Christ is Above All- Including His Own Teachings

Mark Shea, senior content editor for Catholicexchange.com, wrote an interesting commentary for the Oct 5 issue of the National Catholic Register. (http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/16062/) “Denver’s Partisan Theology” is primarily a criticism of the Democratic Party’s pro-abortion platform. However, at the end of the essay while questioning the methods of anti- death penalty crusader Sister Helen Prejean, Shea explains the dangers of taking “a particular aspect of Church teaching and expand[ing] it into the entire faith.” As he correctly points out history is replete with instances of this.
For ex., “Expanding predestination into the Whole Faith got us Calvinism”. Here is a useful definition of Calvinism and predestination as provided by http://www.religioustolerance.org/calvinism.htm :

"Unconditional Election." This is the concept of predestination: that God has divided humanity into two groups. One group is "the elected." It includes all those whom God has chosen to make knowledgeable about himself. The rest will remain ignorant of God, and the Gospel. They are damned and will spend eternity in Hell without any hope of mercy or cessation of the extreme tortures. God made this selection before the universe was created, and thus before any humans existed. The ground or grounds that God uses to select the lucky few is unknown. What is known is that it is not through any good works on the part of the individual. It is not that he extends knowledge to some in order to find out who will accept salvation and who will not.
Another example given by Shea is that of exalting love of the poor: “Expanding the love of the poor into the Whole Faith led some misguided Catholics to embrace communism.” Who can forget the misguided disaster known as liberation theology?

“Impatience and a desire for results has led certain Christians, despairing of every other method, to turn to what they call "marxist analysis. . . . Let us recall the fact that atheism and the denial of the human person, his liberty and rights, are at the core of the Marxist theory. This theory, then, contains errors which directly threaten the truths of the faith regarding the eternal destiny of individual persons. Moreover, to attempt to integrate into theology an analysis whose criterion of interpretation depends on this atheistic conception is to involve oneself in terrible contradictions. What is more, this misunderstanding of the spiritual nature of the person leads to a total subordination of the person to the collectivity, and thus to the denial of the principles of a social and political life which is in keeping with human dignity.”

(Instruction on Certain Aspects of "Theology of Liberation" - Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, August 6, 1984 http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_df84lt.htm)

As Christians we must resist the temptation to elevate Christ’s teachings above Christ Himself. Christ was not Confucius. He was not simply a sage who developed a social philosophy for men to live in harmony. He was, and is, the Son of God:

“For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting. For God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him.” (John 3: 16-17)

And there is not a beatitude or commandment that takes precedence over this.
So by all means try and adhere to all of Christ’s teachings to the best of your ability . . . but remember: it is the Son of Man who gives those teachings their authority, and not the other way around.