Cheerful Curmudgeon Weighs In

[This response by Cheerful Curmudgeon to my previous post was so insightful that I am posting center stage.]

I enjoy your blog and I often find it to be instructive for insights about our culture. I also agree with the majority of your definitive and descriptive statements that you presented in your most recent post: “Curmudgeonhood for the Masses”.

However, I believe that curmudgeons who claim Christ as their model must also be prayerful and careful to be led, empowered and adorned by the Fruit of God’s Spirit (i.e., love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control) while exposing all pretenses. Yes, Jesus was the Truth Teller extraordinaire, but He was so empowered by God’s Spirit that He did not sin nor could He sin (not true of the curmudgeon) because Jesus was in essence fully Divine and fully human simultaneously as one congruently connected being fellowshipping in oneness. As Truth Teller extraordinaire, He also showed mercy and faith as a high priest and atoned for our sins (Heb 2:17). As Jesus the Truth Teller spoke, His actions showed mercy and faith and were congruent with the truth that He told.

Moreover, Jesus used Scripture to demonstrate why humanity should trust the Bible as true and enduring (Mt 5:18; Lk 16:17). Jesus taught that lack of knowledge of the Scriptures creates a likelihood of error in one’s thinking (Mt 22:29). Thus, believers are taught by Jesus to trust the guidance of Scripture for both faith and practice. Scripture is efficacious, living, and active (Heb. 4:12) in that the Spirit and the Word work together. Therefore, I also suggest that the Christian curmudgeon should be a prayerful and careful ongoing student of God’s Word while testing everything to Scripture in context when exposing pretenses.

Additionally, the Christian Curmudgeon must strive to ongoingly close the gap between what they write and speak and what they demonstrate in their personal relationships. This requires an ongoing battle in sanctification (the curmudgeon will not arrive at complete sanctification this side of glory). The process of sanctification is a joint-effort (divine and human, Phil. 2:12-13). God imparts righteous justification. The believer struggles and strives to follow His will, but at the same time retains the sinful nature. Even Paul fought this overwhelming battle (Rom. 7:14-24). Curmudgeons must constantly remember that they also have a sinful nature and so apart from God’s Spirit in exposing all pretenses, the Christian curmudgeon (acting in the sinful nature) might simply be a pretend servant who actually masquerades as a servant of righteousness (2 Cor. 11:14). This non-Spirit empowered action allows the curmudgeon to simply use their passions to vent frustration about what seems nonsensical or illogical resulting in acidic behavior and destructive action rather than constructive behavior and action.

Last, the Christian curmudgeon must clothe themselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5)" The Christian curmudgeon must regularly seek repentance and humility because when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom (Prov. 11:12). The Christian curmudgeon must fear the Lord and seek His wisdom because “the fear of the Lord teaches a person wisdom” (Proverbs 15:33). The Christian curmudgeon must serve the “Lord with great humility and with tears” (Acts 20:19), because you will be severely tested by the plots of those who oppose His will. Just prayed for all of you in the Christian curmudgeonhood masses.