Christians substitute the heavy yoke of the law for a lighter burden (faith and hope) in Christ. So yes, you can appreciate a more rigorous ethical code, but Christians wish not to live under the law. You can call it weakness but I think it is humility grounded in the realization that we all know the good we ought to do but fail in doing, and the bad we hate we find ourselves doing.
If a superior ethical framework makes it easy to do that good and shun that evil, we’re back to keeping contracts with God and herein lies the real challenge—contracts are hard to keep and easy to break. What you have is a student with a textbook who has to get a perfect score on a test. I’d prefer a test where I don’t need a perfect score to pass, and even better if the professor (Jesus) takes it for me. This my concept of Christianity and I hope other Christians will agree.
Christians substitute the heavy yoke of the law for a lighter burden (faith and hope) in Christ. So yes, you can appreciate a more rigorous ethical code, but Christians wish not to live under the law. You can call it weakness but I think it is humility grounded in the realization that we all know the good we ought to do but fail in doing, and the bad we hate we find ourselves doing.
If a superior ethical framework makes it easy to do that good and shun that evil, we’re back to keeping contracts with God and herein lies the real challenge—contracts are hard to keep and easy to break. What you have is a student with a textbook who has to get a perfect score on a test. I’d prefer a test where I don’t need a perfect score to pass, and even better if the professor (Jesus) takes it for me. This my concept of Christianity and I hope other Christians will agree.