Insufficient Grace

I had been meaning to post something under this heading for quite awhile but never really got around to it. Perhaps my thoughts were not ripe. The basic germ of the original post was that God's grace is sufficient for all, but we choose to make it insufficient. Let me explain before someone brands this as 'heretical garbage'.

My pastor recently spoke on the temptation of Adam and Eve and unpacked seven verses with wonderful clarity. 

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her and he ate.

Genesis 3:6

Three points were raised about how the woman decided to take the fruit. 

1. The tree was good for food.

2. It was a delight to the eyes.

3. The tree was desirable to make one wise.

Those three points reflect the three fronts on which we are tempted even today, by the ancient serpent, who, disempowered as he is, still revels in our failure to transcend these minefields. 

On the first point, the tree was good for food, the temptation is physical. The perceived benefit is a physical one, to meet a bodily need. The second front is emotional, appealing to our sense of poetic beauty and wonder in the world. The third is intellectual, appealing to the desire to be wiser, more mature, to know more.

It occurred to me that sins could be classified into these categories to some limited degree. A sin may not always be so purely motivated by weakness one of these fronts, often there is a blend, but perhaps in examples, this will be demonstrated more effectively.

Physical temptation is based around bodily need. It may be hunger, thirst, sexual appetite, feeling ill, and tired, or the need to be relieved from pain. The thing is, those who are engaging in sin for purely physical reasons are often ashamed of themselves, and prudish society tells them that they ought to be ashamed. The man or woman who cannot control their sexual appetite and engages in promiscuous activity is called a slut. One who cannot control their desire for alcohol is called a drunk, and the one who cannot control hunger for food is called a glutton. To admit to such addictions and to be controlled by such basal impulses is still, to some degree, regarded as the most embarrassing. In fact they are probably the least dangerous, once we look at the other two categories. Of course, alcoholism and liaisons are seldom solely physical, there is often an emotional tug to them as well.

The emotional temptations are based around what we feel is right, what we believe is good in a poetic sense. It appeals to that sense of poetic justice that comes when we hear a good story. Maybe it is a pair of star-crossed lovers who are separated by their warring families, and their deaths for romance's sake cause their houses to consider reconciliation. Robespierre being executed with the guillotine. Reading that the clan of Cao Cao, the Han usurper, is itself usurped by the Sima clan in short order. It is hard to pin down, that sense of artistic 'righteousness', going beyond what a general penal code can offer. Sometimes these impulses are less 'noble' in guise. It may manifest primarily in sins like envy, greed and wrath, to go with that catholic septet a little further. The mechanism of this front follows that of the lyrics: If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right.

The last category of intellectual sins is based around our desire for control and power, mastery and achievement. It appeals to our desire to be important, significant and celebrated. By far the one sin that stands out in this regard is pride.

It seems to me that society 'respects' the sins in one order, and God treats them in just the opposite. For society, the physical sins are the most serious, the most indicative of character flaws, the most shameful, followed by 'emotional sins' which we have pretty much accepted, while intellectual sins are almost lifted up as examples to be followed. Wise philosophers and progressive scientists we call them, and give them a place of honour in our academic circles. 

When Jesus was on earth, He spent time with those who were caught up in physical sin; the tax-collectors and prostitutes, loving them tenderly, and he was at his harshest with the intellectual sins of the Pharisees. Why might this be the case?

As a generalisation, those who have physical sin are often aware of their inability to justify their actions. Their posture is more along the lines of hopelessness, and they are filled with a sense of imperfection both from comparing themselves to societal expectations and to the moral law. When confronted by the perfection of God they tell themselves that they cannot hold a candle, they acknowledge their brokenness readily.

Those who have emotionally rooted sins are a little harder to reach with the morality of God. They appeal to plurality, saying that what is right for you may not be right for me. They acknowledge that to some people their actions may appear wrong, but they don't let it affect them because they are right in their own eyes. 

Yet this is not the worst, for intellectual pride goes a step further. The proud humanistic intellectual is faced with the moral perfection of God and denies its applicability entirely. By his own reasoning he or she may even deny the very existence and relevance of God, seeking to push Him out of the picture. The intellectual claims to formulate their own moral standard or lack thereof and extends those ideas to the entirety of the human race. They are unhappy when they hear the moral standards of God being 'imposed' on others to the effect of remorse and guilt. (This is another issue entirely that is beyond the scope of this post, but the proper relationship between law and grace is detailed in Romans and guilt should not be part of the equation any longer.) The intellectual is blinded by his or her own reasoning in a crusade of their own construction.

In this day and age, with the voice of human wisdom bolder and more vocal then ever, God still whispers that His grace is enough. We are the ones who tell Him that it is not when we reject it in our pride and independence. What will we do when the torturous, humiliating crucifixion of the Son of God on the cross and His glorious triumph of a resurrection is not enough to move our hard hearts? When we convince ourselves that the wonder of the mystery of Christ is not worth examining, there can be no wonder left in anything else, and emptiness will infuse itself into our intellectual sterility.