Often at church I'll hear something along the lines of "Modern psychology tries to tell us that while we do bad things we are basically good people. However, the Bible tells us that we are sinners." To which I am always yearning to respond "You are saying that as if those statements are in some way contradictory!" See, I most definitely do sin, but I am also the good creation of an amazingly good God. And all the sin I bring into my life cannot change my basic nature as God's good creation. I'm just not that powerful.
I read an article recently which referred to Jane Austen's "Emma," and specifically Knightley's rebuke of Emma.
http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2008/03/24/go-on-agree-with-god/
Emma had just told Miss Bates, in public, that she is a bore. Which, it must be admitted, she is. She will natter on about nothing for ages, leaving everyone else climbing the walls. However, she also has a good heart and precarious financial circumstances and if you are a character in a Jane Austen novel it Does Not Do to let on that Miss Bates drives you up the wall. Emma breaks that social code and Mr. Knightley, appropriately, lets her have it.
However, it seems to me that the writer of this article misses an absolutely essential element of Knightley's rebuke. This author seems to interpret Knightley's rebuke as wholesale condemnation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The end of Knightley's rebuke puts everything into the right context:
"I will tell you truths while I can; satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now." Emma, Ch. 43.
He is absolutely unsparing about her awful behavior -- because he knows her and loves her and knows she is better than this.
Talking with a friend recently, I was saying that we humans are fundamentally good, although certainly still sinners in need of a savior. He did not understand the concept, but it seems to me an absolutely essential one. We screw up royally -- and yet we remain fundamentally God's good creation. That does not excuse our bad behavior -- if anything it makes our bad behavior all the worse because we are better than this! And it is high time we live up to our God-given good nature.
Knightley is in love with Emma, and that colors everything. He calls her to account because he loves her and knows her current behavior is unworthy of her. We would do well to understand our own conviction of sin in the same light. The Holy Spirit often will call us to account -- always and only because of God's great love for us. We are better than our bad behavior. Time to start acting like it.
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3 comments:
I really get what you're saying. I would suggest, though, that the "You're better than this," can be interpreted, as you did, as, "You are inherently better than this," but it can also be interpreted as, "You're capable of doing better than this," or, "You *know* better than this."
Even that old braggart, Paul, was tormented by his own sin. "I know better than this," he said in Romans. "But what I want to do, I do not do, and what I know I should do, I don't!" It is not that we, and Emma, are inherently good, but that only "goodness" will suffice, and therefore we must find some way of attaining that goodness. Trying to be perfect doesn't work -- for us or Emma -- and so we sin and repent and are saved through grace, in spite our ourselves.
What do you think?
Oooh! Thoughtful comments! Excellent!
I guess I don't really see the difference between "You are inherently better than this" and "You are capable of doing better than this."
What really gets my goat is the idea that "You are not capable of doing better than this. You are a mess and will simply keep doing this bad stuff over and over. Or maybe you might not do THIS bad stuff over and over but you'll just replace it with some other bad stuff. There is no hope."
Well, there's throwing up your hands and saying "rescue me!" That is some sort of hope -- but it's a pretty hopeless form of hope.
Much better, in my mind, to think of ourselves as dusting ourselves off and trying again -- and while I'm still going to screw up, today I screw up a little less than I did yesterday and by God's grace just maybe tomorrow I'll screw up a little less than I do today.
This does not eliminate the need for grace. Not at all. First of all, there are all these screw ups. That requires a remedy. Perhaps even more importantly, though, it is grace that pushes us along the process and grace that assures us we will get to that finish line.
I would posit that just maybe "the presence of God" is a better catchphrase to describe grace than "unmerited favor" is. As far as I can tell, those two phrases are two different ways of saying the same thing. But there sure is a difference in emphasis. But that's probably another conversation.
I get what you are saying, but, depending on how some things are defined, I disagree. I think it is important to know what you mean (and what other people interpret you to mean) when you say people are "fundamentally good." And also what a "good work" is.
I'd agree that all people, Christians and non, have the ability to lead an outwardly upright life in many ways. They can follow the law which is written on their hearts (Romans 2:15) as well as civil laws. But none of those works are "good" in the sense that none will earn salvation. No matter how many or how astonishing the works we do are, we will and can never attain salvation that way. It's not that we, as many a report card might say, aren't living up to our potential; it's that we cannot, ever, live up to what the law requires. Without faith, "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags" (Isaiah). Salvation is entirely God's doing. In fact, in terms of salvation, I'd say that throwing up your hands and saying "rescue me!" is *exactly* the right course of action.
But after that - after we are saved entirely by grace without any merit or worthiness in us - there are all of those good works that God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2). We do these works not to impress God or earn salvation, but to serve our neighbor. (Here I could go on and on about vocation and where works fit in, because that is one of the Bible studies I'm currently in, but I won't.)
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