As a parent and\u00a0a parish priest I have been involved in a number of schools up and down the country.\u00a0 As a school governor I’ve even been involved in a couple of Ofsted inspections.\u00a0 One thing I have noticed is that, in the quest to raise standards, judgement criteria change fairly frequently, and this is quite challenging for schools.\u00a0 The phrase, “moving the goalposts” springs to mind.<\/p>\n
Praise God, then, that when it comes to our relationship with God, the Bible makes it crystal clear where the goalposts are; about what God expects of us.\u00a0 Jesus said, \u201cBe perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,\u201d (Matt 5:48).\u00a0 With the target set as high as this, we can be confident that the goalposts won\u2019t move \u2013 there\u2019s nowhere higher than perfection!\u00a0 But it does then beg the question, how will we ever reach our target?<\/p>\n
The answer is that on our own we won\u2019t.\u00a0 None of us will ever be perfect (and even if we think we\u2019re good people, deep down we know we still have dark thoughts and ugly attitudes).\u00a0 So are we lost, consigned forever to miss the mark?\u00a0 No, praise God!\u00a0 The Bible also brings us the good news of hope in Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Because of his perfection, and by faith in him, we can be counted as children of God.<\/p>\n
The Bible is clear about this, but sadly, our hearts find this difficult to take.\u00a0 We find the idea of coming to Jesus for help somehow offensive; it runs completely against our pride.\u00a0 And what we end up doing is trying to move the goalposts to suit us.\u00a0 Each of us imagines they are somewhere slightly different.\u00a0 For one, it is sufficient that they were baptised as a baby.\u00a0 For another, the goal is reached by their charitable good deeds.\u00a0 Others choose to remember that God is love and anticipate, therefore, that he will ultimately turn a blind eye to their sin.\u00a0 Tragically, they forget he is also just (promising never to acquit the guilty) and holy (unable to look upon sin).\u00a0 Our attempts to move the goalposts are completely futile.\u00a0 We can pretend all we like, but they will actually remain where God set them.<\/p>\n
We’re fast approaching the season of Advent when the church looks forward to Christ\u2019s return as the judge of all.\u00a0 But whilst the return of Christ is good news for his friends, it is not good news for those who reject him, and I am anxious for everyone who diminishes his importance.\u00a0 This month, may I urge you all as a matter of some priority to consider how you relate to him?\u00a0 Do you trust Jesus to carry you to the goal, or are you trying to move the goalposts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a parent and\u00a0a parish priest I have been involved in a number of schools up and down the country.\u00a0 As a school governor I’ve even been involved in a couple of Ofsted inspections.\u00a0 One thing I have noticed is that, in the quest to raise standards, judgement criteria change fairly frequently, and this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[20,50],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel","tag-advent","tag-gospel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}