Like many of the ideas I have had recently, this thread is not something that I have derived very explicitly from didactic instruction. To be quite frank, my mind has been so abuzz with all sorts of themes that I should like to take a whole week out and pen them all down before they are lost to the murky waters of memory. In summary:
1. The nature of the political left and right, in relation to chesed ve'emet, and the lyrics of Wicked.
2. A crazy link between the ideas of Strauss Howe generational theory and the eschatological views of what Skye Jethani calls evolution and evacation theology.
3. The church's loss or surrender of the faculty and power of reason and academia to deceptive powers that has become a major source of misconception.
Today though, I would like to deal with the issue of responsibility. I know the title somewhat implies the responsibility of sin, but I'm going to move a little beyond that in the later half of this text.
I think we can all admit this: We like it when blame can be pinned down. It gives us a sense of clarity, and in some cases, an uneasy absolution. We see this from the very beginning, in Genesis 3, when, as it is popularly thought, the man pointed to the woman and the woman, in turn, highlights the serpent. With the passing of culpability, or the accusative fixation of fault on certain individuals or even communities, the narrative is neat and tidy. It goes like this:
'Something is wrong, we're not always too sure what, but we know things are not right. There is someone at fault, and that someone is surely not us. It must be them! We must do something to rid them from our presence. Once we do that, we'll be all better again.'
This narrative gives us unity. It provides our societies with a common enemy to focus on and work towards eradicating. Many of you see where I'm going with this surely. At times, 'them' has been the lazy aristocrats, the greedy bankers, the communists, the Jews, the Lutherans or the iconolaters. Now there are those who would put blame of radical Muslims, on immigrants, on desperate refugees. A framework of us against them is created. Its very dualist in its approach, in the Zoroastrian sense of the word. There are good guys, whom we are, and bad guys, who are beyond redemption. 'Heaven forbid that someone I should know finds him or herself on the wrong side of the fence that we are constructing here.'
By imbibing this narrative, we side step the words to the Ephesians:
'For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.'
Sure, one can say that this passage simply moves the culpability onto the spiritual evil forces around us, and guilty of the same blame game, but there is a distinction to be made at this juncture. When we pin the blame on people, we do so at the expense of creatures of whom God tells us He can redeem. Unlike humans, there is no known provision for redemption for the rebellion of the host of angels who turned away. For now, let us move on to the antithesis.
There is another common narrative, increasingly acceptable because of the inherent meaninglessness that popular ideologies of the age promote. That narrative generally follows this vein:
'I'm not responsible. In fact, no one is responsible for anything. Everything has been determined already, and things are the way they are because that's just what has been mechanically dictated since the inception of this universe.'
Like the first narrative, this manifests in many forms. In the secular world, it is determinism. Volition is an illusion it tell us. Everything that I have done is a result of mechanistic or probabilistic collisions and interactions of particles within me. Morality is irrelevant, for how can I be held responsible for the simple mathematical outworking of the fundamental laws of nature that none may disobey?
In the religious world, the dictator may manifest in many guises. In some belief structures, it is fate. Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos reign supreme. If even the ruler of Olympus finds it hard to appeal against their decisions, what influence do mere mortals have? In others, it is karma. Strangely enough, in some strains, God is the grandest dictator of them all. The uber-Calvinists whom Calvin would probably have found a little strange also chime with the sentiment that free will is non-existent within the framework of the sovereignty of God. That view seems quite contradictory to me, because if God was going to make us automata in the first place, why the whole effort to woo us back to Him, to tolerate the disasters of the scarlet sins of this world in order to save an elect? I understand that there are many passages that can be interpreted both on the side of free will and predestination to fruitless argument. I am not here to address those today.
I will merely state that in my opinion, the dramatic story that is told in the Word, and is still unfolding before us, seems more consistent with the gentle coaxing of the rebellious independent will of man. After all, do we see computer engineers try to encourage poorly written programme to turn into what it was meant to be, or do we see them intervene dramatically and alter the very composition of its code? We are more complex than the most sophisticated software in existence.
What then is my synthesis? To use some Hegelian concepts for clarity:
Thesis - Responsibility is placed on an individual, preferably not ourselves.
Antithesis - Responsibility is diffused beyond any meaningful source.
Synthesis - Responsibility is both individual and societal.
This will take awhile to explain.
In Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell writes this through the words of Somni-451:
'Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others,
past and present, and by each crime, and every kindness, we birth our future.'
While I do not subscribe fully to every line in her speech, I believe this one captures something of an understanding of human nature that we have lost sight of in the developed world. We are individuals but we are not isolated.
Over and over in the stories of the bible we see that effects that one person's choices have on the lives of others. King David's affair with Bathsheba, at first clandestine, is exposed, and the consequences ripple out in uncontrolled waves to taint the rest of his household. On the other hand, the obedience of a prince of Egypt leads a people from slavery into freedom. This principle does not just apply with the great heads of state however. The love of a Moabite woman for her mother in law results in her eventually becoming an ancestor of King David himself, and in his life he runs to Moab for refuge. The slave Onesimus, in his service to Paul and Philemon, teaches the community about respect for servants. The willing heart of a young Jewess allows for the incarnation of the greatest history changer the world has ever known.
It is glaringly obvious once we look at the lives of those around us, at our own lives. We are shaped by uncounted influences, connected in ways profound to others, whether overt or covert. Family, friends, colleagues, fellow citizens, the global community, we affect one another with words and deeds as part of the intricate tapestry of the human epic.
So why do we live as though the individual is all there is? We seek our own self-promotion, and when when we choose to destroy ourselves in addictive behaviour and self-pity we act as though no one else will be affected. We live as though we are isolated, that no one cares about you except yourself. Do we not sense the subtler harms and influences that our behaviour has?
In the modern liberal democracy, we cherish our rights. Simultaneously, we dread our responsibilities, even when those responsibilities have to do with maintaining the rights our forbears have fought so hard for. We like to behave as though we are responsible for no one but ourselves, and live in denial of the disastrous effects that our wanton pursuits have on our dislocated relationships.
I suppose the point that I'm trying to get at is this: Our choices do not just affect ourselves. It seems like rather an inane observation to make, but let me carry on with its implications.
Sin often compounds sin. Let us consider a relationship gone sour. Very rarely can one say that it was entirely one or the other person's fault. Little things build up over time into raging and furious storms within us that nigh impossible to reconcile over. When one side sins, it often makes it easier for the other side to follow suit, not necessarily in a sin of the same kind, but in a reciprocal sort of way. Left uncontrolled, they feed on each other in some sort of mutual parasitism, exhausting the vibrancy and health of that relationship. To borrow Paul's language: A husband who waits for his wife to respect him before he loves her, and a wife who is resolved that she cannot respect her husband until he loves her properly, will likely find themselves waiting for quite some time.
One person's sin makes it easier for another to do so. Sin becomes easier to justify. How many times do we comfort ourselves with the thought that something can't be that bad since so many people engage in it? We shut ourselves into communities of people who are just as deluded as we are so that we can ignore the emotional alarms that blare by filling our heads with so-called supportive and encouraging words from the false prophets of our age.
As our failures and their consequences metastasise like a cancer in our societies, the power of sin grows and it becomes harder and harder for the righteous to maintain their convictions. The children who find themselves in such societies are torn left and right by powers malevolent that distort and destroy their understanding of God and of themselves. They grow up and perpetuate, or even augment the brokenness of this world, and each generation becomes more lost than the one before.
When God judges an annihilates society, such as that of Sodom and Gomorrah, I would suggest it is because they have gone so far astray that every new birth in that society is another lost soul. They have forgotten so much of His truth that every conception is doomed to destruction, not by God, but by the sheer depravity of the environment in which that soul will mature. Fatherhood and motherhood become meaningless words, moral education is non-existent. In His mercy on those who would be unborn, He amputates the diseased tissues of the collective body of humanity. We see this in the days of Noah, and we observe the same trends today.
Who is to blame for this destruction? Society? Society is fundamentally composed of individuals, all influencing and connected with each other. In every decision, we impact the future of our nation on scales that are too far reaching to realise in the moment, and in this globalised context, we shape the global society.
In this day and age we have a society that tolerates a lot of sin and in some cases even endorses it. We have a society that answers economic questions of what to produce and how much to produce without any moral compunctions. We fail to ask the question of ought: We know what we can make, but we do not ask if it is right to make it. We have a society where pornography and violence are produced, accessible and not questioned. Increasingly they are not kept in private, but broadcast to massive audiences, a la the recent Marvel movie of a superhero whose name bears the tone of what he represents chillingly accurately. We have a society that has more functions at its fingertips than ever before, but we do not ask if it is right to send an emotionally manipulative message at any time of the night, or if it is right to produce platforms that drive our egomania with likes and comments.
Where then is hope? Does God leave us to our destructive tendencies, not merely on an individual level, but on a societal level? Thankfully He has not abandoned us. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that spread through a batch of dough. By a slow influence, whole nations and cultures have changed to adopt the principles of the kingdom order. One individual, then another, chooses rightly, and their righteous choices also tug on the lives of those around them, influencing, impacting, transforming and redeeming.
When God sees us, it is true that He values us as individuals. He values the uniqueness, the gifts, the aspects of you that He gave you that make you the marvellous creation that you are. But He looks beyond you. In you He sees the potential you have to impact the lives of others. Each smile that you give a cashier, every glare that you cast on rival, each word of life or death spoken intentionally or carelessly that digs deep and roots itself in the soul of its recipient.
We are confronted with choices, and the methods by which we make those choices are shaped by the cultural milieu we find ourselves in. When God judges our actions, I doubt He will judge us individually either. If I may use a literary example, when George Wilson pulls that trigger on Gatsby, the outside world sees a madman shooting a tycoon out of revenge and spite. But the eyes of T. J. Eckleburg, the symbol of the eyes of God, see more than that. They see an adulterous man having an affair with a married woman, a deceptive Tom Buchanan feeding George the wrong information, a careless Daisy moving on and leaving a disaster in her wake, a society where the rich get off free and the poor are oppressed, a materialistic and selfish ambition that justifies the horrid actions of the characters, the hypocrisy of moral bankruptcy under a glossy sheen.
So much has gone into shaping every tiny decision, but the Lord knows it all. No human judge could do this. I suspect that this potent combination of omniscience and justice will be one of the deciding factors that causes each person to leave the judgement at the Great White Throne thoroughly satisfied with the verdict, no matter what that verdict will be.
To return to the original question: Our decisions are a balance between our own wills and the forces that impose themselves on our wills. Yes there may be powerful societal forces at work, but those forces do not have final authority over the decision I make in the end. When I choose to sin in this day and age, I still make that choice and I am still responsible, but in many cases, I am not the only one responsible. Because we are influenced by others, the responsibility of my choice falls not only on me, but on those around me who have influenced me. It is not a case of me being solely to blame, or of me being helpless in the face of overwhelming powers.
This explains another observation to me as well. Since the coming of Christ, every man and every society has the potential to be redeemed. The powerful bondage of sin over societies has been overcome, is being overcome and is still to be overcome through the gradual permeative influence of the gospel. No longer do we see a society wiped off the face of the earth in the manner of Sodom because now there is hope!
Yet we also see the final coup in action. As I wrote about in the post '
Insufficient Grace', we see that the world is increasingly rejecting the hope that is in Christ. There will come a day when what is left of humanity is so caught up in its own pride and delusions that the gospel ceases to have any effect, for hearts would have become so hard. In that day, Dies Irae, we will see the final judgement come, and it will come upon all men because at that point, all men will be part of one terminally diseased society.
This post is getting too long, and new ideas keep flooding my mind. I shall break it off here and write a second part to this.
