by Graham Veale
Homer Simpson’s Heresy
But this all sounds rather melodramatic; isn’t this the sort of guilt trip that a revivalist preacher uses to boost Church attendance? This brings us to the heresy of Homer Simpson. Not too long into the life of The Simpsons, Homer discovered that skipping Church on a Sunday morning can be an incredibly liberating experience. 72 (Unless you have experienced weekly Church attendance as a mere mandatory religious duty, you cannot even begin to imagine Homer’s sense of emancipation. I imagine that the French felt something similar on D-Day.)
In and of itself, skipping one Church service would be of little consequence. This wasn’t even an act of religious defiance; Homer simply wanted a moment’s freedom from life’s dull routine. But then Homer reasoned that Church attendance should be optional for the religious man. He declared that he would never attend Church again. He would worship God in his own way, largely by doing whatever he wanted on a Sunday morning. Thankfully, Homer’s evangelical neighbour, some cute ducks, and a Jewish clown intervened to restore Homer’s faith. (Well, they persuaded him to attend church again.)
Homer never really lost whatever ‘faith’ he had; he simply wanted free time on Sunday mornings to watch sports. As a heretic Homer was a spectacular failure; but his argument for abandoning Church must have resonated with many viewers: ‘I’m not a bad guy, I work hard, and I love my kids...so why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I’m going to hell?’ Granted, Homer’s comic selfishness might not make him the best person to advance the argument. But surely we’re decent people. We do our best to do what’s right. We care for our families and friends. So isn’t it excessive to insist that every human being must capitulate to God? Surely a God of love couldn’t demand anything like our unconditional surrender?
The problem with this objection is that it misunderstands the nature of love. We tend to view love as a desire or a feeling; and love is never less than an emotional experience. But love is much more than an emotion. We only love when we value another’s happiness more than we value our own. We cannot tell if we love someone by examining our feelings for them; we tell how much we love another by asking what we would sacrifice for them. If God wants us to truly love him, he might ask us to sacrifice quite a bit. After all, he has made an unimaginable sacrifice for us; God the Son died to pay our debt.
But this takes us back to Homer’s original objection. If we’re doing our best, and don’t go out of our way to hurt others, why do we need to hear all this talk of forgiveness and atonement? It all seems terribly old fashioned and archaic. We didn’t ask for Jesus’ sacrifice, and it doesn’t seem that we needed it. Couldn’t God just accept us for who we are? Do we have to return to this repressive and restrictive talk about human sinfulness?
Christianity is offensive because it does not teach that ‘humanity is good’. Christians believe that man is a ruined masterpiece, ‘a good being gone bad.’ We were made in God’s image, but we have chosen to bury his likeness deep in the darkness; we only feel its influence when we find it convenient. So we need to pay attention to some inconvenient truths about ourselves; we need to stare into the abyss in our hearts.
Sins and Misdemeanours
G. K. Chesterton reminds us that when men stop believing in God, they will believe in any absurdity. The secular world insists that we are not sinners; that we should think of ourselves as innately good and worthy individuals. We would be more comfortable believing that the doctrine of sin is a relic of Europe’s unenlightened and repressive past. But history, philosophy and art remind us that this is a blind, irrational and dangerous belief. As Chesterton puts it:
If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat. 73
Of course most teenagers do not enjoy skinning cats; they would rather watch films. Which brings us to the most offensive aspect of the doctrine of sin—it is much too egalitarian. It puts the label ‘wicked’ on every human being regardless of class, colour or creed. It would be more convenient to divide the world into ‘evil’ men (like terrorists and paedophiles) and the rest of us. The deeds of evil people are incomprehensible and inexcusable; our misdeeds are mere misfortunes. Evil men must be eradicated; we who remain must learn to forgive ourselves.
J. R. R. Tolkien followed Plato’s parable of the Ring to illuminate our hidden depths. Both writers asked us to imagine a ring that rendered its owner invisible; then they asked us to consider what effect the ring would have on its bearer. A new world of possibilities opened up for the man who owned such a ring. In an age before forensic science, the owner of the ring could do what he pleased, when he pleased, without fear of prosecution. The law could not punish him; he would not even have to worry about his public reputation. He could take what he desired when he desired it.
And what effect would this power have on a human? He might start with petty acts of revenge, and little acts of theft. But he could act on every impulse for revenge, sate every appetite, and not have to worry about the consequences. How long could he resist the temptation to do terrible things to those who had wronged him? How long before he sought out every forbidden fruit? The parable of the ring reveals that there is a terrible desire for power, and a lust for experience, in each human psyche. We need the fear of retribution, and the desire for a good reputation, to keep our darker nature in check.
History confirms the results of this thought experiment. When attempting to discover why the great atrocities of the last century occurred, agnostic philosopher Jonathan Glover discovered that many ordinary men and women were capable of the most terrible crimes when they knew that there would be no consequence for their actions. Conscripts were transported to the other side of the globe to face enemies for whom they had no empathy, in a place where no moral authority reigned. The result was atrocity on an unimaginable scale. 74
Every day we inflict dozens of little acts of cruelty on our neighbours; we express our selfishness every hour that we live. There is a gap between the good that we know we ought to do, and what we achieve. We bear responsibility for the shortfall. This is not a counsel of despair. It is a plea for self-knowledge and wisdom; it is an attempt to illuminate the gulf between God and humanity. If we cannot see our need for redemption then the message of the cross will make little sense to us.
Try another thought experiment. In the film ‘The Final Cut’ scientists known as Cutter’s can implant a recording device in a person’s brain at birth. This device will create an audio-visual recording of their every conscious moment. When they die, a Cutter will select ‘scenes’ from their consciousness, the most significant moments of your life, and turn these into a film that sums up their identity. The film will be shown at their funeral—a ‘Re-memory.’ This becomes a focus for the grieving family, a reassurance that the deceased’s life had significance.
Of course the Cutter ‘edits out’ any details that will shock or offend mourners and retains a few moments of sentimental value. For our thought experiment, reverse the premise of the film. Imagine that a cutter has recorded your every conscious moment, but will only create a film from the moments you are most ashamed of. Make a quick mental list of what this will include. The list will include every time you have spoken ill of someone who loves you. It will include every time that you have thought ill of someone who loves you, or when wished that you could betray them. It will include every cruel ambition and vengeful fantasy.
Could you bear to be in the room with your family while this film played? Could you let them know what you have said and thought about them all? Or would you rather disappear into a mouse-hole than face what you actually are? And here’s the rub: this is exactly the position we all find ourselves in once we acknowledge that there is a God.
God, by definition, is perfectly good and knows every truth. He knows us better than we know ourselves. How could you bear to be known by a perfect God; one who knows exactly which rules you have willingly broken? Who knows what we would do if we could escape the consequences…
We are drawn to the holiness of God; only his unlimited, loving power can satiate the hunger in our souls. However, we are not holy. We are not pure enough to draw near to God, because his knowledge would expose us for what we are. This is the human problem: we are drawn to the light of God’s holiness, only to discover it is like an all-consuming fire. We cover our shame by retreating to the shadows, only to find that we are miserable once more. If only someone could take the shame away; if only something could make us holy as God is holy.
What about the good that we do? Isn’t that enough to atone for our failures? Unfortunately, that seems doubtful. God made us to be good. I like it that my car starts when I turn the key in the morning. That’s what it was made to do. If it fails to start four or five mornings out of ten, then the other mornings that it did manage to start will be of little consolation to me. I expect my car to do what it was made to do all the time. The same standard applies to humans. We were made to be good. It’s pleasing to God, presumably, when we choose to do what is right. But we are hardly doing him a favour—working up extra merit as it were. This is just what God should expect from us.
So we cannot change ourselves to be suitable for a deep, intimate relationship with God. We need God to provide the means; this is what God’s Son did on the cross. He took the punishment we deserved and suffered the shame of our fall. Of course, it’s reasonable to ask how the suffering of the Son of God can benefit us. The answer is that it can’t—unless we choose to identify ourselves with Jesus. We identify ourselves with other people all the time by forming unions with them. For example, we marry, we take children into our families, and we transfer citizenship from one nation to another.
When we do these things we change who we are. Our identity becomes inextricably linked with the identities of our new family members, or with history of our new country. We must take some responsibility for the other individuals in the ‘team’ that we join—just as they take some responsibility for us. Philosopher John Hare asks us to
…consider marriage. How is it that I can be ashamed or proud of what my wife does, and she can be ashamed or proud of what I do? When she does well at an interview and gets the job she wants, I am pleased and proud for her. But the truth is also expressed by saying that she and I together form a unit, and I am pleased and proud for the both of us. It is true that I may also feel envy and resentment, and gird myself for new battles about the division of responsibilities. But if the marriage is functioning well, you might see a new spring in my stride, a greater sense of self-confidence, that would be altogether mysterious if we could not understand the transfer or transmission of pride within the unit. Similarly if I fail in some disastrous way at work, especially if it seems that the whole world knows about it, my wife and I will both be dragged down by it. It is not just that she feels sympathy for me in my predicament. It is that she has been humiliated together with me, and we will both feel the urge to hide from public view. This kind of example can be extended … into relations of close friendship, and beyond that into relations of collegiality at work, and so on. 75
We form alliances and unions all the time. When we do, we can take responsibility for one another’s failings and credit for each other’s achievements. This helps us to understand the cross. We need no longer fear God’s judgment if we are identified with Christ. Jesus paid the price of our disgrace. He took responsibility for our faults. If we are united with God’s Son, and he takes possession of us as his rightful property, he takes the consequences of our failures. He covers our shame; we need no longer feel the pain of our moral and spiritual flaws. Christ raises us up, as one of his own. If he did not, an eternal relationship with God would be too painful for us to bear.
A union with the Son of God would be more demanding than any human relationship. It would mean acknowledging Christ as sovereign, giving him complete rights over our characters and our minds. This is challenging. But God would want to challenge us morally—and more than morally. God would want to challenge us on every level of our being; so God calls us to the cross. This evidence does not come in the form of detached, objective observations, that every competent observer can acknowledge. This evidence is personal. We can feel it working directly on our conscience as God calls us to surrender to him.
Sneers at the Cross
Christianity is not just a set of truths about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; it is a call to know God personally, and to be transformed by him. We can experience the power of this call in at least two ways. We can be morally challenged when we realise we are not morally fit for a relationship with God, and therefore desperately need the atonement provided by Christ. Or we can be emotionally challenged by God’s perfect, sacrificial love.
The call to be transformed through Christ is a compelling experience that needs an explanation. Accepting the call is a source of consolation; the cross meets our needs for love, forgiveness, justice and hope. Crucially, Christian doctrine explains more than our inner, experiential evidence. The evidence provided by the universe’s order and structure, by the reality of moral values and obligations, and for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, verifies that Christianity is true. The end result is a powerful cumulative case for the truth of the gospel.
Yet, the Christian is not on a quest for intellectual respectability. Belief in God is worthless if we believe as one believes in an academic theory. Knowing that there is a God helps in the search for wisdom; knowing God personally saves a person from guilt and emptiness. To know God fully we have to travel to a cross, and accept that the life and death of the son of a Palestinian carpenter is the most important event in history. We need to believe that a Galilean teacher rose from the dead and triumphed over evil. For God became one of us in the most unassuming of places.
This message is not a neat academic theory; it will always have its cultured and educated despisers. But God’s concern is not to bring our data bases up to speed. If Christianity is true, God’s concern is to know us, to save us and to transform us. The sneers of culturally respectable academics are to be expected and, to some extent, welcomed. They remind us that the gospel is not merely a source of propositional knowledge; it is the way to know God. And the Christian can be confident that his God is not a delusion; for only at Calvary can we finally make sense of everything else that we know.
* * *
69 There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Hell is a real and present danger for human beings. We are damaged and dangerous creatures who would willingly forgo an eternity of blessing if it kept us free from God’s love. See www.saintsandsceptics.org/is-hell-hot-in-hollywood/
70 Peter Van Inwagen ‘The Problem of Evil’ in Wainwright ed. The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: 2005); Thomas F. Tracy ‘Victimization and the Problem of Evil: A Response to Ivan Karamazov’ Faith and Philosphy 1992, 9:3) 301-319.
71 Chad Meister Evil: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum: 2012); Stephen J. Wykstra ‘The Human obstacle to evidential arguments from suffering: On avoiding the evils of “appearance”’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16 (2):73–93 (1984).
72 ‘Homer the Heretic’, The Simpsons, Season 4 Episode 3, first aired 8 Oct 1992.
73 Orthodoxy (Moody Press:2009), 28.
74 Jonathan Glover, Humanity: a moral history of the Twentieth Century (Pimilico: 2001).
75 www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/writings/moralato.htm. Hare gives a convincing explanation of sin and atonement in The Moral Gap (Oxford: 1997).
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