Today with Oswald

Our family is currently using Oswald Chambers' classic My Utmost for His Highest in our morning devotions. I was particularly struck by the truth, and the importance, of the following observation in today's entry.

While there are still some self-righteous, legalistic personalities like the Pharisees to be found in our culture today, it is far more common for us to not even strive for the perfection of Christ, and to accept our sinful mediocrity as inevitable. Both extremes are equally wrong, but one has become more socially acceptable in our day:

Pride is the deification of self, and this to-day in some of us is not of the order of the Pharisee, but of the publican. To say "Oh, I'm no saint," is acceptable to human pride, but it is unconscious blasphemy against God. It literally means that you defy God to make you a saint, "I am much too weak and hopeless, I am outside the reach of the Atonement." Humility before men may be unconscious blasphemy before God. Why are you not a saint? It is either that you do not want to be a saint, or that you do not believe God can make you one.