Celebrity Christians, Religious Myths, and AA's 12 Steps

In his sermon last weekend my pastor addressed some of the recent episodes of moral failure among high-profile Christians, and how media and believers have been responding.

He mentioned Miss California, recently de-frocked (if you'll forgive the pun), that governor who ran off to Argentina for an affair, and "Jon and Kate" from "reality" TV.

I'm not very oriented toward the world of celebrity. While I was aware of all those stories, had not been focused on them or thinking of any of them as being representative of Christianity. But apparently all of them have been seen that way.

The pastor said the ways people have been responding show how often we buy into several popular Christian myths.... I don't remember exactly how he summed them up, but it was something like this:

1. That if we Christians just try really hard, we're going to become good people; that there's nothing we can't do if we work at it hard enough.
2. That if enough Christians become good enough, the societies we live in are going to get better, restoring our civilization to its rightful place as a light for the world.
   
3. That our tendency to mess everything up, instead, is a huge setback for God's plans.

Of course, it's not only Christians who make these mistakes. Other religionists and humanists alike can fall into such traps.

None of those myths is true. The truth of the gospel is more along the lines of AA's 12 steps. The more we realize this, the more we'll be able to get in touch with real freedom and change. Just look at the first three steps.

1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.

Sounds a lot more sane, doesn't it? Of course, there are still nine more steps. But if you don't start with the foundation of these three, how well do they work?