Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Or the Speck in your brother’s eye

For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.1

We make our sin too small and too large. We make so little of it that we can’t understand why it would be so offensive to God – he should just get over it, what’s with eternal damnation. The gospel is unnecessary. And we make so much of it that it becomes unforgivable – our shame convinces us that no one could, or should, accept us if they knew the real us. The gospel is not enough. The depravity of sin is rooted in the holiness of God. When we make little of our sin, we make little of God. This is our psychological tendency, we feel ashamed, and respond by making God little hoping that this will lessen our shame. This move does not merely fail, it worsens our position. Our conscience is the source of our shame and we have not salved our conscience by diminishing God. We have only ensured that the god who remains is too small to forgive us. Leaving us alone in a fight against ourselves and our innate, accurate understanding that we have not lived up to our own standards, much less the standards of holiness to which we know we are called.

I do not intend to offer a systematic theory of morality. No categorical imperative. Rather, I intend only to offer a few thoughts on morality. It is worth spending a brief time considering ethics because each person is a moral agent, accountable for their actions; and because a philosophy of parenting is inherently part of a moral philosophy. We are exploring moral questions: what does it mean to be a good parent, what ought to be the goals of a parent, and what methods are allowed in pursuit of those goals. The following sections will unpack these claims:

Morality is objective. I don’t get to define good and evil for myself, they are defined by a God who is beyond me.

Morality is pervasive. No action is amoral. No choice is gray. Every action is either good or evil.

Morality is personal. Because God is a person and he will judge each person. What a particular person ought to do in a particular situation cannot be fully derived from abstract principles applicable to every person in every situation.

Morality is relational. Righteousness is being right with others. Sin is not the breaking of a rule, but the breaking of a relationship.

Morality involves the soul, not merely the deeds of the body. Most actions are not in themselves sinful, but rather are judged based upon the nature of the soul that bore those actions as fruit.

Whereof One Cannot Speak

So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics. Propositions can express nothing that is higher. … It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental. … Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.2

There is a chasm between is and ought that can only be crossed by the gods. Questions of good and evil are not questions about what is but rather about what ought to be done. Morality is therefore not discoverable through science or philosophy, because those disciplines can, at their best, only describe the world as it is. There is no way to logically derive what ought to be done from what is. We can devise clever sounding ethical systems – treat other people like you want to be treated – but it is not possible to logically prove an ethical claim or the validity of an ethical system.

Tigers are orange with black stripes, but they hunt in environments that are primarily green rather than orange. So tigers ought3 to be green (with dark brown stripes). Through study, we can discover reasons why orange may provide a camouflaging effect from the dichromatic vision of deer, and why mammals may lack the genetic instructions required to produce green fur. But no amount of study will reveal that it is evil for tigers to be green, or morally good for tigers to be vegetarian. Likewise we can discover that an act will knowingly cause the unjustified death of a person, but we cannot discover that such an act is evil. We can form an hypothesis that orange may help camouflage tigers and then devise experiments to measure how effectively the most common prey of tigers are able to distinguish orange from the surrounding environment. But there is no experiment to run, no phenomena to measure that affirms or refutes the claim that murder is evil.

Science and logic silently fail when applied to good and evil. We can talk about good and evil in ways that sound sensible, just like we can say sensible sounding things about the golden mountain. But when we start talking about ought, we stop talking about what is. And when we stop talking about what is, the rules of science and logic go out the window. It is nonsense to apply the law of non-contradiction to claims about good and evil.4 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

If ethics cannot be put into words, every ethical sentence written here is nonsense. We cannot speak ethics, we can only repeat what we have heard from the gods. All valid moral language is heresay. I know that his command is eternal life, so the things that I speak, I speak just as the Father has told me.5 Even the Son, who himself crossed the chasm, presents his ethics as quotation. The gods may cross the chasm because in their nature they transcend what is — every other being exists dependently, createdly, while God simply is what he is;6 and because the gods hold the final sword — fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell.7

Behold the Kindness and Severity of God

I know that his command is eternal life, so the things that I speak, I speak just as the father has told me.8

We want morality to be grounded in something other than arbitrary divine command. Oughts ought to flow out the unchanging character of God. Or from a design for human flourishing – God created us so he must know what is best for us, and his commands must be for our good. It feels offensive to say it is evil merely because God commands thou shalt not. So we tell stories. Bacon is unclean because undercooked pork carries parasites – so this apparently arbitrary command was actually a public health ordinance. And, implicitly, God decided they were too dim to be taught the principles of food safety directly. But after Peter saw pigs in a blanket, it was clear we had learned how to cure meat well enough to deserve bacon. We may laugh at thin slices of pork, but the bitter taste lingers when we see slavery permitted, and sometimes commanded, and never see it sufficiently condemned.

God is allowed to give commands that are arbitrary and contrary to human well-being. The appearance of arbitrariness is not an appearance that needs saving.9 It may be the reality. Take your son, your only son whom you love, and sacrifice him to me on the mountain where I show you. Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.10 God may command what he wants. His commands do not become binding only when we find them reasonable. And his purposes ought not be human well-being but rather his pleasure and glory. Our well-being is always a derived consideration – does he find pleasure in our well-being, or pleasure in our destruction: what if he endures with great patience the objects of his wrath.11

Abraham did not obey a rule on Moriah. There was no rule. The rule, when it arrived at Sinai centuries later, would forbid exactly this. Abraham had faith in a person. The command was arbitrary; the commander was known. Because I said so is not the failure of analysis; it is the honest admission that the reason lives on the far side of a chasm we cannot cross, and that what is invited is not comprehension but trust.

Gods may cross the chasm between is and ought for several reasons. 1) Because in their nature they transcend what is. The existence of all other beings is dependent, created. For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for him.12 Whereas God must be self-existent – I am that I am.13 2) Because the ends pursued by commands from the gods transcend . 3) Because gods hold the final sword. I will tell you who you should fear, fear him who after he has killed has the authority to cast into hell.14

I am that I am

We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.15

Silence the God who speaks across the chasm and only two grounds for morality remain. The first is power: an act is wrong because whoever holds the hammer says it is. The second is competing freedoms. You hear this in America’s founding documents: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness; a bill of rights. The authors understood themselves to be transcribing rules built into nature, not proposing good ideas for a country. But none of those rights is absolute; each is bounded where its exercise collides with mine — your free press against my fair trial. The whole scheme reduces to a negotiated truce among appetites: I may do as I please up to the point where it obstructs you doing as you please, terms enforceable by whoever holds the hammer, which returns us to the first grounding wearing better clothes.

The Bible does not talk this way. Morality is not a truce and not a hammer; it is an ordering of loves. I am the LORD your God; you shall have no other gods before me — the first command is not the threat of a hammer nor a boundary on your freedom, but a claim on your affection. And every command after it is derivative: love properly prioritized, each person and each assigned patch of the garden valued at its true worth, with the One whose worth is intrinsic and unearned — I am that I am — at the center. Morality is objective not because there exists an impersonal moral law hanging in the void, but because there exists a person outside of you whose worth and worthiness is beyond measurement. Good and evil are not matters of private interpretation.16 You do not get to do what is right in your own eyes.17 Because there is only one who is worthy of your worship, and your every thought is more or less an expression of or desecration of that worship.

But suppose you did get to define good for yourself. Suppose the objectivists are wrong and you are permitted to legislate your own personal morality. You would still stand condemned. If you commanded yourself, you would disobey yourself. I cannot keep my own promises. I do not meet my own standards. I am not good enough for me. The demand for autonomy imagines that self-rule would end in acquittal, when every honest person already possesses decades of evidence that the self is the one judge before whom we have never once won a case. Our inner sense of justice is warped — we know this not because it condemns us too harshly but because it does not condemn us nearly enough, and still it condemns us. Subjectivism is not too easy a standard. It is merely a smaller courtroom with the same verdict.18

WWJD

Go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.19

That cannot be a command for everyone. If all sell all they have, to whom do they sell it. Someone is the poor. It was a command for one rich young man on one afternoon, and he is judged by it – you are not. Or rather, you will not be judged by his command but by yours.

The sinfulness of an action cannot be judged by analyzing the action in isolation. The widow gave two mites; from nearly anyone else the same coins would have been contempt, and from her it was the largest gift the treasury received that day. The people passed their children through the fire to Molech and were condemned for a thing so evil it had never entered God’s mind;20 Abraham raised the knife over his son on the altar and it was credited to him as righteousness. God gave his Son to the fire of his own wrath and it was righteousness to the world. Thou shalt not murder — take your son, whom you love. Thou shalt not lie — I will be a lying spirit in the mouths of his prophets.21 Thou shalt not make a graven image — make a serpent of bronze, and whoever looks upon it will live.22 It is foolish to say things like “murder is wrong” and believe you have said something precise. Not because each of us decides good and evil for ourselves, but because the top of the moral hierarchy is not a principle, it is a Person. There is one right way to live. One right word to say in this moment, to this person. One right way to cut this avocado. Morality is objective and absolute and it is specific to you, because it is defined for you by a person who knows you, personally and entirely.

This means you are not called to be Jesus. Perfection does not mean doing whatever Jesus would do if he were incarnated into your position; he was not, you are. And the call and assignments on you are yours. It also means that you cannot decide someone else’s assignment. What God commanded the rich young ruler, he did not command you; what he is healing first in your neighbor, he has not disclosed to you. Special revelation is real and not transferable. The purpose of the law was never to equip you to judge others. It was to equip you to judge yourself, and it does that job devastatingly well.

Am I My Brother’s Keeper

Man does not see what the LORD sees, for man sees what is visible, but the LORD sees the heart.23

The moral weight of your action is located in you — in your desires, beliefs, choices — and not in the effects your action produces in other people. It is sin if you believed it was sin.24 It is sin if the goal was wrong. It is sin if the method was wrong, even when the goal was good. It is sin even when it works out for the best, because everything is always made to work out for the best.25 That redemption is his doing and no credit to you.26 The why of an act matters: I killed by accident, I killed to prevent worse, I killed because I hated. The how of an act matters: I killed in a way that prolonged suffering; I killed publicly.27 Two parents restrict a child’s access to the internet; one is guarding a sheep and the other is guarding a possession, and heaven does not judge them the same though the outward appearances are identical.

And the converse: a virtuous act is not made virtuous by the response it happens to provoke, nor made futile by the response it fails to provoke. But an act designed to provoke — a manipulation — is judged for its provocational intent, whatever fruit it bears. Am I my brother’s keeper? No. God, you are; and as your servant, so am I; and the difference between keeping and managing is the at the core of the questions we are exploring here. Pharaoh will harden his heart and will not listen to you — Moses is warned of this before he begins, and he is not commanded to workshop his presentation. The outcome was never assigned to Moses. The obedience was.

This is not an academic exercise: sin is not ultimately the breaking of a rule. If sin were lawlessness merely — breaking the posted regulations of the latest Baal — then I have no sin problem worthy of the name and no need of redemption; I need a lawyer and a loophole. No law was ever given that could impart life.28 The law is a tutor,29 and the goal of the tutor is a Person. Sin is the breaking of a relationship — it severs connection with the only person in the universe who can give you life. And justice, accordingly, is not the levying of penalties but the restoration of what was broken: righteousness as being right with. Which is why forgiveness is the harder miracle. What is easier to say: your sins are forgiven, or get up and walk? The paralysis was the smaller problem. The walking was only the receipt, proof that the harder work had been done.

The Speck in Your Brother’s Eye

Only the lost are saved. Only the sinner is justified. Only the dead can rise from the dead. … Some men are only virtuous enough to forget that they are sinners without being wretched enough to remember how much they need the mercy of God.30

When you are enslaved, every action you take — no matter how confidently logic promises it will lead to freedom — serves only to wind the chain tighter. You must be made free; only then can the chains be loosed; and even then we cling to them, the way Israel longed for Egypt from the far side of the sea. While you are enchained, what hope do you have of freeing your child? Your movements tangle your chains with theirs. You cannot see clearly enough to tell which links are yours, which are theirs, and which you have wrapped around them yourself with your own loving hands. The blind leading the blind.

The work is this: identify the lies we believe about ourselves, God, and others; counter those lies with what is true; let the truth soak into the places the lies had colonized; live accordingly. That is slow work, and God himself does it slowly. I will not drive them out in a single year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts multiply against you — little by little I will drive them out, as you increase enough to fill the land.31 He does not deal with all of our sin at once. He does not require that we fathom the depths of our depravity as a precondition of walking with him. He frees and heals in the order and at the pace that he chooses to fill the vacated space.

It is not your job to be their judge — Son of man, can these bones live? You know, Lord.32 It is not your job to be their priest or their confessor; they owe you no penance and do not require your absolution. There are moments when we are genuinely required to help a brother with the speck in his eye — the Text is not naive about this; it gives procedures and occasions33 — but every one of those passages hands the log-carrier a mirror first, and every one of them breathes restoration, not verdict. You cannot decide what is broken in another person, any more than you can decide how to fix them. You can only invite them to look at themselves, and then allow themselves to be seen and healed by the one who sees souls.

When someone you love is deep in sin and its wages, often the only thing that can or need be said is: that sucks. I still love you. God still loves you. Let’s walk through this. It sounds like too little. It is nearly the whole of the church’s work — which is not to suffer as the righteous but to bear sins with sinners. To pray for the men driving the nails, to intercede for the jeering crowds, not to be nailed or jeered. We were once foolish ourselves, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, but the kindness of God appeared.34

Between Good and Evil. Morality is pervasive.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice. – Thoreau Walden p. 194

Every moment I have to choose what to do. At each moment, the set of alternative actions from which to choose is practically infinite. God in His transcendence wills precisely that action which I will have chosen. God in His immanence wills precisely that action which I ought to choose. “Ought” as in that action which is morally perfect - that singular action that is fully obedient to God’s revelation generally and specifically to me; fully expresses affection for (worships) God, myself and all other beings in proportion to their true worth; and fully reflects the truth of who I am and the gifts I have been given. My work is to pursue the understanding, wisdom and self-control required to see, choose and act as I ought. When I fail to choose/act as I ought, God in His transcendent immanence effectually acts to fully redeem my failures and accomplishes an end that is morally perfect.

Every action is either sin or not sin. There is no gray, no sliding scale. But the line between sin and not sin is not drawn down at thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie. The line is drawn in the heavens: love God (fully know and fully express the truth in worship) with everything I am, and love my neighbor as myself. Which means that my every action is sin. I can sin in ways that move me and people around me towards God, or ways that move us away from Him. And regardless of which way I’m currently sinning, I have the relentless power of the blood redeeming all to His glory. There aren’t better or worse sins. There are better or worse ways to sin each sin. Our goal may rightly be perfection, but our hope is to sin better today than we sinned yesterday. Are we excused from choosing the better because it still falls short? May it never be. The call is to perfection, to be holy as God is holy. We are freed from the delusion that our righteousnesses are ever more than filthy rags. Freed to show grace, patience and perseverance to others and to ourselves. Freed to forget what lies behind and press on towards the upward call.

But note, grace does not make sin safe.35 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Breaking his law is not simply a foolish mistake, a minor character flaw. By our words and actions we lie against the truth of who he is.

Fallen Angels

Only the lost are saved. Only the sinner is justified. Only the dead can rise from the dead… Some men are only virtuous enough to forget that they are sinners without being wretched enough to remember how much they need the mercy of God.36

When you are enslaved, every action you take, no matter how strongly logic claims it will lead you to freedom, serves only to entangle you more in your chains. You must be made free. And only then can the chains be loosed. The chains of our captivity become comfortable. We cling to them even after being freed – how often did the Israelites beg to return to Egypt while they wandered in freedom. … While you are enchained, what hope can you have of freeing your child. Your actions entangle your chains and their own. You can’t see clearly enough to distinguish between the chains they wear and the ones you wear and have wrapped around them. The blind leading the blind.

If sin is simply lawlessness, breaking the rules of the latest Baal, then I don’t have a sin problem or need of redemption. If the motivation offered for following the rules is the hope that death won’t be the end of this life, then we are too be most pitied. Our fear is not that this life will end, but that, whether it ends or not, it is meaningless and empty. An eternal, hopeless, unsatisfied existence is infinitely terrifying. No law has been given that is able to impart life.37 The rules are not the fullness. The letter is not the spirit. The rules are a teacher that guide us to Christ.38 The point of the law is the person of God. Sin is not breaking a rule – it is breaking a relationship. Sin severs our connection with the only person in the universe who can bring us life and satisfaction.

You do all the evil that you are capable of.39

God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best.40

Obedience produces joy and peace. John’s love - knowledge - obedience. If you love me you will obey me.

There is a difference between morally perfect and morally blameless/acceptable, between a choice which doesn’t merit condemnation and a choice which is good. There is a force of ought behind moral perfection – I ought to always and only do that which is best. From the set of available choices, I am capable of identifying some as my best – the best I can do right now, given what I know about myself, God, others, my assignments. But rarely does my best narrow the field of choice to a single option. How to choose between my bests. Is there a larger set of acceptable options around my bests such that I could choose poorly without choosing wrongly, choosing evil.

Making the world a better place

The moral value of your actions is found in you – in your desires / choices / actions / beliefs. Not in the affects that those actions have in other people. Mens Rea. It’s sin if you thought it was sin. It’s sin if the goal was wrong. It’s sin if method was wrong, even if the goal was good. It’s sin even if it works out for the best (because everything is always made to work out for the best).

A virtuous act is not virtuous because of how the other responded to it. But a manipulative act, an act that is intended to provoke a specific response from an other is judged for the provocational intent. Am I my brother’s keeper – no You are, and as your servant I am. Pharoah will harden his heart and not hear you – so you should be more creative in your presentation.

One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Morality is Personal.

There is only one way to be good. Only one right way to live. One right way to dress. One right word to say in that moment. One right way to cut an avocado. A person is only their own person because they continue to be sinners. When the perfect comes, every person will be the same person and everything will be done rightly.

morality, like destiny, is worked out with a personal God

The sinfulness of an action cannot be judged by analyzing only the action itself. The widow gave 2 mites - for most others this would be treating God with disdain, but her act honored Him. The people passed their children through the fire to Molech and were condemned as having done that which was worse than anything God Himself could imagine. Abraham sacrificed his son in fire on the altar and it was credited to him as righteousness. God sacrificed His Son in the fire of His wrath and it was righteousness to the world. Perhaps no action in isolation, abstracted away from the people and circumstances involved can be judged morally right or wrong. Maybe one of the lessons we’re supposed to learn from the OT Law is that it’s foolish to say things like “murder is wrong”. Not because we each get to decide what is good or evil for ourselves, but because the top of the moral hierarchy is a Person and so morality is inherently relational, concrete, and personal.

Morality is a hierarchy

every act is more or less an expression of love for God. God is at top of moral hierarchy - Experiencing and responding to His love. Discerning the voice of God. Knowing assignments each moment and doing

God is at the top of the hierarchy, his merit for being the point of all existence, is unearned – it is intrinsic in his nature. I am that I am.

There’s a tendency to ground secular morality in either power or competing freedoms. The argument from power is easy - an act is wrong because the person or group with the power to punish says it is. The argument from competing rights is more nuanced. You hear it in America’s founding documents. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The bill of rights. The authors of those documents understood themselves to be writing down rules that were built into nature, not just good ideas for a country. But none of those rights are absolute, they are always limited, because your unrestricted expression of your rights could interfere with mine. For example, freedom of speech and press can conflict with the right to a fair trial if the public is convinced of guilt before the evidence is weighed in court. But I think it’s hard to argue that the Bible talks about morality as being based on competing rights. And while I can point to passages that say “obey because God will punish disobedience”, the biblical ground for morality is ordered loves. I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me. It’s not, I get to do whatever I think will make me happy up to the limit set by whoever holds the hammer. Or I get to do whatever I want unless it interferes with you doing whatever you want. Biblical morality is relational. It is my job to love myself and God and this person and that group and this assigned piece of the garden in a way that properly prioritizes, rightly values, each.

Law is made for man, not man for the Law. New covenant

Beyond Good and Evil - The Law is not a list of rules defining morally good actions and morally evil actions. Principles that we are meant to see beyond – God did not kill Cain or Moses when they murdered, even though that was the punishment that was written. The odd placement of Jesus’ teachings on divorce. Paul’s application of muzzling an Ox to teachers. What about “sin is lawlessness”. Holiness (as otherness) as becoming like God. Jesus didn’t evaluate each moment whether a potential course of action was allowed by the Law (did He? what about in the temptation of Satan), even within the hierarchy of laws, but rather knew what He ought to do in that moment as it had been taught to Him by His Father.

Not just that laws are “fuzzy” (as in it’s hard to define murder). The “why of an action matters: I killed on accident, I killed to prevent worse, I killed because I hated. The”how” of an action matters: I killed in a way that caused suffering, I killed publicly, he sought to divorce her quietly.

Forgiveness

All things are cleansed with blood.41

The evil you do deserves wrath. And you can’t make up for the evil by doing good, assuming it were possible for you to do anything good. An evil act creates division in the community. Justice = Righteousness = Reconciled = “Right with”. We good. Death is required for redemption.42

forgiving requires forgetting

What is easier to say “your sins are forgiven” or “get up a walk”. The sins was the real problem, the real disability. And to forgive or proclaim forgiveness was the harder work. The walking was proof that the harder work had been done.

Chandler: Grace does not make sin safe.

I want to say “I can’t tell someone else what is good or evil for them with the authority of God”. But I don’t want to be heard as saying “everything is permitted” (1 Cor 6:12). Nor as saying morality is subjective, up to each person to decide, as opposed to absolute. Morality is absolute and pervasive – every thought and action is either good or evil, and which it is may be discovered by you, but it is decided absolutely by God. Because the highest command is that I love God with everything that I am. Everything short of that is sin. Which means that our righteousnesses are filthy rags. … Is this hypothetical guy sinning when he has sex with another guy? Yes. His heart is filled with a thousand idolatries. In his actions and beliefs, he lies against who God is and who he himself is. Is it sin because of the gender of the person with whom he’s sleeping? I am not his judge. And I don’t have to make that judgement in order to counsel him because my counsel is on the truth and lies. God will change hearts and actions. I don’t get to decide which part of this other person He heals first.

Does special revelation trump general revelation – purpose of law is not to equip you to judge others, but to equip you to judge yourself. Thou shalt not murder (or sacrifice your children) – Take your son whom you love and sacrifice him to me. Thou shalt not lie – I will go and be a lying spirit in the mouths of the prophets. Thou shalt not make a graven image – Make a serpent and anyone that looks upon it shall be saved.

Only One is Good. There is not only one way to be perfect. Morality is objective and absolute. All of your actions are either morally good or morally evil and there is no gray. You are not your judge. Morality is objectively a Person and absolutely personal. Good is not defined by what feels good to you. Good may be different for you than others, because it is defined for you specifically by the person of God.

sin twists good, healthy things into evil. only God creates ex nihilo, evil must use what’s already there. Romans 7:13

Deal with sin by pursuing God, so spend some time discussing how to do that. Different from studying Text. Connects to “secrecy of God”.

Jesus was Jesus so that we don’t have to be. Our failures prove our need, we cannot hold others to a standard that requires them to be Jesus for others – they must be allowed to fail, to get divorced, etc.

Justice is about community. Questions of morality or equality are derivative of community, similar to Newton’s Laws being special cases of Einstein’s Relativity. Justice is not just reconciliation in the sense of “now we can be friends again”, it is making things right, restoring the world to what it would have been without the wrong.

Does a personal “offense” (someone sinned against me) create “debt”? You hurt me, so you owe me? Doesn’t feel right. By doing wrong, you brought evil, broke the “pre-existing peace, good, rightness”, and that needs to be fixed, repaired, made right, redeemed. And it seems right for you as the breaker to bear the costs of repair.

Jr’s arguments re his president who allowed a felonious sexual deviant to be a teacher/coach basketball and lied about it: epistemological - how can I know this guy is repentant and cured of that inclination to sin. Other equally qualified candidates who have not had a moral failing. If you had a moral failing and are really repentant then you wouldn’t want to have your old position back. Must be above reproach and can never be after a moral failing. – But I feel that justice is restoration. Not that you deserve or get your job back, but that you are requalified. Moses. Peter.

The church’s work, as Christ’s presence on earth, is to do the same thing Christ did: bear the sins of the world. To suffer for sinners. Not to suffer as righteous.

the saying of Rav: A man will have to give account on the judgment day of every good permissible thing which he might have enjoyed and did not.43

Our understanding of sin and redemption must be grounded in joy and life to the full, both tasted today and hoped for tomorrow.

We talk as though government is an “it” that takes from “us” and gives to “them”. But government is us. “We”, as a community, in order to be in community, agree to use our individual freedoms to, in part, advance the interests of the community. Acts 4 is not a commune or communism, it’s a microcosm of the natural order of community. The natural state of man is not a Hobbsian war of individuals. It is communal cooperation. Cain is the aberration. The Tower of Babel the perversion. The natural, healthy bent of man is to community. Scatter us across the globe and we immediately band together as much as we can.

Incorporate Other People’s Problems book into this one?

Whatever keeps you going. Whatever gets you up in the morning.44

Don’t settle for bullshit. The lies you tell yourself are the most hidden to you and most destructive. The heart is deceptive above all else.45 But if you’re going to hold onto a lie, then own it. Don’t claim to be an atheist/materialist and then pretend there’s an alternative to nihilism. Don’t accept nihilism and then claim there’s a reason to get up in the morning. Walk towards truth or own the lie, but don’t see the lie, pretend that it is the truth and change nothing.

Cannot decide what is broken in another person, any more than you can decide how you’re going to fix them. Cannot see or know. Can only help them see themselves and then allow themselves to be seen and healed.

You are not their priest, their confessor. They do not owe you penance or require your absolution.

Darkness is a harsh term, don’t you think? And yet it dominates the things I think. … It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart, but the welcome I receive with a restart. – Mumford

What are we with our little conversion, our little repentance and revising, our little ending and beginning, our changed lives? .. . It is in His conversion that we are engaged…. It is in His baptism in Jordan that we are baptized…. It is in His death on the cross that we are dead … and in His resurrection. .. that we are risen. . . . It is because this is the case .. that the awakening to repentance is the power of the Gospel, and that it has the force and depth … which are proper to it. .. . It remains for us to know that .. . we are [upheld] by the great movement which He has fulfilled. – Karl Barth

fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.46

You will not be pure again until I have satisfied my wrath on you. Ezekiel 24:13.

As the body of Christ, the church is called to do the same - to be present in public life as sinners who direct God’s judgment away from others by taking responsibility for sin through repentance. In doing so, the church faithfully witnesses to the lordship of Christ and participates in Christ’s transformation of this world. – From church and politics book on kindle

How to deal with sin?

The work we do is identify the lies we believe about ourselves, God and others; counter those lies with the truths of God; incorporate those truths into our minds and souls; commit to live according to the truth.

The Sin of others:

We are all sinners. We all have unconfessed sin. We all have sin in our lives that we don’t know is sin. Our souls are broken on the surface and in their depths. God does not require that we address all of our sin at one time, nor that we fully understand the depths of our depravity, or the far reaching death brought into the world through our sin. He works slowly, on little parts of us, and He redeems the death our sin has wrought. It is not our job to tell others their sin. It’s our job to walk with others as we both walk with Jesus, and let Him address their sin. There are situations when we are required “to judge those within the Church”, to help someone get the speck out of their eye. Those situations are decided primarily by the discernment offered by the Spirit as guided by the wisdom revealed in the Text (as in the above passages). Anytime we are dealing with other’s sin, we have to remember to be gracious, to remember that “we were once ourselves foolish, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures … but the kindness of God appeared and saved us” (Titus 3). Often the only thing that can or need be said when someone you care about is dealing with sin and death is “That sucks. I still love you. God still loves you. Let’s walk through this.” God is immeasurably kind and patient and wise. Jesus prayed for those driving nails into His hands.

  1. Romans 10: 3↩︎

  2. Wittgenstein, Tractatus↩︎

  3. as a practical matter or as a moral matter? The word “ought” slides quietly across the chasm.↩︎

  4. I withhold comment on whether it is similarly nonsense to apply the law of non-contradiction to claims about the physical world.↩︎

  5. John 12:49-50↩︎

  6. Exodus 3:14; 1 Corinthians 8:6.↩︎

  7. Luke 12:5↩︎

  8. John 12:27-50↩︎

  9. Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances.↩︎

  10. 1 Samuel 15:3↩︎

  11. Romans 9:22↩︎

  12. 1 Corinthians 8:6↩︎

  13. Exodus 3:14↩︎

  14. Luke 12:5↩︎

  15. Steven Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy for President Trump.↩︎

  16. 2 Peter 1:20↩︎

  17. Judges 21:25↩︎

  18. Romans 2:15↩︎

  19. Mark 10:21↩︎

  20. Jeremiah 32:35↩︎

  21. 1 Kings 22:22↩︎

  22. Numbers 21:8↩︎

  23. 1 Samuel 16:7↩︎

  24. Romans 14:23↩︎

  25. Romans 8:28↩︎

  26. Ephesians 2:8↩︎

  27. he resolved to divorce her quietly↩︎

  28. Galatians 3:21↩︎

  29. Galatians 3:24↩︎

  30. Merton, No Man Is an Island.↩︎

  31. Exodus 23:29-30. And see Matthew 12:43-45 for what moves into the house that is swept clean faster than it is filled.↩︎

  32. Ezekiel 37:3↩︎

  33. Matthew 18:15-17; Galatians 6:1; James 5:19-20; Luke 17:3-4.↩︎

  34. Titus 3:3-4↩︎

  35. Matt Chandler.↩︎

  36. Merton 11.4↩︎

  37. Galatians 3:21↩︎

  38. Galatians 3:24↩︎

  39. Jeremiah 3:5↩︎

  40. Merton 4.13↩︎

  41. Hebrews 9:22↩︎

  42. Hebrews 9:15↩︎

  43. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Pesachim on Judgment Day↩︎

  44. Whatever keeps you going, Donovan Woods.↩︎

  45. Jeremiah 17:9. Does the heart deceive more than anything else deceives, or does the heart deceive more than the heart does anything else?↩︎

  46. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) in Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 1980) 56.↩︎