The eCrozier

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote: Original Sin is “the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith.” It’s obvious everywhere. It’s not just that we commit sinful acts but that we’re sinful by nature. If you doubt that, have children. I have a robust view of my own sin as we all should. As my momma always said, we’re “messes.” Some call this having a “low anthropology” (expecting that none of us will always behave well). That’s why God’s grace is so obviously and completely necessary. As the Collect for the 3rd Sunday of Lent reminds us: “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.” God’s grace showered upon us is the only power that can make us right and whole before God.

That being said, we all should have reasonable expectations that in our relationships and in society we’ll at least try to act in ways that exhibit honesty, decency, and respect for others. Laws help. They create boundaries for what’s acceptable behavior and what’s not. Whether it’s hurting another person or running a red light in our cars, laws dissuade us from behaving poorly or endangering others. Laws have their place. Even hardened thieves don’t want other people to steal their stuff.

But laws have their limits. They can’t engender mercy, forbearance, or compassion. Laws can’t mandate love for others or require us to think first, not of our own needs, but those of others. Laws can’t oblige us to be kind to others, treat them with dignity, or show them basic decency. Such a stance in life comes from a different place other than the law. And we get to that place by being molded and shaped by something outside ourselves. Our parents, teachers, and mentors hopefully showed us a kind of life worth living that’s grounded in God’s love incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ.

All of which causes me to ask: who were the parents, teachers, and mentors of those angry men who assaulted a young woman earlier this week at Valdosta State University at Donald Trump’s rally? Did they raise and teach their boys to treat another human being that way? As adults, do those men actually believe that such behavior is in any way decent? And if those men are Christians, and I assume some of them self-identify as such, can they be anything other than ashamed? Do they have no shame?

I don’t blame Donald Trump for those men’s behavior just as I would never blame him for my own sin. I have to own my own sin as we all do. Trump is merely unleashing a coarseness and ugliness that’s hiding in all of us, if we’re honest enough to admit it. Trump is tapping into our collective id and giving that id license to go unchecked. That’s why it’s so important that we surround ourselves with people who will help us be better than we’d be otherwise left to our own sinful devices, people that’ll help us love our enemies, be merciful, and live compassionately with others.

We can never, this side of heaven, lose our sinfulness. We can, however, surround ourselves with people who will show us the virtues of God’s Kingdom and then lovingly hold us accountable to those virtues. At the very least, that’s one of the things the church ought to be about. With whom are we keeping company this Lent?

+Scott