“Can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will achieve unity and peace, and that our children will live in a world made more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from strength to strength in an ever-widening circle of achievement? What man has done, the little triumphs of his present state…form but the prelude to the things that man has yet to do.”
– H. G. Wells, A Short History of the World (1937)
“The cold-blooded massacres of the defenseless, the return of deliberate and organized torture, mental torment, and fear to a world from which such things had seemed well-nigh banished – has come near to breaking my spirit altogether… ‘Homo Sapiens,’ as he has been pleased to call himself, is played out.” – H. G. Wells, A Mind at the End of Its Tether (1946)
Keller: “It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world. According to Christianity our biggest problem is sin. Yet the concept of ‘sin’ is offensive or ludicrous to many.
This is often because we don’t understand what Christians mean by the term.”
Sin and Human Hope
In this section, Keller shows that to admit we’re sinners isn’t a bleak and pessimistic thing; it’s very positive and hope-inspiring once we rightly understand it. Recognizing that we’re sinners delivers us from a victim mentality that blames others for our problems or sees them as sicknesses, something which comes upon a person for no fault of their own and which cannot be avoided. Keller says we must also see our sins as violations of relationships with God and others, rather than as violations of some law-book or rulebook.
“The Christian doctrine of sin,” says Keller, “can be a great resource for human hope, but what is that doctrine?”
The Meaning of Sin Soren Kierkegaard described sin as “not wanting to be oneself before God,” whereas faith was, “the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God.”
Keller explains that by saying, “Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from Him.”
He goes on, “Everyone gets their identity, their sense of being distinct and valuable, from somewhere or something. Kierkegaard asserts that human beings were made not only to believe in God in some general way, but to love him supremely, center their lives on him above anything else, and build their very identities on him.
Anything other than this is a sin. … according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things.”
In the movie Rocky, Stallone says the reason he has to go the distance in boxing, even if it means he’s beaten to a pulp, is, “Then I’ll know I’m not a bum.” Likewise, the Jewish runner in Chariots of Fire says that in the 100-yard dash, he has “ten seconds to justify my existence.”
This demonstrates how human beings desperately look for something that will give them a sense of self-worth. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ernest Becker wrote that a child’s need for self-worth “is the condition for his life,” it’s what gives him a sense of “cosmic significance.”
Keller says “Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on 2 we essentially ‘deify.’ We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think of ourselves as irreligious.”
Becker says we look to romantic love to fill that need, and sometimes focus all our energies on one person, thinking they will make us feel worthwhile. Others, of course, look to their work, and their career, to fill the void within. But all of this sort of thing only “sets the stage for continual disappointment.”
“No human relationship can bear [this] burden of godhood…If your partner is your ‘All,’ then any shortcoming in him becomes a major threat to you…What is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to this position? We want to be rid of… our feeling of nothingness…to know our existence has not been in vain. We want redemption–nothing less. Needless to say, humans cannot give this.” (Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, qtd. 163, 164)
“This is exactly Kierkegaard’s point. Every person must find some way to ‘justify their existence,’ and to stave off the universal fear that they’re ‘a bum.’
In more traditional cultures, the sense of worth and identity comes
from fulfilling duties to family and giving service to society. In our contemporary individualistic culture, we tend to look to our achievements, our social status, our talents, or our love relationships. There is an infinite
variety of identity bases. Some get their sense of ‘self’ from gaining and wielding power, others from human approval, and others from self-discipline and control. But everyone is building their identity on something.” (164)
The Personal Consequences of Sin
Once we define sin in these sorts of terms, we can more easily see how it is destructive to us. “Identity apart from God is inherently unstable.” Everything in life is temporal and changing, so if we base our self-worth on
something temporal, we’ll be greatly shaken if anything happens to it. No matter what we might see as that which justifies our existence when it is threatened, we are shaken to our very core. We could even see
parenting as our ultimate value, but then if our children don’t turn out right, it destroys our sense of worth. We will have no self outside of being parents.
If anything or anyone but God is our center, then when it is threatened in any way, we will be anxious and paralyzed with fear. “Only if your identity is built on God and his love,” says Kierkegaard, “can you have a self
that can venture anything, face anything.” (qtd. 165)
“An identity not based on God also leads inevitably to deep forms of addiction. When we turn good things into ultimate things, we are, as it were, spiritually addicted. If we take our meaning in life from our family, our
work, a cause, or some achievement other than God, they enslave us. We have to have them.” (165)
According to St. Augustine, “Our lives are not rightly ordered.” We’re not rightly oriented, so “ we fall into patterns of life that are not unlike substance addiction. As in all addiction, we are in denial about the degree to
which we are controlled by our god-substitutes. And inordinate love creates inordinate, uncontrollable anguish if anything goes wrong with the object of our greatest hopes.” (165, 166)
Keller’s point is that we’re harmed by putting anything before God in our lives.
He tells the story of two women
he counseled those who were angry at their husbands for not being good fathers. One was able to forgive her husband and go on living in relative peace and joy, whereas the other was not. It turned out the woman who couldn’t forgive was unable to because her whole sense of identity and worth was bound up in her son’s happiness, so she couldn’t forgive her husband when he wasn’t all he should’ve been as a father. Her son was her idol.
Keller 3 quotes Simone Weil, who wrote, “One has only the choice between God and idolatry. If one denies God…one is worshipping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such (things), but
“A life not centered on God leads to emptiness. Building our lives on something besides God not only hurts us
if we don’t get the desires of our hearts but also if we do.” (166)
Lots of people think that if only they were
more successful, wealthy, beautiful, famous, or popular, they’d be happy. But examples abound of people who have achieved those things and are more miserable, mean-spirited, selfish, more disillusioned than they
were before they achieved them!
The Social Consequences of Sin
People who deny the Christian teaching of original sin are more devastated by the wickedness of the world, because they get their hopes up that things could be better, only to be disillusioned by all that’s wrong with the
world. Christians, on the other hand, are not as surprised by the failures of the human race, and are not as depressed about them, because they know this is a fallen world, and they also know one day it will be redeemed. Keller quotes English author Dorothy Sayers, who said, “The people who are most discouraged are those who cling to an optimistic belief in the civilizing influence of progress and enlightenment.” (qtd. 167)
“In The Nature of True Virtue, one of the most profound treatises on social ethics ever written, Jonathan Edwards lays out how sin destroys the social fabric. He argues that human society is deeply fragmented when
anything but God is our highest love. If our highest goal in life is the good of our family, then, says Edwards, we will tend to care less for other families. If our highest goal is the good of our nation, tribe, or race, then we
will tend to be racist or nationalistic. If our ultimate goal in life is our happiness, then we will put our own economic and power interests ahead of those of others. Edwards concludes that only if God is our
summum bonum, our ultimate good and life center, will we find our heart drawn out not only to people of all families, races, and classes but to the whole world in general.”
Whatever we get our identity or sense of worth from apart from God will lead us to look down on others who don’t have the same values. The more we love and identify with anything other than God, the harder it will be
not to feel superior or even hostile to those who have any other basis for their value. This leads to an unraveling of society instead of knitting together or building up of society. These are the social consequences of sin.
The Cosmic Consequences of Sin
The Bible tells us that God was involved deliberately and personally in the creation of the universe, unlike other ancient accounts, which show things were just formed by violent forces. God made all things and was very
pleased with them, calling them all very good. He created man and told him just to keep all of this harmony and life God had created going. Keller points out that the Hebrew word Shalom, which we translate as
peace, doesn’t just mean the absence of trouble or hostility. “It means absolute wholeness – full, harmonious, joyful, flourishing life.” (170)
“The devastating loss of shalom through sin is described in Genesis 3. We are told that as soon as we determined to serve ourselves instead of God – as soon as we abandoned living for and enjoying God as our highest good–the entire created world became broken. Human beings are so integral to the fabric of things that when human beings turned from God the entire warp and woof of the world unraveled. Disease, genetic disorders, famine, natural disasters, aging, and death itself are as much the result of sin as are oppression, war, crime, and violence. We have lost God’s shalom–physically, spiritually, socially, psychologically, culturally.
Things now fall apart. In Romans 8, Paul says that the entire world is now ‘in bondage to decay’ and ‘subject to futility’ and will not be put right until we are put right.” (170)
What Can Put It All Right?
Keller says we all, at some point in our lives, are confronted by the fact that we’re not what we know we should be. So we can try to turn over a new leaf, but that leads to a spiritual dead end.
C. S. Lewis said an honest person knows they have to pay their taxes, and they will, but they hope there’ll be enough left over for them to live on. He says many people have that sort of concept of what God wants from
them. He demands morality and decent behavior, so we hope we can give Him enough of that to make Him happy, yet still be able somehow to enjoy life.
Lewis says that’s not how it works. It’s both easier and harder than that. God doesn’t want you to pay what you “owe,” so to speak. He wants all you are and all you have! “Christ says, ‘Give me ALL. I don’t want just this much of your time and this much of your money and this much of your work–so that your natural self can have the rest. I want you. Not your things. I have come not to torture your natural self…I will give you a new self instead. Hand over the whole natural self–ALL the desires, not just the ones you think are wicked but the ones you think are innocent–the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead.” (qtd. 171)
“Here, Lewis works from Kierkegaard’s definition of sin. Sin is not simply doing bad things, it is putting good things in the place of God. So the only solution is not simply to change our behavior, but to reorient and center
the entire heart and life on God.”
“The almost impossibly hard thing is to hand over your whole self to Christ.
But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is remain what we call ‘ourselves’– our happiness
centered on money or pleasure or ambition–and hoping, despite this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you cannot do. If I am a grass field–all the cutting will keep
the grass less but won’t produce wheat. If I want wheat… I must be plowed up and re-sown.” (qtd. 171, 172)
“Does that scare you? Does it sound stifling? Remember this–if you don’t live for Jesus you will live for something else. If you live for a career and you don’t do well it may punish you all of your life, and you will feel
like a failure. If you live for your children and they don’t turn out right you could be absolutely in torment because you feel worthless as a person.”
“If Jesus is your center and Lord and you fail Him, he will forgive you. Your career can’t die for your sins. You might say, ‘If I were a Christian, I’d be going around pursued by guilt all the time!’ But we all are pursued by
guilt because we must have an identity and there must be some standard to live up to by which we get that identity. Whatever you base your life on–you have to live up to that. Jesus is the one Lord you can live for who
died for you–who breathed his last for you. Does that sound oppressive?”
“Everybody has to live for something. Whatever that something is becomes ‘Lord of your life,’ whether you think of it that way or not. Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive Him, will fulfill you completely, and if
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