I like human beings.
I think we’re pretty amazing.
It may sound like a weird thing to say but we seem to live in a world where we paint ourselves as the bad guys. Being a documentary fan I watch my fair share, and it’s very rare that you get to the end of a doc these days without being reminded that WE are the problem.
We are little more than usurpers.
Bad humans!
I know what they mean, and there is a lot of truth in it of course, but this attitude which tells us we are only destructive, evil beings can’t be healthy.
I’ve been watching a BBC series recently called ‘Human Planet’. This series shows how humanity lives in the harshest environments on the planet; from the deserts of the Sahara, to the frozen wastes of the Artic Circle; from the flooded rivers of South America, to the barren tundra of the Mongolian steppes. We are the only species on the planet who has come up with so many varied solutions which allow us to exist where little else can.
As I sat through each episode the self-hatred of our species began to slip away and I realized we’re not evil. Watching the way mothers love children, and fathers risk their lives to feed their families the world over, you have to adjust your thinking and wonder if we aren’t in fact imbued with the spark the divine. We’re making some big mistakes to be sure, but it’s certainly not enough to write us off as a species.
In fact I felt proud of us, which isn’t usually something we’re allowed to do. It’s now much more trendy to beat ourselves up.
And where as this may be a new trend culturally, our self loathing has been around a lot longer in the church.
Our evangelistic routines, for example, usually begin with telling people they are rotten in one way or another. Words like ‘fallen, depraved, wicked, corrupt, sinful, and evil’, get banded around… and that’s just you’re opener with the person. I took a group of young people to a camp a few years ago where the speaker got up on the first night to tell them that (and I quote) ‘all humans are dead, demonized, deranged and demented without Jesus’… and he took 50 minutes to yell that at us! It makes me so mad, and bears no resemblance to the way Jesus interacted with people.
Even once you’re ‘safely in the fold’ you are regularly reminded of your wicked state and how close to being completely corrupt you are. I was sent a tragically funny Youtube clip the other day of a famous preacher screaming at his congregants because they weren’t behaving as he thought they should. I couldn’t believe the haranguing they were getting, and wondered if any of them left church that Sunday considering themselves of any worth at all.
I was listening to a speaker recently who said that the problem is that people like this miss the beginning of the story. They are really into the bible, it’s just that they start telling the story from Genesis 3, and seem to forget there was a Genesis 1. They begin by telling us that we are fallen beings, rotten to the core; but Genesis 1 seems to suggest that our core is actually good, that we are made in the image of the divine, and that when God took a step back He was pretty stoked with what He had created.
The message is clear whether you read Genesis literally (which I don’t) or not: we are good. We have our problems, but if you peel the layers away to the very center of the onion you will find goodness. Any message which starts with anything different is manipulative in my mind, akin to using a marketing tactic to make someone feel their lack, and see your particular sales pitch as the answer.
This may seem like detail, but I think where you start the story, and what you think is at the core, effects everything!
And I think a lot of the theological disagreement we have today comes down to this one question: do you think people are inherently evil, or good?
I suppose the most famous example of this debate, and the one which has had the most far reaching consequences, is the showdown between Augustine and Pelagius.
Pelagius
Pelagius was born in 354 AD in the British Isles and became a Celtic monk. You have heard me speak here about the Celts and their open-ended, life-affirming spirituality. Well this stuff leeched into Pelagius over his years of training. At some point, as was the fashion, he opted to travel to Rome on pilgrimage, but when he arrived he was fairly shocked at the state of the city and, in particular, the way people treated each other. Crime was rife, poverty was pervasive, and morality seemed absent.
In response to these issues he began to travel around the city and teach people that they had a choice, that they could chose how they lived. He even accused those forming the theology of his day that their talk of ‘Grace covering all sin’ had just given people license to live completely morally bankrupt lives as long as they attended mass and got baptized.
Lucky that particular problem is a thing of the past (please read laced with sarcasm).
One of the big messages he sought to teach was that human beings are good! At their core they are beautiful, because that’s how they were made, and so they need to aspire to more. He told the story from Genesis 1.
This flew in the face of the religious establishment, particularly a celebrity Bishop from North Africa named Augustine, who had just published his ‘Confessions’ which were big on this idea of ‘Original Sin’. Augustine said that all human beings are born inherently evil; in fact he went so far as to suggest that you should baptize your new born infant immediately after birth because if it died, even on that first day, without being baptized, God would send it to hell.
That is how evil he believed mankind to be.
Wicked from the moment of birth.
Augustine
This renegade Celtic monk from the misty isles at the end of the Empire was ruining everything with his ‘humans are good’ talk. So Augustine decided to take him out. He called a council of church leaders and had Pelagius branded a heretic. They accused him of completely denying God’s Grace and suggested he was preaching a salvation separate from God (the theological equivalent of pulling yourself up by your own boot straps).
Pelagius fled to Palestine where he lived out his remaining days, and his ideas were anathema. If you were caught spreading his teaching then you would be in big trouble with the powers that be.
It is doubtful if Pelagius was a real heretic of any sort. In a book I read recently by Ian Bradley, called ‘The Celtic Way”, he says of Pelagius:
“Recent analysis of his thinking suggests that (he) was, in fact, highly orthodox, following in the tradition established by the early fathers and in keeping with the teaching of the church in both the East and the West. … From what we are able to piece together from the few sources available… it seems that the Celtic monk held to an orthodox view of the prevenience of God’s grace, and did not assert that individuals could achieve salvation purely by their own efforts…”
But of course history is written by the victorious, and how dare this little British upstart suggest that human beings are good!
Of course because Augustine bullied Pelagius into submission, the Augustinian view point has dominated the thinking of western Christians through the ages. Calvin borrowed most of his ideas from Augustine for his work during the Reformation, and these ideas form the basis of much mainstream theology today. The likes of John Piper and Mark Driscol (the ‘Neo Calvinists’ or self proclaimed ‘Gospel Coalition’) are todays loudest voices pulling this bad theology through the ages.
The popular mindset is that we are born ‘evil’ to the core.
The popular leadership mode in churches is to bully people with a ‘lets make them feel bad so they behave themselves’ methodology.
It constantly surprises me how many churches today find this stuff captivating, and follow it without question. Maybe it’s popularity is down to the volume and vigor with which this message is delivered, because the theology seems well off the mark to me.
A case of the ‘loudest person in the room’ perhaps?
I would obviously agree that we have something in us that needs to be rooted out; a propensity to destroy in order to gain, a greedy desire to take more than we need, or hurt to get ahead (and call this evil ‘sin’ if you like, I just think we’ve ruined that word). And this isn’t a case of EITHER ‘we are sinful’, OR ‘we are deeply valuable’. It’s has to be both/and. But most of our telling of the story focuses on how rotten we are.
But that isn’t where the story starts… and it isn’t where it ends.
Our view of humanity can’t just be that we are these ugly, dirty, naughty things who have to find Jesus, say we’re sorry, and then live the lives of repressed puritans until He comes at some future date to snatch us from our own mess. I won’t suggest, as Augustine did, and as many Evangelicals would begin their evangelistic spiels, that “all humanity is depraved”. The story I read begins in Genesis one, and there we are made in the image of God, and given the breath of the divine to make us live.
As St Iranaeus of Lyons apparently once said: “The glory of God is humanity fully alive.” In other words, crank our core essence up to 11, and we are the ‘glory of God’.
Human beings are fascinating, capable, brave, ingenious, precious beings.
Mark my words, someone who believes this will move very differently in the world to someone who believes we are fallen, depraved, wicked, corrupt, sinful and evil.
We will look at ourselves and others differently.
We will treat this planet differently.
We will pass the story on differently.
I love the story of God destroying Sodom if only for Abraham’s response. He doesn’t agree with God and just sit down to watch Him kill them all for their debauchery, but instead he engages with God by begging for the lives of the people in the city… because he values humanity. He believes people to be good at their middle, and worth fighting for.
I think God wants us to do the same.
The story is more hopeful than you can imagine. We are good, but have gotten into some bad ways of dealing with God, each other, and the world at large. We have gotten off track from our God-given purpose, and we have to be better than that, because our core is Godly. And we WILL be better than that, because God is out to redeem everything, and everyone who is willing. Perhaps it’s time to drop our obsession with managing sin (we were never meant to be the world’s moral police anyway), and start by becoming champions of humanity, telling the story from Genesis 1 again, and reminding all of their worth.
hey buddy
i don’t think i agree with the point you’re trying to make here – i think most of it is ‘this is a nice idea and what sean thinks’ as opposed to ‘this is what God and the Bible are saying’ – in the main Biblical example you use, that of Sodom and Gomorrah God ends up destroying the cities because He can’t find enough good people…
you say “Watching the way mothers love children, and fathers risk their lives to feed their families the world over, you have to adjust your thinking and wonder if we aren’t in fact imbued with the spark the divine.” But maybe you’ve just lived in the wrong neighborhoods – live here for a week and you’ll have a much different story – people call this place poverty yet most south africans would walk down this street and go really? in South Africa when you’re poor you have nothing whereas people here have houses and cars and stuff… BUT having said that, there is definitely a poverty of spirit here – the other day i saw a 2/3 year old kid lying on the floor with his mom shouting at him “get the F&^% up” and that is not an aberration here, that is normal life – the way parents speak to kids and in front of kids, it’s just not the cheery example you were sharing at all. yes, there is good and potential and the God spark, but in a lot of this neighborhood it appears to be the other side that is winning.
and in terms of how you say it affects us, i think if i walk past a person who is well adjusted and friendly and seems all together, i think ‘cool that person doesn’t need anything’ and keep walking, but it’s when i walk past someone who is bruised and beaten and broken and needy then i am more inclined to think they need help and i should get involved [although sadly the miserable sinner in me i still likely to keep on walking and possibly cross over to the other side of the road]
i think it was Jesus who spoke about the doctor coming for the sick…
And as much as I believe we should be champions of humanity, I think The story is more hopeful that you can imagine. We are good, but have gotten into some bad habits, and we have to be better than that, because our core is Godly. Perhaps it’s time to drop our obsession with managing sin (we were never meant to be the world’s moral police anyway), and become champions of humanity, telling the story from Genesis 1 again, and reminding all of their worth.” missed the point a lot – sin is not “bad habits” – it is rebellion, it is choosing ourselves over God [usually by turning our back on Him and walking the other way or by nailing Him to a tree again] – as James describes it is is something that comes from temptation that is allowed to linger and gives birth to sin which if left unchecked gives birth to death. i witness that all the time watching unchecked sin in peoples lives. If all sin is is ‘bad habits’ then you are definitely hanging out with the wrong crowd…
much love
b
I agree with you man. I don’t ignore Genesis 3 for the sake of Genesis 1… I just want to tell a story that includes both. A few people have had a problem with the ‘bad habits’ phrase. Obviously I know it’s more serious than that. Put the phrase down to a bad writing style which can be too flippant… or irreverent. I just find it interesting that the response to bringing in this part of story is just to shout the dominant story even louder. Surely there is something to learn here? Surely there is truth in this too which needs to be included?
Why does it have to be one or the other, either we are by nature good or bad- can we not be “good at our middle” and yet prone to sin? I am reading some of this great guy Richard Rohr’s work, and he refers to this kind of thinking as dualistic, and even argues that spiritual growth takes place when we can move away from a dualistic world view to one which instead of saying “either/ or” says “both- and”, one that can encompass the contradictory nature of things. We can be both inherently divine and yet somehow broken.
I think that a lot of human suffering and a lot of human cruelty is caused by the fact that we have such a negative view of humanity and of ourselves, unless we can come to peace with the fact that we are both divine and sinful. That every human being is enough and is sacred, and yet that every human being struggles against our own sinfulness. In my view, I don’t think we will be equipped and strong enough to navigate and overcome our own broken “sinfull” natures. Unless we have a grounded understanding that we are, no matter what, divine, that as awful as we may seem to ourselves and as scary as a clear look at our own sinful nature might be, its OK, we don’t have to deny the bad because the good is strong enough to give us worth. Then we can begin to deal honestly with our sinful nature. Then we will have hope enough to believe that no matter how far we feel we have fallen, we are redeemable, and part of something a lot bigger than ourselves and that its good, and its somehow “in” us too.
If you look at the people who hurt those around them the most, its not the people who believe they have real self worth- those people are big enough to deal with their own destructiveness and be gracious and care for those around them at the same time, its the people who are insecure, who believe they are inherently evil and are ashamed, these are the people whose own brokenness overwhelms them. If you believe your own life is not worth much why would you believe some one else’s is? If you are ashamed of yourself how can you move effectively in the world and have the emotional energy to put others first- you will be too self conscious or too busy trying to hide from your own shame.
We are not good or bad, inherently sacred or sinful, we are both, at our cores we are good and yet we are also prone to sin. We have to come to terms and be at peace with both of these sides of ourselves. There will always be goodness in us and in what we do and yet we will all always struggle with/have to work with a darker side to ourselves.
I agree with Sean- it matters a lot which side of things we choose as the starting point. I think we should start with telling people/ humanity that they/it is beautiful and sacred, and once we have done that-once we have that understood-we can far better deal with the fact that despite this there is some dark stuff we need to get honest with ourselves about.
We were made good. We are the crowning glory of God’s creation. We made and make mistakes. Costly ones. Terrible ones. Mistakes that we can’t undo by ourselves. And so we’re rescued in ways we could never fathom or engineer ourselves. We are still made in the image of God, still made good, still make mistakes, and still need redeeming.
How scandalous.
Love it:)
Sean, you said you’ve felt people misunderstood this post. i’m not sure if the reason you feel misunderstood is perhaps that you are using the word “good” in more than one way. You’re using the word “good” in terms of moral goodness (which was most certainly lost in the Fall), and you’re using the word “good” in terms of humans being “beautiful” (like the “fearfully and wonderfully made” in Psalm 139), having aspirations and accomplishing great feats, etc. These are two different — very different — things. But regardless of any misunderstanding over your use of “good”, it is difficult to misunderstand your use of Pelagius.
It is indeed important not to miss the beginning of the story. But it is just as important not to miss the flow of the story. The story is linear; it goes in one direction. Which side of Genesis 3 are we now on? You are quite right that the story should be told from Genesis 1, which reveals God as the sovereign, eternal, infinite, good Creator of all things, Who did create all things good. God created humankind right there in Genesis 1, and saw everything that He had made, and “it was very good.” But the story does not end there, and we have to proceed through Genesis 3 to get to where we are now, and to where we are going. And as we do, we certainly do not see a clear message that “we are good” in any moral sense.
Do good people disobey God? Pass the blame? Kill their brothers, then lie to cover up? No, these things are wicked, sinful. “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5)
Jeremiah rightly says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick…” (Jeremiah 17:9)
And what do you make of the first three chapters of Romans, especially Romans 3:10-18 and the passages it cites?
“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” [quoting Psalm 14]
“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” [quoting Psalm 5]
“The venom of asps is under their lips.” [quoting Psalm 140]
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” [quoting Psalm 10]
“Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” [quoting Isaiah 59]
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” [quoting Psalm 36]
The clear message throughout the Bible is that all humans following the Fall are by their very nature wicked. It is only by the restraint of God’s grace (“common grace”) that humans are not *more* wicked, and are even able to show some degree of love — but not the kind of intimate and shame-free love that Adam and Eve once enjoyed, nor the harmony with the rest of the creation enjoyed in Eden, let alone peaceful intimacy with God.
We must not forget on which side of Genesis 3 we now live. Otherwise, why did Christ die? Why do we need Christ if we are by nature good? If Pelagius was right (and i do know his arguments, and i have read Augustine extensively), then Christ’s death was needless. But Christ came to the sick — that is, Christ came to save sinners, people who recognised their sinfulness, who recognised that they were, indeed, rotten to the core. Again, Christ spoke of this recognition of our helplessness when He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “Blessed are those who mourn” — those who mourn the wickedness of their hearts. It was not good people whom Jesus told, “repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) means that there is no-one who is good. But the incredible joy Christians can have is that the more clearly we see our sinfulness, the more clearly we will understand the inexplicable love of God in saving us. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8).
Love in Christ
– m
These are interesting discussions guys… but I can’t help noticing the absense of the atoning blood of Christ in any of them. If nothing is wrong with mankind what on earth is the cross for. Jesus is dying for all that Adam brought to bear on creation not just on mankind but on all of the creation. The creation both mankind and the rest of the cosmic order has been bent out of shape by man it’s federal head rejecting the rule of God. That is what Evil is… mankind ruling God’s creation under his own sets of rules assumtions and conjectures. If we use that word “Evil” outside of its biblical meaning what we will mean and understand by calling humans evil will be irrlevant to what we learn from the bible.
Evil in Hebrew comes from the word Ra’ah which means bent out of shape. That is how we are born… bent out of shape. This doesn’t mean that there is nothing good about us. Rather it means that in every faculty we are bent out shape away from the teleological (goal or purpose) direction God intended for us. On the cross Jesus absorbed that crooked shape in every human faculty into himself bearing the consquence of all the crooked things that man’s sin has ever perpetuated in human history.
At the cross what was bent by Adam’s sin was made straight and inhabitable. Man was always meant to be the true temple of God. When the Holy God dwells in his temple it will be filled with the light of his glory. We do not contain a spark of the divine… but the fullness of the God can dwell in mankind because the temple has been cleanesed.
In the Old Testament… Only the Holiest man (the high priest) from the Holiest people on the face of the earth (The Israelites) could enter the presence of God on one day of the year (Yom Kipur the day of atonement) and only to atone for sin. The absense of the presence of God dwelling in man as his temple is the reason that the story needed to move from the garden (Genesis) to the city (Revelation).
People receive much more than the spark of the divine when they are cleased by the Holiest man (Jesus the high priest) from the Holiest people on the face of the earth (The Israelites) who entered the presence of God on one day of the year (His brutal day of atonement the spotless lamb to atone for sin on the cross) That the fullness of God might indwell his temple (mankind). So that all the earth might be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as many temples are filled with his glorious light. That is what the gospel brings. The light of the glory of God to dwell in mankind.
He’s coming back to take the story of this world to it’s conclusion. The Cross is what J.R Tolkien called a EUchatastrophe (good catastrophe) The good catastrophe that bends everything bent out of shape back into shape. Because of the cross Dostoyevsky wrote this… it’s so beautiful.
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
Seano
I believe that your thrust towards a more realised eschatology is important. The Kingdom has come and God’s healing presence is at work in creation through the progress of the gospel. We should be getting involved in that on every level if we believe the gospel. The gospel is God taking the whole creation towards it’s goal. If we believe the gospel we must get involved in revealing the glory of the new creation to this world in it’s present state which is groaning. We are the first fruits. The Spirit indwelling God’s people is heaven on earth. When we pray thy kingdom come… we must realise that by the indwelling of the Spirit the Kingdom has come. But it has come to mankind. At the consumation of the age it it will flood the cosmos. So that death (the consequence marker of sin) will be swallowed up in glory. Safer to have an over realised eschatology than an underrealised one. But we must not in our sentimentality deny the reality of sin and it’s cosmic consequences.
Much love and grace
Craig
Thanks for the interaction guys. I don’t want to make this thread overly long, but let me just say that I think a couple of you have missed what I said, and I feel like you’re just shouting the dominant evangelical story at me. I know it. Trust me. I studied the same stuff you guys did… but my point still stands. I really appreciate you all keeping the discussion civil and gracious. Peace all.
Hi Sean, I’ve had these ‘feelings’ that you are having for a while….. and i have literally spent close to 10 yrs on and off reading/trying to grasp so called original sin (thanks Augustine). The best i can get to is this…. If God’s story to us starts in Genesis 1 and not ch3 – then so must ours because this is our Genesis. Hope it helps, Its helping me as I live with Jesus and follow him in mission….
Hey Seano be encouraged bud… I listened to your interview with Rob and I think I got a better perspective of where you’re at and what some of your concerns are. Many of these I share. Learning to read the bible right was the one thing our Sunday school teachers and youth pastors failed atrociously at teaching us. Hence this process of relearning is crucial. Even our theological colleges dropped the ball heavily on many issues, but hey we’re stronger on the otherside of all these speed bumps. Only thing I’m always aware of is that we can never escape the seat of teacher once we’ve been there. So people take our words with lots of weight. We just need to be careful what we say and how we say it because bloggs are modern lecture halls. But I love you bud and really enjoyed your interview with Rob. I’ll be intrigued to hear more
Peace
Craig
A thought keeps reoccurring to me as I read through all the interaction. It’s that: we must not underestimate or minimize the intense pain and brokenness we cause one another as human beings. Yes, the conservative evangelical or whichever other form of institutional Christian church is guilty of this in a big way, but that does not mean that the secular world or even other religions are standing out there with their big loving comforting arms wide open just waiting for wounded church people to come and find total healing and restoration. I have said it before, the Christian institutional church is not the worst organisation on the planet… I sometimes wonder if some of us aren’t actually alarmingly naive about what is out there. But then it isn’t flesh and blood that we are ultimately dealing with out there… but it’s real. This is the essence of sin… an all pervasive polarity of preservation of self at the ultimate expense of all else… (it’s what Jesus and John mean when they say if you are not truly loving you are actually murdering… note, what would seems, an extreme emphasis) sin is not just a matter of making mistakes, doing little wrong things here and there, offending people, needing to touch up or have a little sit-down talk with ourselves and get back on track, adjust our attitude… or whatever other euphemism we want to throw at it… it’s there… and it’s real, and it will rear its head if it gets a chance… think about the times you have been stretched to your human limits by life and think about that poor soul who came across you at that very minute and tipped the scales…
Our beauty and potential to love is as deep and real as our potential to hate and kill… we were not originally designed to be that way, but we ended up that way as a result of an inner change of polarity… we humans need radical divine intervention because without it we will create our own hell… and there is no doubt about that… people need to open their eyes to what is out there and to the potential of what is inside too.
As Richard Rohr also says, there is often a direct correlation between piles of religiosity and piles of money… it’s easy to see the world with rose coloured spectacles when you can afford them… or those in your church can afford them for you… when you begin to live a TRULY incarnational life, sin (especially your own) no longer remains a vague hypothesis… when you deal with that reality head-on, it will produce in you a love for others that is rightly balanced… not a giddy, naive, hope for the best kind of love… a love with courage enough to die for the most insignificant human on the planet and a love with courage enough to tell the truth (to the High Priest, the King and the Samaritan Woman at the Well… without favouring one over the other) no matter the consequences.
God’s intense wrath (to use the traditional word) is fueled by the passion of His deepest longing for us to give up creating our own heaven on earth and surrender to the bigger vision He has for us.
Where we have failed in church is in putting two and two together…
Hey Sean,
I know it’s a bit late, but I just wanted to let you know that I totally get what you’re trying to say in this post. I think for Christians it is hard for us to look at the goodness without becoming afraid that we’re thereby overlooking the bad.
I like the Eastern Orthodox approach to sin. First off they don’t believe in Original Sin in the same way us western Christians do. Also they view sin as primarily sickness rather than legal guilt. God is trying to heal us, not judge us.