how an ill manner is often excused and not considered as serious a  failing as "other sins" but how devastating the effects can be if we leave our "surly moods" unchecked.

Thomas offers that the best cure for this condition is humility, an attitude of repentance that remembers how much we ourselves have been forgiven. "When we don't live as people in need of grace, we expect others to be perfect, and we bitterly resent it whenever the slightest imperfection puts us out."

In quoting Drummond, he goes on to say, " souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in ~ a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.  Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all."

It is as we worship and see ourselves as Christ sees us that we can be free to forgive as He does and model Christ for our children.  "Demonstrate the loveliness of God's disposition toward us, so they'll fall in love, not just with what God has said and done, but who He is."