Emily: Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Rachel Voytek, and today we are talking more about the study of history from a Christian perspective. What are the framing ideas to the way we look at history?
We’ve talked about what God is doing in history, his plan, and how we know his plan a little bit. We’ve touched on those themes. The big problem with this would be, of course, sin. Does that just wreck everything? I’m sensitive negative emotions.
Rachel: No.
Greg: There are two things we have to address. One is to speak to our brothers in Christ with that question. Are we adopting, as Christians, a philosophy of history that says, “The fall changed everything. God had this great plan, the one we’ve been talking about now for two episodes, and it’s never going to materialize because of sin. Satan got in the way and that’s that, and God has had to settle for some other kind of plan.” We can talk about the options, and we started to do that last time.
Then we can turn to our unbelieving friends and say, “Wait, we’re talking sin – that doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?” and we’re going to find out, “No. That’s a weird word that no one uses anymore, and it never was a proper understanding of the human condition.”
So whereas we would like to be looking at there’s this Christian philosophy of history and then there’s this anti-Christian philosophy of history, we inconveniently have the third, which thinks it’s a Christian philosophy of history but we’re going to argue it fails miserably, and the consequences it brings to us in our study and appreciation of history are rather disastrous and could explain why most Christians aren’t terribly interested in history these days.
So that’s our agenda and I think we need to start with Genesis 3, which I’ll read, and then we need to talk about what was Satan proposing, what’s the nature of sin, how does the biblical idea of sin stack up against all the things the world would declare to be our problem, and then what happened afterward. Some of that may have to wait until the next time when we talk about the promise of redemption. This is Genesis 3:
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
As Christians we believe this is history and not mythology. There was a real flesh and blood woman who stood before a real tree and talked to a real serpent that in some sense is possessed by or identified with or in some other form Satan, a fallen angel, that this took place in time and space about 6,000 years ago, and that the consequences of her choice, and more specifically of Adam’s choice afterward, have in some ways set the course for earth’s history, and certainly have wreaked havoc on human society and civilization ever since.
There’s this thing we call sin. God said, “Don’t do this.” The serpent said, “Why not? Nothing really bad will happen. In fact, something tremendously good will happen,” but he implied, “Don’t take my word for it. Go ahead and find out,” which is to say, “Break God’s commandment and see if anything happens.”
It’s true empirical science, I suppose, but not very intelligent, or certainly not very wise empirical science, because what Satan is saying here is, “Yahweh is telling you one thing. I’m telling you something else. I don’t claim to be the Creator. He does, but obviously since I’m telling you he can’t follow through with his threat, he’s not a Creator. He exists, he’s something, perhaps powerful and perhaps dangerous like a playground bully, but this tree is what it is, and you in your autonomy should investigate it, find out about it, because I’m telling you there’s magic going on here. There’s power. There’s transformation. You do this thing and you will…”
He doesn’t specify all that he means, but at the very least “You will be as gods, deciding good and evil for yourself. You’ll be free of Yahweh’s control, lordship, sovereignty, and you’ll be in charge of your lives and probably the lives of lots of other people, and wouldn’t that be great?”
That’s sin. It’s the promise that if you sin, good things will happen. Break God’s law.
It’s important to remember that there was no lack of clarity. Eve is the one who repeats back the commandment. Sometimes in school kids get away with, “Well, I didn’t understand.”
“Here’s the order. Everybody repeat it back now.” We do that as teachers sometimes.
She repeats it back, but she adds to it. She makes it even more difficult than God actually did. God did not say, “Don’t touch it,” but she adds that on. She’s already adding to God’s Word, and then she’s left with a choice.
Satan’s argument is, “This tree is a fact in itself, a brute fact. It awaits your apprehension. You will find in it something of value because it’s just there. God found it and he’s trying to keep it from you. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I know what it can do. But you know, why trust either of us? Find out for yourself. Take nothing by faith. Check it out on your own. I’m sure the consequences won’t be bad.”
Emily: Can I add in one more thing?
Greg: Please add in all kinds of things. At this point I think I’m done.
Emily: With reference to Eve adding to the commandment, she’s adding to the commandment in such a way as to negate the opposite commandment. They were supposed to be dressing and keeping the garden. You can’t be caring for a tree if you’re not going to touch it.
Greg: Ooo, you go to the head of the class. I had completely missed that. That’s great. You’re absolutely right. I pointed this out once, not what you said but the general thing that she’s added to the commandment, and condemned her for it. And one gentleman who’s been in the church forever sent me an email saying, “I think you’re being too harsh. I think all she was doing was just being safe, like let’s not even get near it.” I wrote back and said, “You mean like when people say let’s not touch alcohol because it might make you drunk? There’s a word for that. It’s called Phariseeism. It’s the sin that crucified Christ.”
Yes, we may not add to the Word. We may not take away from the Word. The Word is itself, and when we try to defend against Satan’s attacks with our own word, we find out more or less what Eve found out. It doesn’t work. It’s self-contradictory. We find we have no foundation and we lay ourselves open to the temptation and to the sinful response that arises in our heart.
Some people have been surprised at this. “You mean she was sinning before she ate?” Well, of course. Do you think her hand just went up there randomly, stuffed it in her mouth, and suddenly she realized, “Wow, I sinned! How’d that happen?” She obviously at some point chose to reach for the tree, which means at some point before she reached for the fruit she had already alienated her heart from God. Now we’re just getting a clearer idea of when. When Satan approached her, rather than stand on every word of God simply because it was the word of God, she had to put her two cents in. She had to play the Pharisee and add to God’s law.
By the way, this makes Satanism – Satan’s worldview – and the Phariseeism we meet in the New Testament more or less the same thing. By the time we get to the New Testament we’re thinking, “Oh, these people are not Satanists. They’re very upright religionists,” and their religion is Satanism. It’s the same thing. Sin proceeds from the heart, and at some point the heart crosses the line.
Emily: Their upright religion led them to crucify God in the flesh. That should tell us something about the religion of the Pharisees. This fits with James too, where he outlines the life cycle of sin, if you will. It doesn’t begin with the fulfilled act. It’s desires conceived and brought forth, brought to fullness as sin.
Rachel: That’s where it’s also important to realize that the tree itself had nothing for her to use to make her decision. Sometimes when we get to the ceremonial laws people say, “Oh, God chose that diet because it’s healthier for people.” They try to say, “God did these things because he knows the physical creation and knows that this will be better for us.”
There was nothing healthy or unhealthy in the tree. It was solely a test of trusting the word of God, not can you correctly use your environment, and can you have the perfect diet of this fruit or that fruit? It was nothing to do with that. So as soon as she turns to the physical, she’s already lost.
Greg: Yes. You either accept God’s interpretation of this or you don’t. The moment you don’t, you’re an idolator. She could stop there. She could have never touched the tree, but once she has done that she sinned in her heart.
Then what’s the fruit all about? This is perhaps the point where we say here’s the magic word that you’re going to hear a lot – covenant.
Emily: And by ‘magic’ we don’t mean magic at all.
Greg: We don’t mean magic. Covenant is the word we keep saying until people are sick of it because it is the answer to so many things. Covenant, yes, touches our heart, but it also reaches to externals. The word that Adam and Eve had heard was, “The day you eat from the fruit you will die.”
Now, they are in sin. What if they stop now? But here’s the thing. Once we’ve abandoned ourselves to sin, that means we’ve broken free of God’s grace and guess what? We will do what we want and there’s no longer anything to restrain us.
So once they had conceived lust in their heart, the act was inevitable, and yet God waited on the act. God did not punish or break the covenant or reckon the covenant broken by the internal sin, but by the outward manifestation. That has implications all the way down through theology that we won’t talk about right now, but it’s important to point out there was sin before the covenant broke, before they broke the covenant by their own choice, but once the sin was there the covenant-breaking was inevitable.
Emily: We can flip this around and have a positive example in marriage and love. You can have love and not be married, and there’s a time when you get married and that ceremony means something. It makes a real difference.
Greg: Yes. Man is a spiritual being who lives and acts in a physical environment, and these are not separate things. This is the same thing. This is what it is to be human, and so God reckons with us. This is something that certain parts of the evangelical church have real trouble with. In my wife’s Bible class the other day, a bunch of 5th graders said, “God doesn’t care about our bodies. All he cares about is our hearts.” I think I mentioned this last time. They’re just representing the general attitude of the American church. God is spirit and all he cares about is the spiritual part of us, and what our bodies do doesn’t really matter.
I’ve seen this manifested over the last two or three years in professing Christians who have done something pretty bad, and they come and say, “Well, I talked to God about it and he’s forgiven me. There’s no need to talk to my church, to talk to other people who maybe I offended, to talk to people who tried to counsel me and I blew them off. I’m alright with God. My conscience is clear. My heart is right. Asking me to do anything else in the sphere of other people is legalism. It’s adding works. I’m free and I just want to drop it and move on.”
We look at the wreckage and carnage that they have created along the way, and they do not see it. They do not see all the collateral damage because they’re thinking – I think this is at least a good part of their thinking in terms of, “Well, my soul to God’s soul.”
Emily: Radical individualism, as well as the materialism that Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians, where he says, “Yes, it does in fact matter what your body does, because your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.”
Greg: 1 Corinthians is a good place to go there. Also 1 John, which we’re working through in Wednesday night Bible study right now. John is going to present as two of the tests, if you’re a Christian, if Christ is in you, that you will love your brother and you will keep God’s commandments with your body. You will do the things that are right. It’s not an option.
The Bible totally rejects the Greek and Gnostic notion that the true man is the soul and the body is some kind of unnecessary and inconvenient extension into a pretty slimy gross world, and we would all be better if it just didn’t exist. One more time, salvation is dying and going to be with Jesus.
What we’re seeing here – and perhaps this is the reason for bringing this up – is that sin is not simply something internal. It’s not simply a matter of the heart. It has outward consequences and they show up immediately.
Look what Adam does. “The woman that you gave me…” and ‘gave’ is not simply, “You plopped her in the garden, but you gave her to me in marriage. You created this ‘other’” – to use the language of psychology. “You created ‘the other’ and then you ordained this institution called marriage and stuck me in it. So between society and social institutions that I had no say in, it’s not my fault that things went wrong. I am simply the product of my society. If you want to give me a better model and a better institution, if you want to reinvent marriage for me so it’s more congenial to my way of thinking and acting, you can go for that, but don’t blame me. Yeah, I did it, but it’s hardly sin.”
Eve is a little more subtle. Her response used to kind of puzzle me because it seems like there’s so much she can say, but I think she says it all. “The serpent beguiled me.” Just let that hang there. “Serpent? What serpent? Oh, this serpent right here, in the garden, with your husband and God, and they apparently did nothing about it. Well, I am obviously the victim here, so what else in there to say? Victim, not to blame. Obviously all three of you are abusive – God, Satan, Adam – because you let this thing get in here. I have nothing more to say. Just pity me, pity me.”
So already sin is wreaking havoc on the basic social institutions, relationships, interpersonal communication, whatever you want to call it – man and woman. It’s tearing at the pieces, turning them against each other. Each throws the other under the bus to try to escape consequences, and both of them continue to assume that they can get around God.
Their worldview has not altered. They went over to Satan’s side. Satan was preaching a finite God who can’t control everything, doesn’t know everything, didn’t make everything. And although they are attacking Satan with their words, they’re also still attacking God.
“So Satan was fundamentally right. He just wasn’t very helpful right now at this point so, you know, it’s his fault. But if we just say the right thing with the right cringing tone in our voice, we can get out of this. We can work around God. God’s not all that.”
They’re still clinging to this idea of a finite God who is part of the creation. There is no creation. He’s part of this continuity of being thing we call reality, and we can still make this work. We are not sinners. We just kept bad company.
Emily: Which is a sure-fire way, Proverbs tells us, to be consumed.
Greg: Yes, Proverbs 1. “Don’t hang out with gangs.”
“Why would I ever hang out with gangs?”
“Everybody hangs out with somebody.”
I remember at least one of you does not like Good Omens. Nonetheless, there is a good line in it. Pepper says, “Sooner or later, everyone has to decide what gang they belong to.” There’s tremendous truth in that.
Emily: Side point – Good Omens is one of the first books that my husband David and I read together when we were courting, dating, whatever you call it.
Rachel: So you can tell which one of us doesn’t like it.
Greg: It’s not for everybody, obviously, and I’m not exactly recommending it. It’s dedicated to G.K. Chesterton, a man who knew what was going on, but the dedication is announced through the mouth of a demon, so there you go.
Let’s look at this two different ways. They’re the same way, but you know. All forms of humanism are one, but on the one hand this is not Bible pictures, Bible stories, Bible people, Bible lands, Bible myths, Bible times. This is true history. These things really happened and they had a real effect and continue to have a real effect today.
On the other hand, this is not the existentialist or nihilist, “Hey, they did their thing. Why does that touch me?” Well, the thing they did was in the context of covenant that united them with all of their children, and Adam was the head of that covenant. He was the covenant representative. He was ordained that by God, and when he fell, the human race fell with him.
Emily: I don’t think there’s an existentialist so consistent as to deny any effect that their father had on them as a person.
Greg: But they do in theory.
Emily: In theory. It all breaks down as soon as you hit reality.
Greg: Yeah, it does, but you know ‘existence precedes essence.’ Isn’t that it? We come on the scene and we create ourself by our choices.
That brings us back to how the world looks at history. So Adam and Eve made these choices. The Pelagians, the disciples of Finney, the existentialists all say, “Well, let’s grant this is real history. That was then. I’m now. That was their choice. I make my choices. Every human being makes his own choices. Let’s not blame them for our sin. Let’s just start choosing to do good, because that’s all it takes. Once we start choosing the good…”
And now the Marxists step in and say, “But you know, there’s a problem with that because let’s face it, the reality is that bad things happen. Bad things happen on a planetary level – poverty, disease, plague, wars. Obviously, this bad stuff is coming from somewhere. Now, we agree with you existentialists that it’s not because man is corrupt, but there are institutions – as Adam and Eve pled here. There’s a socioeconomic environment that corrupts, and it’s just too much for the individual to overcome. So now if we combine our efforts to cleanse the world of these sorts of things on every level – the economic/social environment, the organic environment, global warming or cooling or whatever’s going on this season – if we can fix all these things, then all of us as individuals will indeed be free to make the right choices, and probably a lot more of us will, and the world will be a lot better place.”
So history then becomes man trying to come to terms with this, and the true prophets from Plato to Rousseau to Jean Paul Sartre to the woke movement – it’s all about, “Let’s gain control of the environment. Let’s excise anything that will not fall under that control, and given enough time and money and power and knowledge, we’ll hand you a perfect world, because the other possibility is unthinkable – nuclear annihilation. We will destroy ourselves. That’s hell. Heaven, paradise, utopia, something – we can create if we simply realize where the problem lies.
“We need to educate. We need to control the media. We need to know what everybody is doing and thinking. We need to remove the people who are problems or subject them to proper psychological treatment. We need to more fairly distribute wealth, and we’ll volunteer to do that for you, thank you very much. And we will give you paradise.”
So history becomes the charting of that, because the only other possible story is that there is no story. Yeah, people screw up a lot. That’s it. That’s the story.
Emily: And there’s no meaning to it. There’s no arc. There’s no purpose. There’s no direction.
Greg: Yeah, that’s it.
What falls in between that and a Christian point of view – and we peek ahead for next time – is that God’s about to turn and curse the serpent and promise to do something incredible. He’s going to send a hero, a savior, into earth’s history who will crush the head of the serpent.
Now, the language is figurative because simply stamping on the head of the serpent is not going to do anything, but the implication is he’s going to break the power that this moment has had over history. He’s going to undo the work of the fall. He’s going to turn back Satan’s works upon himself, and destroy the works of the devil, as the writer of Hebrews says.
The question then becomes, “Alright Christian brothers and sisters, what does that mean? Because here are two possibilities. You can create others, but these are two broad things. One, God still has in mind the same goal he always had, because it was great and good and pleasing to him, which is why he came up with it in the first place, and he’s not going to be defeated by a stupid snake. That’s what it comes down to. What kind of God do we have?
“The snake got God.”
“Oh, that’s just really exciting and convincing. A wonderful God you’ve got there.”
Rachel: But that is what Satan thought of God. He thought that he as a snake was sufficient to take down the God of the universe.
Greg: Yup, because at some level he does believe his own propaganda. At another level he no doubt doesn’t, but he’s good at convincing himself and his followers that God’s not all that. A snake can do it. Just a few lies can bring down empires, right? That’s all you need.
But there’s another way of looking at history that can give lip service to God and yet not hold up his glory the way the Bible does, and that’s to say, “Yeah, Satan really did screw things up. Sin is too powerful. It’s too deeply rooted in the human heart, and this idea of filling the world full of God’s image, of people who believe in the God of the Bible, trust him, fear him, walk with him, keep his commandments and serve him, and do this in the context of a worldwide community dedicated to the worship and service of God – that’s just not possible. It can’t happen. So God’s plans got redesigned.”
I think we can talk more about this next time, but as I said last time this is where eschatology comes in and you do have to face it sooner or later. The point of God’s promise is not to undo the work of the fall and to assert his original vision by a new and living way that involves an incredible mystery, that God himself should take on flesh and die in the place of his enemies. If that’s not it, then what’s God after?
We get things like, “Well, you know, God could do that, he’s just not going to. The number of elect is very small and he’s going to save some out of every nation and kindred and tongue, a handful, a smattering. Some are more optimistic, and I’m optimistic about this. He may save lots of lives. I just don’t think he’s promised to. But the original vision – that worldwide kingdom of God – no. That’s not going to happen.”
Or, “Yeah, God’s actually going to do all of that. He’ll do it by the second coming of Christ, but not by the gospel. The gospel is a completely different sort of solution. It saves people from sin and sends them to Jesus when they die, and they’ll live and reign with Christ in heaven forever. But anything happening in this world – that’s not part of the church’s mission. It’s actually antithetical to Christianity. That’s the anti-Christ stream. We shouldn’t be encouraging it or supporting it. I mean if you want to vote for a moral candidate, I guess that’s okay, but be careful because you don’t save the world by politics. You don’t polish brass on a sinking ship. The sooner that the world falls under the complete spell of Satan’s power, the sooner Jesus is coming back, which is what we want.” So you have that kind of approach to things.
There’s a deviation on the first one which is, “Yeah, God’s not going to do anything, but if he were…let’s talk about philosophy and restructuring Christian society and institutions, but it’s never going to happen. Oh, and don’t bring in God’s law or God’s word. Let’s just think philosophically about what Christian society could look like.”
That’s Dutch Calvinism in its deformity, and very few people are on that boat so I’m not going to worry about it. I just point out that it does exist or did exist.
Rachel: It’s very interesting listening to you talk, because when we talk about Satan and Adam and Eve, one of the chief aspects of their sin is to minimize God, his power, his dominion, but then we see it coming into the church, where we minimize God’s intent. We minimize what God cares about, what he plans to save, what the effect of Jesus’ salvation is, the number of people that Jesus is going to save.
We tend to come from ourselves to God instead from God to ourselves, so that we’re small and finite, and we see things in salvation as small and finite and not the immensity and eternity of God that he then puts into the salvation plan.
Emily: And we see the lie of the devil in the very beginning. You can get to that point of, “You shall not surely die” by minimizing any one of God’s attributes. “His love is too small. He wouldn’t have said this is he had a greater love for you.” Or “His justice is too small because he’s not really going to enforce this thing.”
You can get there from so many different angles, but they all just diminish God and give us a false idea of who he is and how great he is and how different he is from us.
Rachel: And often we see that when people say, “Well, if I was God…” or “My God wouldn’t…” or “I would never…” Again you’re starting from yourself, which is that sin at its heart is selfish and a worshiper of self, which always makes God, or even ourself when we’re God, very small. When we see autonomy in man, it’s still a very small autonomy that ends up leaving them feeling depressed, because we really can’t atone for ourselves.
Emily: It’s like, “Congratulations. You’ve got all the power that you could possibly hold, and it’s this little bitty amount.”
Rachel: “Itty bitty living space.”
Greg: Before we begin to wrap up, I would like to spend a moment and talk about how losing the biblical concept of sin kind of has landed us where we are, because the church doesn’t teach sin anymore. It’s very rare that you’ll find a church that will actually say, “Hey, this thing? It’s called sin. It’s breaking God’s law. It’s rebellion against God. It not only breaks God’s heart, but he’s angry not simply with the sin but with the sinner, and he punishes such people in hell forever.” We’re told, “You can’t tell people that.”
At the school not too long ago a mom said, “Yes, my boy is a sinner, but don’t tell him that or don’t make a big deal over his sins, because that will drive him away from the faith and we want him to know Jesus.” We have so many misunderstandings going on there.
Here are Adam and Eve in paradise and they have broken God’s law. Shall God not tell them they’re sinners? Shall he just walk by whistling and waving and walk on his way and leave them to themselves? Is that what we want? Do we want a Jesus who comes into our midst and says, “You know, I love you and there’s something wrong here, but I’m don’t want to make you feel bad.”
Emily: This is not a recipe for conflict resolution and peace in any relationship.
Greg: Well, we try to make it such in every relationship. Just love the person and that will fix everything. Man’s problem is not that he’s a sinner, not that he’s a rebel, he’s broken, he’s lonely, he’s friendless, he’s alienated. Pick a word. What else have you heard presented as man’s chief need right now in the 21st century?
Emily: Mostly I hear broken. Sometimes sick.
Rachel: Or it’s often also things have been done to him. He is abused or he is traumatized, those sorts of things.
Greg: He’s a victim.
Rachel: Yes. Somebody else has done things to him and that’s his problem. It’s not in him. It’s outside of him.
Greg: One of the many problems with this is that it admits no solution. You can’t undo some of these things, and some of them are far beyond fixing. “Okay, you’re poor and we give you a million dollars.” You know how well that works. It doesn’t.
Back in the ‘50s or ‘60s when this kind of thinking was fresh and people were excited about the war on poverty, someone decided to build a whole bunch of condos for poorer people so that they would have nice places to live, with the idea that if we give them a nice place to live they will rise to that expectation and it will work transformation.
Well, within a few months the whole facility was trashed, abused, destroyed, because the problem wasn’t the environment. The problem was that people were unthankful, ungrateful, lazy, violent by nature, didn’t want to work and didn’t want to maintain a good environment, so they destroyed the whole thing.
People sat back and scratched their head and said, “But we gave them everything they could want,” kind of like Adam and Eve in paradise. For those of us who know the Bible and actually believe it, those kinds of things are not surprising.
The problem with homeless people is – well, there are a number of things that are problems with them, but one of the biggest problems most often is that they are people who hate God, hate their neighbor, hate their family, hate church if they ever got near it, hate to work, and love being perpetually high.
The only thing that can break that is the power of the gospel. “This is not a poor you issue. This is a moral issue. You’re a sinner in rebellion against God. You’re not the worst of sinners. There’s all kinds of people who do this and worse, but it doesn’t free you. You’re a sinner and you need to repent of your sins and you need to throw yourself on the mercies of God and Christ. God can fix this. He can fix you. You have to want to be fixed at a fundamental heart level.”
Emily: It’s not that all of the bad things that happen to people are not problems. It’s just that the essence of the truth is that their relationship to God is the biggest problem, and it’s an act of faith to acknowledge that. It’s trusting God to believe that what is most core to who we are is our relationship to God. Everything else is secondary, no matter how crazy huge hurtful it is, and it truly is.
Greg: Yes, there are horrible despicable things that we do to one another and that we do to ourselves, and yet the question is, “Why did that happen? Was it a fluke? Was it a cosmic accident? Or did people do these things because they hate God?”
Emily: Because they also hate God, yes.
Greg: And what’s the way out of this? “I need to stop hating God and to start loving him, and then maybe I can go to them and tell them the same thing, or maybe somebody else will do it.” This is not just a question of moral philosophy, “Check box: love God, hate God.” This is a question of throwing yourself in true repentance on the mercy of God saying, “I’m a sinner. I’ve rebelled against you. I’ve pretended it was something else and it’s not. I just hate you, and I would like that to change. I would like to be forgiven. I would like to be a new person.”
The encouragement that we have is that if you’re doing that, God is already at work in you because the flesh never does that. The man as he comes from Adam does not make those admissions, does not claim that mercy, does not turn to God for help in any real sense. He may say words, but he does not humble himself and open his heart and admit, “I’m a sinner and I deserve hell, and God is the only one who can get me out of this. So does God have promises for me?”
At that point we turn and say, “He absolutely has promises for you, and the fact that you’re asking is good news. It probably means he’s at work in you right now. What he will do beyond that, we don’t know everything in this life, but there will be good stuff that will happen, along with some hard stuff. But we know in glory, in the resurrection, all the pain will be gone forever. All the hurt will be gone. You will be right. You will be glorious.”
We have promises that are eternal in the heavens, and it starts with admitting that what the Bible says about sin is real, and until we say that we have no good news. We have nice news, and nice news doesn’t save anybody.
On that note, we’re ready for the next episode where we’ll start talking about the nature of redemption a little more thoroughly.
Emily: Lovely. We can look forward to that. Let’s close off with some recommendations.
Rachel: I can go because I have one. It’s a smaller one than in the past, but as I was thinking about this topic and preparing for it and our need to understand the depth of sin, I was reminded of the hymn, “Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted.” I particularly love Fernando Ortega’s version of it because it captures the emotion of it. The third verse says –
Ye who think of sin but lightly,
nor suppose the evil great,
here may view its nature rightly,
here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the sacrifice appointed;
see who bears the awful load;
'tis the Word, the Lord's Anointed,
Son of Man and Son of God.
It was reminding me that we will diminish Christ and his glory and his sacrifice if we diminish sin. It’s a beautiful reminder of just how much Christ chose to suffer and needed to suffer because of us, so there’s my recommendation for today.
Emily: I’m going to choose a related recommendation, which is a poem by George Herbert, “Love (III),” another aspect of the same truth.
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything."A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here":
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?""Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
Greg: This is my recommendation and I’m going to read it because it’s a little hard to find. In fact, do you two remember the poem “Invictus”? I think it came up.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
It ends with –
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Dorothy Day wrote a response and I’m going to read it:
Out of the light that dazzles me,
Bright as the sun from pole to pole,
I thank the God I know to be,
For Christ – the Conqueror of my soul.Since His the sway of circumstance,
I would not wince nor cry aloud.
Under the rule which men call chance,
My head, with joy, is humbly bowed.Beyond this place of sin and tears,
That Life with Him and His the Aid,
That, spite the menace of the years,
Keeps, and will keep me unafraid.I have no fear though straight the gate:
He cleared from punishment the scroll.
Christ is the Master of my fate!
Christ is the Captain of my soul!
I think that fits in here someplace.
Emily: Very neatly. Can you tell we’ve all been thinking about poetry this week? This week the three of us got to judge a poetry contest of schoolchildren, which is always my favorite day of the school year, bar none.
Thank you both so much for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure. A great thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thank you to our financial supporters for keeping the show rolling. We appreciate you very much. And thank you, listener, for tuning in. I hope you’ll join us again next time.
SHOW NOTES
Scripture: Genesis 3:1-13
Recommendations
Rachel: Hymn: Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted
Emily: Poem: Love (III) by George Herbert
Greg: Poem: Dorothy Day’s response to Invictus