Hiding Behind False Piety

It’s easy to hide behind devotional language: “God is all I need.” “Just give me Jesus.” This language was used in pietistic movements throughout the 18th-19th centuries and is employed abundantly today as a way of manipulating the Christian to internalize his faith.

The piety of such words betray a fundamental need in the human soul: we are made for one another. We are made to be in each other’s lives; so that, to desire God is to necessarily desire the people God created. To be the foot is to need the other parts. The Head leads when the other parts work together and see each others’ need and purpose in the body.

George Grant on Piety and Activism

“Activism without deep spiritual resources inevitably draws from shallow wells that soon run dry–it cannot long be sustained. This it ceases to be active. Piety without a forthright cultural agenda inevitably capitulates to the prevailing pressures of the world–it cannot exist in a vaccum. Thus it ceases to be pious.” -George Grant, The Micah Mandate, xiii