Over at Desiring God, I have contributed an article called, “What Do We Do With Our Slavery-Affirming Theological Heroes?”

When I read the works of men like James P. Boyce and Jonathan Edwards, I am amazed at the depth of their biblical knowledge and the keenness of their personal application. At the same time, I am astounded that these theological giants could justify the owning of slaves, support slavery as a system, and conform to the racial prejudice common in their day.

John Piper is right: “One of the central cadences of the gospel walk is the breaking down of ethnic hostilities and suspicions, and the impulse of unity and harmony” (Bloodlines, 175). So how is it possible to believe the gospel and articulate so clearly the doctrine of justification by faith alone, yet miss how this doctrine severs the root of racism and ethnocentrism forever? Even more, how can one’s life be so out of step with one’s theology? Here are some things to keep in mind as we seek to learn from the good and the bad we see in our fathers in the faith.

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In June, the Food and Drug Administration announced that, beginning next year, cigarette packs will have graphic pictures plastered on them.

Rotting teeth and gums, people hooked up to breathing machines, a corpse, blackened lungs – these grisly images are the newest attempt by the government to curb smoking. Federal Law will require the warning labels to take up half of the pack, on both sides, by the end of 2012.

Are tobacco companies worried? Not really. Even though the FDA estimates that 213,000 people will stop smoking in 2013, the tobacco companies estimate that their loss of revenue will be less than one percent.

Who is right? The tobacco companies or the FDA?

I’m afraid the tobacco companies are right. Their leaders recognize something about human nature that the FDA does not: Unhealthy behavior cannot be eradicated by merely pointing to the consequences.

The problem of addiction goes much deeper than a warning label. And though the FDA is commendably seeking to put an end to a destructive habit that leads to the premature deaths of thousands of people each year, it is naive to think that grisly images will deter a large number of smokers.

The Church and the “Grisly Label” Approach

Too many times in our churches, when we talk about sin, we share the assumption of the FDA: that people, when given enough information, will make rational, healthy decisions.

Not so.

Sin is irrational. It doesn’t make sense. That’s the whole nature of sinfulness – it goes against the reality of the world we live in. It goes against the grain of our intended submission to the One who has created us.

We might be able to appeal to a person’s willpower to stop engaging in destructive habits. And through common grace, some people may indeed get up the nerve to stop a bad habit.

But we are foolish to think that most people are destroying themselves because they don’t know better. The truth is, we often do know better, and yet we continue on the road to destruction.

Though we know that sin is deep-rooted and irrational, we often act as if sin’s consequences will be the big deterrent to bad behavior. So in youth groups across America, we pass out nasty pictures showing the effects of STDs and tell kids, This is what will happen if you have sex. In marriage seminars, we tell the sad stories of men who lost their families because of a porn addiction, a sexual exploit, or a burst of anger.

We Are Silly Sinners

Now don’t get me wrong. I think we should remind people of sin’s consequences. It is crouching at the door. It has the desire to master us. Be sure your sin will find you out. And of course, we tell a little child to obey or else face punishment (a swift hand to the backside, a time-out, grounding, etc.). One of the ways we learn good behavior from bad behavior is by recognizing that our choices have consequences.

But we are foolish if we think that life change will be rooted in rationality. It’s simply not so. We are silly sinners, engaging in activities we know are destructive to our bodies and souls. Yet somehow we are deceived into thinking we are special, that we will escape judgment. And no matter how many friends die of lung cancer or how many friends contract sexually-transmitted diseases… no matter how many marriages break up because of porn or how many relationships end because of anger, we continue to sin, willfully and (worse) knowingly.

Scared by the Law; Changed by the Gospel

Speaking of the consequences of sinful behavior is good. It’s what the law of God does. It can scare us into temporary obedience. But even as it reveals sinful behavior, it can’t remove and replace a sinful heart.

Grisly images may warn us against the consequences of a bad habit, but they won’t change the heart of a smoker. Only the gospel can change a heart.

What the FDA doesn’t realize (and what many evangelicals forget too) is that sin is a worship-issue. Our destructive behaviors are not just behaviors. They are a symptom of a deeper problem, a root cause – idolatry. Our affections are elsewhere. Our behavior follows our affections. And only the gospel can change the affections to the point that behavior follows.

Guest Blogger: Joel is a graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary and is preparing for ordination in the Presbyterian Church of America. His ministry focus is the Arabic-speaking world, and he writes about life, the gospel, and the books he’s reading at http://joelws.com.

“Everyone looks for an area into which he can throw himself completely, in which what is unique in his life can come to its own” (Johan Herman Bavinck, The Riddle of Life, 58).

Johan Herman Bavinck was a Dutch missionary to Indonesia who lived from 1895-1964. After his 20-year missionary career, he returned to the Netherlands to teach theology, but throughout both of those aspects of his ministry, he constantly reflected on how it is that people simultaneously are surrounded by God’s revelation and yet rebel against it. What is perhaps surprising is that when we see his diagnosis of the problems of the human heart in his own day—a century ago—we may recognize something of the problems that afflict the human heart in our own times.

He wrote The Riddle of Life to address exactly that issue. In chapters 9-11 he addresses the idols of the human heart. He begins his discussion of that topic with the quote above, which argues that built into the human heart is the desire to serve something, to “throw himself completely” into something. I realized the truth of this when I found myself screaming—sometimes in anger, sometimes in frustration, sometimes with joy—at my television as I watched my team play in the NBA playoffs this year. We want to be “all about” something. But of course, while God made us to serve himself, we twist that desire into service of the things that he has created. He highlights three areas in which we commonly create idols for ourselves: money, honor, and pleasure.

Money

“Money,” Bavinck says, “has a romantic glow about it” (62). Money gives such great possibilities—of a better life, of finer things, of more dazzling places—and great security in the face of a changing world. Even beyond that, though, “money is not merely something that you have, but something that you are” (61). When these things come to characterize our attitude towards money, we have fallen into what Bavinck describes as a “narrow desire” for money—an idolatrous desire—as opposed to a “broad desire” for money—the simple desire to have what is needful to feed one’s family and take care of the responsibilities that god has given us.

Now certainly, we all recognize that money is ultimately nothing that important. A green version of Ben Franklin is basically just paper to which society has given value. But because of the possibilities and security it represents, we tend to make it into something more. We make it into a god, but “it is a false god” and “in its deepest essence it is a liar” (64). It is when we come near to Jesus that we recognize our desire for money to be what is—a desire for God that has been twisted into something of our own making.

Honor

The second idol that Bavinck discusses is that of honor, the desire for praise from men. There’s a sense in which this is quite natural. We are made for relationships, for community, and encouraging words are an integral part of our relationships. Indeed, there are many honorable causes for us to work for in this life, and we want to do well in them. But Bavinck illustrates how easy it is to turn that desire from a desire that is ultimately aimed at the message, the mission, or the cause into a desire for approbation for ourselves.

Certainly, different people succumb to this in different ways. Some people are extremely confident, exuding an air of nonchalance toward the opinions and praise of others. But hidden within that very confidence is the assumption that people will generally love what one has to say. Others are not confident at all, and they are constantly wishing for the praise of others, timidly doing only what will gain them acceptance. But both can recognize the idolatrous desire for honor at one particular moment: when they grow jealous upon hearing someone else do or say something better than themselves in the service of the same cause. That is a dead giveaway that the desire for honor has grown into idolatry.

Pleasure

The final idol that Bavinck mentions is that of pleasure, by which he means the enjoyment that we may receive from any number of activities in life. However, he makes a very perceptive note: in his day (the early to mid-20th century), work and pleasure were increasingly divorced from one another. Whereas at many times the enjoyment one received from work was a real pleasure, more and more pleasure has been conceived of as gratification from something into which we must put no effort (participation in sports being a notable exception to this). The sad result of this is twofold. First, work is viewed as a horrible monotony with no real purpose, and secondly, pleasure, because it is divorced from what God has called us to do, can rarely be increased. “In the world of gratification,” Bavinck says, “1 plus 1 is never 2, but always less than two” (78). Pleasure is always limited and never satisfying, and yet it is a great idol of the human heart.

Fleeing Idols

Having identified the idols, Bavinck offers some encouraging words on how to fight idolatry, and it is with these thoughts that I will conclude:

Struggling one, you can live only if you begin with a quiet trust that you are living in a meaningful universe which was conceived and made by the eternal Father. It is possible only if you repose yourself on the confidence that He has given you your existence, your talents and your abilities, and that you have nothing more to do in the place where He has put you than quietly to shine and to serve. If you thus believe that the Father is behind everything and in everything, then you no longer need these three—money, honor, pleasure. Then you can go on your way like a child. Then you have the only true and high ideal of life that is worth the trouble to live for, namely the purpose which the Father has granted you the capabilities to complete. (81)

Tim Challies recently reviewed a biography of A.W. Tozer that describes the sad state of Tozer’s family life. Challies writes:

These strange inconsistencies abound. Tozer saw his wife’s gifts for hospitality and encouraged her in them; yet he disliked having visitors in his own home. He preached about the necessity of Christian fellowship within the family of Christ; yet he refused to allow his family or his wife’s family to visit their home. For every laudable area of his life there seemed to exist an equal and opposite error. This study in opposites leaves for a fascinating picture of a man who was used so greatly by God, even while his life had such obvious sin.

Tozer’s example reminded me of Cornelius Plantinga’s description of sin as parasite:

“In general, good and evil grow together, intertwine around each other, and grow out of each other in remarkable and complicated ways.

• Martin Luther: “one of the three or four most prominent Christians after Paul, a doughty champion of the gospel of race and a ghastly anti-Semite who wanted his readers to break down Jewish homes and house their occupants in stables.”
• Martin Luther King, Jr: “one of the noblest and most eminent Americans of the twentieth century adulterated his marriage and plagiarized some of the work that made his reputation.”
• Thomas Jefferson: “held slaves.”
• King David: “a great and godly and wicked man whose name has been blessed by centuries of Jews and Christians.”

Observing character ironies of these kinds, we naturally conclude that human beings are inexpressibly complex creatures in whom great good and great evil often cohabit, sometimes in separate and well-insulated rooms and sometimes in an intimacy so deep and twisted and twined that we never get to see the one moral quality without the other.”

- Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be : A Breviary of Sin (79-80).

In all the salacious news reporting about the scandal surrounding Tiger Woods, I recall hearing a sports lover bemoan the consequences that Tiger’s fall would have on golf. For many golf fans, Tiger is golf. Even those who do not watch golf on TV recognize and appreciate that Tiger is a very gifted athlete.

But what will happen to golf if Tiger does not return? How will Tiger’s adultery affect golf fans in the U.S.?

I fear the effects will be long-lasting. Tiger’s unwillingness to deprive himself of fleeting passions will unintentionally deprive his fans of the joy that comes from watching him play.

Pop superstar Whitney Houston has recently restarted a career that was on hold through most of the past decade due to years of drug abuse. A few months ago, she was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah called Houston’s voice “a national treasure” and asked her if she feared she had lost the gift. Oprah’s question implied that God had entrusted to Whitney “the voice,” and that drug abuse may have stolen that treasure from the nation.

In her response, Whitney seemed oblivious to the thought that her voice was given to her for others. And unfortunately, despite her recent sales comeback, Houston’s voice is nothing compared to what it was in the early 1990′s. Years of drug abuse have left her with a mere echo of her earlier talent.

These two examples remind us that sin leads to the squandering of God’s gifts.

The parable of the prodigal son emphasizes this idea of squandering in great detail. When the younger son asks for his inheritance, the father surprisingly obliges. The prodigal received his share of cattle, land, and food. “Not many days later,” the text says he “gathered everything together,” implying that he sold off all his father’s stuff at cheap prices so that he could hightail it out of town.

Sin always leads to the squandering of the Father’s good gifts.

The Evil One is not content merely to hold people in spiritual bondage and lead them to hell. He wants to diminish even the contributions they make to the common grace we benefit from in society.

In Satan’s world of darkness, it’s not enough to destroy Houston’s soul or expose Tiger’s lust. He wants to rob Tiger’s fans of their joy in watching him play golf, or rob the nation of Whitney Houston’s voice.

Sin always affects more than the individual who commits the offense. Whenever we sin, we are consciously or unconsciously affecting those around us. We are robbing those around us of the particular gifts that God has given to us. The pastor who commits adultery not only affects his family by losing his ministry. He squanders his gifts and deprives future generations of what could have been a legacy of faithful preaching and teaching.

Satan not only wants our heart; he wants our hands. He wants to limit our contributions to the world by killing and destroying us, while also stealing from those who might benefit from our lives.

The good news is… there is a prodigal God who lavishes grace at a rate faster than we can squander his gifts. When we come home empty-handed, we are ushered into loving arms.

Here’s an email I recently received from a friend:

Trevin,

I have a question for you concerning some readings and discussions in class at my seminary.

Recently, we have discussed the topic of Original Sin in one of my classes. One of my professors doesn’t believe it to be biblical and is sharply critical of how it seems to condone thoughtless actions and attitudes towards others outside the church (although any theology can seem to condone wrong actions towards others. I believe it depends more on the people in this sense, although the theology has an effect). Many in the class disagree. I’ve been leaning away from Original Sin for a while, but I want some perspective on it outside of my seminary.

The view (and the one I lean towards) is that people are not inherently evil. We are all good, but a corrupted sort of good. We make mistakes, we drop the atom bomb, we create Hitler’s, but we aren’t evil, although there are some pretty radically terrible people out there.

This of course makes us wonder about Christ. Why did he die on the cross if we are already good (kinda)? In the readings we are discussing, I would say it points us toward the cross serving a different purpose than we might suppose in the theology of Original Sin…

The cross of Christ is a call and recovery. A call for us to die and live again as the imago Christi. A recovery of truer and more real humanity. Following Christ is a deepening of our humanity, the way God intended us to be in the garden.

My question is: What do you think about all this? I’m asking because I think you will give me a balanced perspective I can bring to my mind and to class discussion. What is your opinion of Original Sin? True, wrong, flawed? Do you have a different view altogether?

My Response

First off, let me affirm you in asking this question. When you say you want some perspective outside of your seminary, I am encouraged. (I’m encouraged when people at my seminary do the same.) It’s important to get perspective outside of one’s immediate circle. Even if you do wind up agreeing with your professor that the doctrine of original sin is unbiblical, at least you will have wrestled through it yourself and not just accepted the teaching outright.

That said, I disagree strongly with your professor on this subject and think that the denial of original sin causes more problems than it solves.

Scripture

The ultimate reason that I believe in the doctrine is because I believe the Scriptures teach it. Exegetically speaking, I don’t think you can properly interpret Romans 5 without seeing something like original sin. Paul does not explicitly explain how Adam’s sin and humanity’s sins are connected, but it is hard to understand Romans 5 without seeing that Paul is presupposing a link.

I admit that the doctrine we call “original sin” is a theological construct. No passage comes right out and says “Christians believe in original sin.” Like the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of original sin is constructed by putting together important passages that are best understood through the lens of original sin.

But the fact that we have this theological construct does not mean it’s unbiblical. Instead, the doctrine provides a synthesis that best explains what the Bible says.

I suppose you are familiar with the biblical passages that seem to support the traditional understanding. I won’t take the time to list them all. There are other good reasons to believe in original sin.

Church History

I believe church history got this one right, especially regarding the debates between Augustine and Pelagius. Church history is not infallible, but one should not dismiss quickly the teachings of the church through the centuries.

There are times the church has proven very fallible (think medieval Roman Catholicism, indulgences, infant baptism etc.). On this issue, however, the overall consensus of the church has been right. The Western Church speaks of original sin and total depravity as twin sides. (I understand that the Western explanation differs slightly from Eastern Orthodoxy, but both wings of the church agree at a substantive level that every single individual is a sinner and has a sin nature.)

Beautiful Truth

I believe that original sin is a beautiful truth. (Not that sin is beautiful, but that the doctrine – precisely because it is true – has beautiful facets that deserve consideration.) Upon first looking at it, it seems rather stark. We’re sinners. We are depraved. We are born with a corrupt nature. But I am encouraged by many aspects of this teaching.

1. “Original Sin” gives hope to losers

Let me quote  from Alan Jacobs’ marvelous book, Original Sin: A Cultural History:

“The Pelagian good news is that at every moment you are free to obey; the (unstated, hidden) bad news is that every moment you are equally free to sin, and at the instant of choice a lifetime of strict spiritual discipline will avail you nothing…”

“Pelagianism, like many zealous movements of moral and spiritual reform, writes a recipe for profound anxiety. Its original word of encouragement (“You can do it!”) immediately yields to the self-doubting question: ‘But am I doing it?’”

“By contrast, Augustine’s emphasis on the universal depravity of human nature – seen by so many then and now as an insult to human dignity – is curiously liberating. I once heard a preacher encourage his listeners to begin a prayer with the following words: ‘Lord, I am the failure that you always knew I would be.’ It is the true Augustinian note. Pelagianism is a creed for heroes, but Augustine’s emphasis on original sin and the consequent absolute dependence of every one of us on the grace of God gives hope to the waverer, the backslider, the slacker, the putz, the schlemiel. We’re all in the same boat as Mister Holier-than-Thou over there, saved only by the grace that comes to us in Holy Baptism…”

2. “Original Sin” puts us all on the same level before God.

During his preaching ministry, evangelist George Whitefield became friends with Selina, the Countess of Huntingdon. But his preaching on sin – precisely the truth that we are all affected by original sin – repulsed her. She wrote him:

“It is monstrous to be told you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting; and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiment so much at variance with high rank and good breeding.”

This kind of egalitarianism is what is so beautiful about original sin. The common people who heard Whitefield’s preaching wept at his teaching about sin. Why? Because Whitefield told them that, though they were sinners, God loved them. He called them to repentance, just as he calls everyone else to repentance, even the king and queen. The message of repentance is for all.

So, in the end, it’s not “original goodness” that makes us value other human beings, but “original sin”, because it levels us and puts us all on the same playing field. We’re all cut down to size, from the prince to the pauper, the rich to the poor, the educated to the illiterate.

3. “Original Sin” gives us tools to respect others.

Tim Keller makes a good point. The doctrine of original sin (together with the doctrine of the imago Dei) gives us the tools with which to respect people.

Because we believe that the image of God is in every human being, we know that they are better than their wrong beliefs. And because everyone is a sinner, we know that we Christians are worse than our right beliefs. People who are wrong about Jesus are not as bad as they could be. And we who are right about Jesus are not as good as we could be.

Original sin does not deny that we were created with the image of God. It only says that the image is tainted or shattered. Original sin does not deny the value of humanity.

4. “Original Sin” explains the need for Christ’s death

I agree that following Christ is a deepening of our humanity. We become more human as we grow in sanctification because Christ is the True Human – the greatest reflection of all God intends for humanity.

The problem with excising original sin from this picture is that it neutralizes the power of the cross. It makes the cross a call to new life, but not something that actually accomplishes anything. It’s a call to new life, rather than a gift of new life. The cross says, “Be better.”

For those who deny original sin, the cross is about making (kinda) good people better. In the traditional understanding, the cross is about making dead people live.

I need God to swoop in and change me and save me himself. I can’t save myself. I am so wicked. I know my heart. I know my thoughts. The last thing I need is a call. I need to be revived first and then set about to new tasks.

So I take great comfort in original sin. It rings true with the biblical witness and with my human experience.

We are rebellious sinners, but God loves us anyway. That’s a lot better than saying, “We aren’t really as bad as we think we are, and God does love us.” God’s love for me is greater and more impressive because I know how bad I am than by my making myself seem better.