Christian Leaders are Always Having Ethical Failures, Why Would I Want to Be Like Them? – Part II of God as Goodness

    Why do our Christian leaders disappoint us with their ethical failures?  Why is it that we cannot seem to go a month without hearing of a respectable Christian leader who has committed adultery, or abusively berated their children or their employees, or coldly ignored poverty on their doorsteps while putting millions of dollars into their churches?  I believe that the problem and the solution are in the same place – the Christian doctrine of man’s depravity.  I hope you find resources for hope in what follows, as have I, that despite our ethical failures freedom and transformation are possible in the way of God as revealed in Scripture.  This post also responds, I hope charitably, to the Calvinist critiques of Part I of those post, I Try to Be a Good Person, Isn't that Good Enough?

    When I mess up in my everyday life – when I berate an employee of mine, when I piggishly fail to notice my wife while being consumed with work and study, and so on (the list could be an article in itself!) – I have learned a very spiritual response from my Southern Baptist pastors and Sunday School teachers that is truly life-changing.  Many of you are familiar with this response and practice it daily.  It is a response recommended by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.  Let’s call it the Sinner’s Response.  The response is this: “Lord, I realize that I can’t be a good person on my own effort.  I just can’t.  I’m sorry for being so selfish as to try, Lord.  I no longer want to reject you, and today – right now – again I turn my life over to you.  I turn my pain, my failure, over to you, and seek to live no longer on my own strength, but on the strength of your Spirit in me.  Amen.”

    If you have said this response, like I often do, then you know the extraordinary feeling of having a weight literally lifted from your shoulders that you didn’t even know was there.  This experience is real, and anyone who has had this experience can testify like I have to its reality.  The experience of this spiritual response is also confirmation that our natural response is to not accept the things of the Spirit of God, as Paul tells us.  We are depraved, and it is only through God working in us that we can be the type of people who do good things.

    The Christian doctrine of man’s depravity asserts that man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation, such that any good that man does do is based on false premises and motives.  This seems to be supported by my daily experience of failure, and of turning to God as a failed person in need of His grace.  I go to God so frequently in need of grace in response to my failings.  A couple years ago, in fact, I started wondering if I was missing something, for I wasn’t having the experience of God’s grace making me a noticeably different person, a better person.  What I found is, I believe, the missing element in the Christian doctrine of depravity.  The missing element of the doctrine of depravity is revealed when we ask why those who ask for God’s grace daily do not in fact lead better lives than the general population. 

    Above I recommended one spiritual response to failure in everyday life.  Here is another one, let’s call it the Response of Transformation: When you fail – let’s say you cut off a car on the freeway, as I do often – ask yourself why you think this was a failure, why it was wrong.  The answer may be due to your belief that driving recklessly is wrong.  But then ask yourself if you really believe that.  Do you really believe that driving recklessly is wrong?  If so, then why did you drive recklessly?  Think back to the instant just before you cut off the car.  Was it simply anxiety that drove you to do it?  Or did you make a choice?  Did you in fact think it through in that instant, and realize that what you really believe is that driving recklessly is wrong except in the case of drivers with extremely pressing appointments?   

    This response to ethical failure reflects the fact that we can’t believe that something is the right thing to do, and then do its opposite.  If we know that something is wrong, then we simply cannot do it.  There is no mechanism in between that can override our beliefs.  When we do something wrong, and we carefully reflect on the instant before the action, we realize that we did what we did because we believe it is acceptable.  People who lie believe that lying is acceptable in certain cases; people who steal believe that stealing is acceptable in certain cases; and people who kill believe that murder is acceptable in certain cases.

    This may sound like a harsh doctrine.  It is more harsh, at first glance, than the doctrine that excuses our failures as the result of the depraved will of man.  It is more harsh, at first glance, than the doctrine that assures Christians that they aren’t perfect, just forgiven.  In fact, it is much less harsh than these doctrines, for it shows the way to transformation and freedom from the bondages of repeated failures.

    The path to transformation, therefore, lies in bringing our true beliefs up to the light of day.  When we see what we really believe – that driving recklessly is ok when you have pressing appointments, or that lusting after other women is OK when husbands are tired and stressed, or that yelling at our children is understandable when a parent reaches his limit – then the doctrine of depravity becomes more than a doctrine.  When we lift our true beliefs up to the light of day, we see who we really are for the first time because, as Roger Rueff writes in The Big Kahuna, “you will gain character because honesty will reach out from deep inside you and tattoo itself across your face”. 

    The path to true awareness of our depravity is thus also the path to transformation.  For when we realize what we really believe, then we can evaluate our true beliefs for the first time and judge whether and why they are wrong.  And usually it won’t be immediately obvious that our true beliefs are wrong – that’s why they have such a deep hold on us.  They are our character.

    This Response of Transformation, furthermore, shows the essential truth of the Sinner’s Response discussed above.  Some believe the total depravity of man means we should utter the Sinner’s Response, but that it precludes the Response of Transformation since depraved people can’t fix themselves.  That doesn’t seem to be what Jesus taught, and it’s not confirmed by the successful experiences of those who have bravely chosen the Response of Transformation. 

    When we choose the Response of Transformation, we have learned that simply trying to do good things doesn’t work, so instead we ask what beliefs we have that make us the type of person who doesn’t do good things.  Is this not a search for truth and goodness?  Is this not a denial of self-reliance, and an affirmation that reliance on truth and goodness is the only way we can have the lives we yearn for?  Isn’t this just the Sinner’s Response drawn out into its essential emphasis on transformation? Isn’t Jesus calling us to such transformation of our character when he says, “Be sure not to do your rightness before human beings with the intent of being seen by them.  Otherwise your Father, the one in the heavens, will have nothing to do with it”?  (This is Dallas Willard’s excellent translation of Matthew 6:1.) 

    Good deeds are not the sign of a good person – people may do good deeds because they believe it’s important for others to see them doing good deeds. But, one can’t be a good person and not do good deeds. The distinction between having a relationship with God who is goodness and doing good things is thus meaningless – it is like a distinction between 2+2 and 4. 

    The question posed by those whom we would evangelize - Christian leaders are always having ethical failures, why would I want to be like them? – thus challenges all Christians to re-identify God and goodness.  When God and goodness are put back together again in our minds, then we will see that everyone who strives for goodness has long ago admitted that man is naturally depraved.   (As with all doctrines found in Scripture, the doctrine of man’s depravity is in Scripture because it is true; it’s not true because it’s in Scripture.)  The response of an evangelist in the way of Jesus can then only be to first join others in the transformation into truth and goodness that our depravity requires.  Only once we join others in this dynamism for truth and goodness can evangelists in the way of Jesus point to God as Truth and as Goodness as the only possible fulfillments of our yearning; in fact, we would then point to God as Truth and as Goodness as the a priori condition of our dynamism towards truth and goodness in the first place.

Comments

[James Galvin]

Ken - so glad you are back on the web. I always enjoy, and am deeply encouraged by your thoughts.

[Nic Nelson]

Hmmm! Interesting take. I thought I would have to add my Postconservative Reformed "two cents" to defend vintage christianity, but instead I'll go away and think about this some more.

You accurately describe the actual mental processes that occur in the most Charles-Simeonesque times of dissecting my own depravity, and my transformation (sometimes major, sometimes incremental) has always been the result. I did not realize how common it might be for folks to take the "Sinners' Response" as a mental circuit breaker rather than an opportunity to bring hidden mental and emotional strongholds of sin up into the light of love and reason.