Legalism, Spiritual Growth and Kempis' "The Imitation of Christ"
A new blogger whose site I recently ran across notes the following in describing that site: "I hope to be able to look back over time and see how I have grown." That's always a good strategy, not just for a blog. For me, it's been almost 3 and a half years since I, starving and destitute, decided to humbly seek the position of a slave in my Father's house, and He, seeing me coming in the distance, shamefully and ecstatically ran down the road to welcome me back. Soon after, I was gripped by a burning desire to investigate the nature of that Being who I had just met. Not being one to seek much in the way of guidance from others, I began to read...anything I could get my hands on that had "God" or "Jesus" or "Bible" or "Christ" in the title. No rhyme or reason, mind you. Just anything . As you can imagine, my early Christian education was comprised of quite a potpourri. I read some Pagels and Crossin, but they simply didn...