Time for a bit more depravity

Some time ago I wrote a blog on the doctrine of total depravity. Various subsequent conversations have kept bringing me back to the subject. In The Salvation Army it is a key issue, possibly ranking only just behind the doctrine of scripture as an indicator of where we are and where we are going. In particular, the common misconception that there can only be responsibility where there is innate ability is a constant point of attrition, and reflects a misunderstanding of the doctrine of sin. 

What I have noticed is a tendency to set the doctrine of sin over against the doctrine of the image of God, in such a way that the two modify, or leak into, each other. The confusion gets worse still when the Wesleyan doctrine of prevenient grace is added to the mix. 

So, by way of just one example, in a Facebook conversation about whether we are "naturally attracted to holiness", a friend who is a Salvationist can say, "Although I agree that we need to know we are sick to know we need medicine, I think, although we naturally side with sin since the fall, God also does give us the power and the choice to live a life of Holiness. Because although we are fallen we also are made in the image of God, even if the fallenness does come out more often than not."

In that paragraph, the doctrines of Image, Sin and Grace are swirling around and intermixed. If "God gives us power" were related to grace, it would not be so problematic, but it seems to be based in the image of God. The result is, effectively, a watering down of total depravity which, as I hope my last piece made clear, takes the real urgency out of the gospel of Jesus and leaves us in the same boat as all the other religions.

The problem starts with a lack of appreciation of salvation history. If the doctrines concerned are only viewed in the abstract, uprooted from their place in the Story, then there will be a greater risk of 'leakage' between them. Salvation history should ground us. The image of God is a concept from creation; whatever happens to that concept as a result of sin, it must be understood as starting in that pre-fall condition. Total depravity describes the condition of those who are in the image of God. It is post fall; it describes the spiritual inability of fallen people. It cannot be "modified" by the Imago Dei; rather, it assumes it, as the Image is the very backdrop against which sin, and the doctrine of sin, comes in. Finally, God's grace is revealed, starting in the sequence of curses that come with the fall. There will be a victory over the enemy: a victory on behalf of people made in the image of God who have fallen into total depravity. 

As we move from the methodology of Biblical Theology towards a systematic approach, taking these doctrines out of their salvation history context and expressing them as abstract ideas, we need to take special care to still keep them separate. 

The Image of God (often called the Imago Dei; a bit of Latin sounds impressive!) is about the purpose and honour of humankind as created. In an era when kings set up statues in their likeness in the city squares of their empire, where heralds would stand in front of those images and proclaim their laws and demands for tribute, the language of "Image and likeness" was instantly recognisable when describing man as the one who would "have dominion" as God's regent and representative on earth. Within the framework of the narrative of the handiwork of God in Gen 1, the Image of God sets the human race apart as the pinnacle of his creativity, with particular dignity and honour within the created order, but the phrase above all highlights our purpose within the world. We are not merely in the image of God; we are the image of God. 

The fall ushers in the era of failure to live up to purpose, and it does so precisely because the fall IS radical failure at the very heart of that purpose. Human dominion is to be under God; the world is there to be explored and enjoyed in submission to his supreme rule.  The exploration and enjoyment is to be shaped at its heart - at the centre of the map - by a seemingly arbitrary commandment whose purpose is to demonstrate commitment to his higher authority. At the moment that the couple eat the fruit, they come to the "knowledge of good and evil" in the sense of taking it upon themselves to define their own moral boundaries, instead of submitting to the creator. They are no longer heralds of his will, the spokespeople of his voice into the world. They now declare their own wills, and all hell (some hell, actually) is let loose. 

Imagine a magnificent car, from the classic era of big touring cars. Something like a 4.5 litre Bentley. Imagine it in perfect road condition, built for speed, able to race, turning heads, an awesomely beautiful machine. Then someone comes along and takes a crowbar to the valve rockers. They use the same tool to twist and distort the brake mechanism out of all functionality. They remove the steering wheel. They syphon out the fuel, and for good measure they blow up the oil wells and refineries; the fuel is made completely unavailable. 

The car is still magnificent. It is still intrinsically beautiful and valuable. But its fitness for purpose is utterly wrecked. It cannot move. If it rolls down a hill it is at the mercy of every bump and twist in the ground. It can't stop at the bottom. It cannot be moved uphill except by an outside force. It is impressive and full of grandeur. Further vandalism would still be crime, but it is totally unable to fulfil its purpose. 

We are not machines, but that is a description of total depravity. The dignity and worth of the image remains, but functionality is hopelessly compromised. Every aspect of purpose is affected and rendered useless. If you saw the wrecked car in motion, you would know that it was more of a danger than a joy. If you saw a number of them rolling down a hillside, you would know that, despite apparently chaotic paths taken, they had one thing in common - the downhill pull of gravity. 

No, we are not cars. A car can't wreck itself, which is what we did. But insofar as any illustration is useful, the car helps. We are beautiful, but unfit for purpose. Valuable but unable to fulfil our role. Pushed about by circumstances and trends of thought instead of ruling with maturity and stability under God. In the chaos of human existence, the one thread running through human behaviour is sin, as we career downhill and away from our Creator. 

What we must not do is play the doctrines of Image and Depravity off against each other. We are not permitted to look at that classic, wrecked, car and say, "It's so beautiful - I can't believe it's useless!" or, conversely, "It's so wrecked, it can't have any value!" Rather, the brilliant glory of the Creator is seen precisely in the fact that something of his magnificence is still so clear even in his vandalised handiwork. And the gravity of sin is highlighted by the grandeur and obvious dignity of what was wrecked. 

It is against that backdrop that we see grace. We are utterly unable and utterly undeserving to be what we ought to be, even though what we ought to be is written all over us. And yet, instead of coming in judgement, God comes to our wrecked creaturehood to bring light, to repair, to enable. His grace operates at precisely the level where the fall occurred - he draws us to a humble submission to his word and away from proud, independent self-sufficiency and self-determination. But the Word to which we are drawn is not simply a word of command, the proving point of who has authority in the world, but a Word of promise, the commitment of the Creator to forgive, to re-create, to transform, to re-form humanity. By grace we are remade in the full glory and perfection of his unspoiled image, gathered round a new man, our head, our captain, our champion, our authentic Adam, Jesus Christ.
  

In a depraved world such grace is "wholly other".  It isn't an outcropping of the image of God - it isn't a "bit of goodness left in us". It is all from God and it is all new. Once again, we mix the concepts at our peril. Leakage of Image into Grace will destroy the doctrine of Depravity - and then grace will no longer be grace. 

Last Saturday saw the commissioning in London of new lieutenants of the Messengers of Light session. The Territorial Commander spoke of exactly the distinctions seen in these doctrines, but in terms of light and darkness. Into a world of original chaos and darkness, God spoke Light at creation. But then human beings, the shining crown jewel of God's brilliant creation, chose darkness instead of light. We chose it, it overthrew us, we wallowed in it. And into that new, man-chosen darkness, God spoke light again. Personified light. Light incarnate. The Light of the world. And for those new lieutenants, as for every Christian, our calling is to carry that light into the world.  The way to be faithful Messengers of Light is to live in the light consistently, and to communicate the light in truthful words. Nowhere is that more critical than in clarity on sin and grace. 

Bulls and doves: equally useless

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This morning we started reading Leviticus. It starts where Exodus ended - as a narrative and in terms of theme. God’s people have access to his presence; access is only allowed through blood sacrifice. So the depth of grace and the sinfulness of sin are brought home, and brought home, and brought home... 

What hit me with fresh power today is the breath-taking equality of it all. We go by stages from the one who brings a bull to the one who brings a pigeon. There is no change in the seriousness of the text, no alteration in the ritual description of what the sacrifice means: ‘It is a burnt offering, a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.’ Each worshipper comes into the presence of God equally. 

Discounting the current soaring prices in the Chinese racing pigeon market, the difference between a bull and a pigeon is vast. Modern markets can't be equated with biblical times, but current bull prices from $4000 to 20 000 guineas (various sites) compare rather impressively from a live “fancier’s” pigeon starting from £10 - £40 or a wood pigeon for its meat from £3.25. 

I can think of no context where such a disparity in value would not make one iota of difference. One man brings his Mercedes E class; the other brings his Matchbox model - both are welcome. One man offers his riverside penthouse; the other brings his tent - both are accepted equally. Sadly this is a lesson that the church needs to learn and relearn; the principle is here in Leviticus 1, but that doesn't stop James having to hammer it home all over again. 

But the glory of this egalitarianism in Leviticus is not that God chooses to ignore differential values. It isn’t that he kindly overlooks the disparity in a commitment to fairness. It goes deeper. The various sacrifices actually are of the same value in terms of their purpose in that context. All are equally valueless. It is impossible for the blood of a bull, or sheep, or dove, to take away sin and make for safe entry into the presence of the holy God. There is no differentiation. 

The sacrifices were demonstrations of faith and hope in the gracious, forgiving and providing God of Israel. They pointed to the seriousness of sin, they pointed to the need of atonement, but, for any Israelite who really thought about it, they could never be sufficient. The authentic provision was still ahead, glimpsed and longed for, and trusted in advance. 

The equality of bull, sheep and pigeon in Leviticus 1 is not down to an egalitarian principle only. Not that there is anything wrong with egalitarianism, but cart mustn’t drive horse. The equality of the sacrifices is down to the one, once-for-all, unique, sufficient, every-kind-of-people’s-sin-atoning sacrifice to which they pointed. Bull, lamb and dove are equal because of Jesus. 

There is one mediator, one sacrifice, one atonement, one propitiation for the whole world. Whoever we are, whatever we have done, whatever we have - we have one place to go, one cross to look to, one Saviour to call to, one equal and glorious hope. You may own farms and factories, hotels and shipping lines; you may have nothing but the grubby clothes you slept in on the pavement last night - either way, you need to know God, and God has given the sacrifice that all of us, equally, need. 

So glad of that. 

Why you, preacher, should not commit adultery

I want to write to friends in Christian ministry – especially to the many men I know whose income comes from Christian people, whether simply from the offerings in an independent church, from denominational funds, or channelled through a mission or other parachurch agency. I want to write to you who are called to minister God’s word, preaching his gospel and shepherding his flock, and I want to urge you not to commit adultery. I know that at this very moment some of you are being tempted in this direction, and I fear that some of you will fall.

There are so many reasons I can think of for writing in this way, so many motives I could bring to your attention. But I want to focus on one, because it is the one that never occurred to me during my trajectory into sin. I have to confess that I was conscious of most of the others; I am aware that that is a pretty grim confession as it makes clear how wilful and high-handed my sin was. 

So, I am not writing to tell you not to commit adultery because of the offence to Jesus Christ that such sin would be. You are aware of the appalling blasphemy and peril of wilfully sinning against his precious blood that cleaned you up, but I am not writing about that. I’m not writing to urge you not to grieve the Holy Spirit by using your body – his temple – in a way which utterly rejects his presence. I’m not writing to remind you of the desperate spurning of the Father’s eternal love that such an action would represent. 

I’m not writing to press on you the awful impact of such unfaithfulness on your own local church, and perhaps on many other people who look up to you in wider circles. Of course, real converts to Jesus won’t simply fall away because you do: rather, they will see through you and your sin. But they will be desperately disappointed and hurt, and some may suffer real spiritual damage and set back over this. And there will be those who are as yet uncommitted who will make this THE excuse for their not coming to Jesus. Some will even cite your example as part of their own pathway to adultery. They will give account for that one day, to the extent that it is a shallow, fake excuse; you will, to the extent that it isn’t. And the young people in the church who you have known from little kids will be hurt the most. But I’m not writing to you about all that. 

I’m not writing to you about your own marriage and family. Of course, in the state you’re in right now, your wife’s love and commitment may not be meaning much to you. Believe me, one day you will see this phase of your life with less astigmatism. If you commit adultery you will be running headlong into catastrophic breakdown in your marriage. Before it is discovered or confessed, the secret act itself will already mean that nothing will ever be the same again with the woman to whom you made your vows; discovery will take you into as yet unimaginable fear, shame and misery as you face break-up and divorce, or a long, hard and frequently painful road to putting things right. Whether divorcing or “saving it", you are going to put the woman you promised to love and cherish through as great an emotional pain as you can possibly inflict. And your children, who have probably already put up with a lot due to your ministry, will put up with a whole lot more. From being pedestal-placed preacher’s kids they will become the pitied, and possibly suspect, failed-preacher’s kids. And, though they already knew you and your weaknesses and the issues in your marriage and behaviour like no leader or member of your church knew, they will in future see you in a whole new light and you will run the risk of losing them completely. But I’m not writing to you about that. 

I’m not writing to you about the risk to your own personal life, your mental and physical health, and your eternal salvation. It isn’t my aim to impress on you the appalling sense of free fall that can come over you when everything is in breakdown. I needn’t talk about the hours sitting in a practically empty room with a tube of Pringles and a bottle of whisky, when the distance between being a well-known, respected preacher and living as a drunk on the streets suddenly seems incredibly narrow. I am not talking about the slow, uncertain and insecure struggle to totally reinvent yourself, finding some kind of job in midlife, with the one skill set in which you feel moderately confident now utterly valueless and irrelevant. I am not warning you about the perils of actually surviving and making some money, when ex-pastors find themselves starting to live by precisely the materialistic, or promiscuous, or plain idolatrous lifestyle that they warned against for so long. I have friends who were great preachers and able theologians who are now living as practical atheists. I know of others who have ended up simply denying all they once stood for, slipping from orthodox Christian faith through liberalism to agnosticism or even some tailor-made mystical or pagan nonsense that will give them a philosophical excuse to carry on random sex. I could never manage that - I was always strictly orthodox in my sinning, so I know what it is to carry around in my head and conscience the truth I preached for 20 years, and yet live in total disobedience to it. I know the semi-madness of that incoherence, and I know the fear and dread that goes with it, but I’m not writing about that. 

Nor am I writing to you about the utter social emptiness that can hit you as your friends and colleagues drop you. As I have written before, there will be those who write, and those who don’t. To this day, there are those who ignore my messages, refuse my friend requests and generally give me the cold shoulder. I am not condoning their behaviour – though I know that I used to be pretty much as ungracious. In that context it is easy to give way to bitterness, and it is that bitterness that can make it easy to live, or excuse our living, in a state of worsening backsliding. It is a lethal whirlpool that can suck you down to hell, while all the time you self-justify by complaining about the injustice/heartlessness/hypocrisy of your erstwhile friends. It is horrible, but I am not writing to you about that.

No, I’m not writing to you about any of that. I’m writing to you about something else. I’m writing about the situation you may find yourself in if, by God’s amazing grace, you come out the other side of the grand canyon of sin into which adultery will throw you. 

I think many of us ministers who sinned sexually did so in a context of wider issues. Tiredness, disillusion, financial pressures, marital struggles, relationship tensions with church or mission colleagues – a general malaise in and with the ministry which combined with spiritual backsliding to leave us frankly uncaring about the consequences of sin. One Christian leader even suggested to me that adultery was a mode of “ministry suicide” – just about the only way definitively to escape a treadmill.

These “wider issues” are no excuse for sin, of course. But I mention them because they may be one reason why losing this job, this career, this calling, doesn’t carry much weight at present. And you may even want shot of it. And that is what I wanted to write about. 

Let’s suppose that, like I did, you do this evil thing. And let’s suppose that, by God’s shocking grace, you emerge the other side as a Christian. You may find yourself in a church in broadly the same circle that you have ministered in. You were known there. But you will never be what you were. Even the whole business of “going to church” will have to be relearned and reinvented. A lot of that humbling will do you nothing but good, but over time, as your spiritual life is re-formed, you will find yourself feeling again and again your inability to relate to what is happening around you. Your mind will be like a Formula One engine with no power train to connect it to the road. You will feel like an athlete who can never run. 

In my case, and every case is different, after the slow road (while still overtly not living as a Christian) via village Anglicans and then anonymous attendance at a distant FIEC church, I had a time back as a professing Christian in an independent Baptist church where I was well known. I then remarried and, by virtue of my new wife’s church involvement, now find myself in the Salvation Army. At the time we married I had very low expectations of what I could/should/would be able to do; my only desire was to love her faithfully and assist her in living out her calling. But I have been gradually coming alive. And the very circumstances into which God has placed me are reminders of past hopes, past preparation for ministry, a past sense of calling and purpose. Sarah’s unanticipated appointment to the Salvation Army training college in Camberwell not only took me back uncomfortably to wonderful days in South London 30 years earlier, but her role teaching the very disciplines in which I had worked in colleges and seminaries all over Brazil seemed like a particular pointed providence. The Salvation Army is at one and the same time a lovely gracious body which encourages and is open to new starts among those who have slipped very, very low. It is also a holiness/Arminian movement whose doctrines I respect, but which I cannot fully subscribe, and that might appear to place a natural limit on my usefulness within the organisation.

As I say, every case is different. Your trajectory after adultery will not be the same as mine. You cannot presume that there will be a way back to God in your story at all. (Even though, wherever you are right now, there is a way back to God, and you know it, don’t you?) But supposing you do come back, what then?

After the initial howling pain has shifted into the past, after your children have graciously put together some new level of relationship with you, after you have got comfortable in a Christian meeting again, after you have reinstated the long-lost rhythm of Bible reading and prayer and even read some theology again, you will wake up and remember. 

If you were ever really called to the ministry at all, you will remember what it is to preach the gospel. I don’t mean get up on your hind legs and give a talk in church. I mean that, whether it was one to one, in a small group or in a big congregation, you knew what it was to bring a word that came from the throne of heaven, portrayed the beauty and love of Christ crucified, and called for repentance Now. You knew what it was to feel yourself held at the intersection of the only three moments that matter – Christ’s past coming, his future judgement and the day that is called Today, and to be the herald given by God for these people in front of you.  You knew what it was to see, to sense, God at work, to know that this word now was making impact, that lives were being challenged, that grace was breaking in, that the silence and power were from the Holy Spirit of God, that you were a mere mouthpiece in what God was doing, and that he was doing what he loves to do. You knew that not everyone was called to do this, and that every calling was of great value to God, but you also knew that this was what you were made for and you had to do it and do it to the best of your ability. 

And you blew it. But then one day you are spiritually awake again. And, each morning, you are off to (in my case) sell granite worktops or take photographs. And, though you enjoy those jobs in a way, you know that you are not going to do the one thing you were really created for. You know you have put yourself into a permanent bypath.  And that sensation isn’t going to go away, or diminish with time, like the first screaming terror of adultery-discovered. This is going to go on and on, for the rest of your life. 

I was recently reasonably ill. Not very ill – I was quite clear that I wasn’t dying! – but ill enough to spend a night in hospital and have a fair battery of tests. It made me stop and think. Despite so much happiness in my new marriage, and much pleasure from so many good things in life – travel and food and music and books and film and mountains and photography – I lay there at one stage really thinking through whether I would actually prefer to be dying, simply because of this. When you have fully woken up to your original sense of calling, the weight of the disqualification that adultery brings seems utterly unbearable.

I am not saying I can’t bear it. By God’s grace I am pressing on. I try to explore any and every pathway to spiritual usefulness and fruitfulness, and I guess this blog is part of that. But nothing prepared me or warned me about the deep, inward angst of feeling that my life is now doomed to be a continuous, steady waste where nothing is actually what it could and should have been, and where I have thrown away the years of my maturity in ministry – the strategic years, the weighty years, years where with language and cultural knowledge under my belt in Brazil I could have been speaking into the spiritual chaos with some helpfulness.

That is what I am trying to write to you about. If you commit adultery, you can’t count on getting back a spiritual life at all. You may disappear without trace in the swamp of sin that your new “freedom” and exclusion from the church open up to you. But if the initial pain is got through and you do come back, don’t think that that will be the end. You will be forgiven, you will be back among Christian people, you will be useful. But regrets… boy, you’ll have a few.

If you are being tempted, my dear brother, THINK!

Wrong, but wromantic; right, but repulsive.

Wrong, but wromantic; right, but repulsive. With these memorable words, Sellars and Yeatman summed up the Cavaliers and Roundheads in their fondly remembered "1066 And All That" - the source to this day, I must confess, of all my basic knowledge of British history. 

We are at a critical time for the church in the West. Fin de siècle change is all around us and, as ever, the church is the last body to catch on. That "last body" is not especially derogatory: we are the oldest body, with, by our very nature, roots most deeply anchored in the past, so caution and care ought to be intrinsic to who we are. Nevertheless, we have been caught out by the speed of change. 

It seems to me that there are two ways Christians are jumping at the moment. Some are standing firm on doctrine, strong and true, but sometimes doing so in a way that communicates hardness and brittleness. Others are buying into a more fluid understanding of the faith, and are emoting warmth and honesty and winsomeness in the process. 

Now please hear me out; I'm not saying that postmodern people are all warmth and openness. Actually there is more nastiness, arrogance, cruelty, dishonesty and abuse out there than ever. But some of the post-modern Christians whose voice is heard come across with an honesty and gentleness and kindness that is often lacking amongst conservative evangelicals. Evangelical rhetoric is not suited to the current environment; we may complain about that environment, but we still have to work within it. 

At its best, the more postmodern or liberal stream of Christianity can be very good at honesty about failure and weakness. The success of books like The Ragamuffin Gospel, of authors like Richard Rohr and of bloggers like Rachel Held Evans is in large part due to their honest and sympathetic handling of human frailty. We may critique them (I do!) but we must observe how they have a manner of speaking that functions culturally and draws people by its perceived integrity. 

And the fact is that evangelicalism is not the snow-white bed of honesty it wants to show itself to be. We need to remember that religiously conservative movements are ALWAYS the seedbed for pharisaism and hypocrisy. We are far from immune to that. 

Specifically, we have painted ourselves into a corner by hybridising our worthless-worm view of sanctification with a perfectionist expectation of those who lead us. We know we are all sinners, but expect perfect holiness, and create an environment of intense pressure to deliver that "holiness". 

This applies especially to leaders. Despite the repeated crashes as giants are knocked off their pedestals, we continue to insist on building more and higher pedestals. We are desperate for heroes - and then fast to utterly destroy any hero who shows himself to be mortal. 

I know to my cost what it is to allow a gap to develop between my publicly spoken, doctrinally impeccable, words and my personal devotional and moral life. I know what it is to hear temptation knocking at the door and feel that I couldn't open up about it for fear of losing my job - of coming off the pedestal for good. Every time I hear the words "mind the gap" on the tube I am reminded of the gap I did not mind in my own life - the creeping professionalisation that led to mask-wearing and levels of direct dishonesty and evil that make me shudder still. 

I am a passionate conservative evangelical. I believe in "true truth". Insofar as I ever want to 'rejoice in diversity', 'celebrate the liminal" or 'create a safe space for the exploration of ideas and for hearing different voices', I want to do so within the framework of a commitment to Scripture read as a united, God-given book. I am more than happy with the basic shape of classical reformation theology and appalled that so many are so quick to abandon that faith. 

But I am not at ease with what we have become if and when our conservative theology degenerates into an unkind pharisaism. My question is - Is it possible to retain the commitment to evangelicalism - to doctrinal orthodoxy - and at the same time be honest about weakness and failure, about fear and doubt, about temptation and sin? Can we speak the truth in LOVE? 

It jolly well ought to be possible! Our theology - of grace on the one hand and indwelling sin on the other (sorry - Salvationist/Wesleyan hat off today!) ought to make us kind and understanding more than any other tradition. But we aren't. We are very unforgiving - which leaves the struggling sinner very much alone. As a result, the casualties mount up - people bruised and burnt-out by their experiences of churches where grace has mutated into law, and holiness into hypocrisy. As my friend Robert Bannister put it, "the church is for people who have fallen off the roundabout" - but many churches have forgotten that.  

The Salvation Army is a church that is actually very good at helping roundabout-fallers like me. My prayer for our movement is for a fresh discovery of powerful preaching, with authority, and of genuine commitment to evangelical doctrine. May that come about without losing the love, the warmth and the grace to those who are hurting failures. 

And for every "staunch evangelical" church I pray - may you know and feel and practice the love and grace and patience and kindness and forebearance that flow from the very doctrines you love. For these things are fruit of the Spirit. 

As culture heads into meltdown, as Islam and Intolerant Tolerance threaten the church, can we manage to be Right but NOT Repulsive? 

Accentuate the Positive

She was tall and elegant, the vicar's wife. While he wore a black cassock (? Full length

dressing gown thing with countless buttons down the front) she was in something Laura Ashleyish as I recall. We were in the same discussion group after I had spoken on "the person of Jesus" as part of the Alpha course taking place at their Sussex church. 

The conversation turned to John 14:6 - Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. The lady was forthright: "I love the first half of the verse. It's wonderful. But I can never accept the second half. I just don't believe it. So negative!"

I have never forgotten that moment. Her openness and honesty were refreshing, perhaps, but what she said appalled me and, given her prominent role in the parish church, went a long way to explain why so few of the ninety or more regular church goers present seemed to have much living understanding of Jesus, at least so far as I could see from their words that night. 

What she said has struck me many times since as symptomatic of a widespread discomfort in the church regarding negatives. "I am the way..." is lovely; "no one can..." is uncomfortable.  We feel we want to be affirming and positive, we want to reach out in love, not erect barriers. We want to say Yes. 

But actually, Jesus himself, and the NT in general, use negatives very liberally. Even a passage so famously positive as the Beatitudes is followed immediately by:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. 

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 

In both of those paragraphs, the negative is used precisely to accentuate the positive. The importance of the positive teaching is brought out, but more, the words highlight the urgency of obedience given that an alternative, dreadful, negative possibility is brought into view. This pattern continues. Sometimes the pattern starts with the negative, at others the logic is more complex, but time and time again Yes and No interweave to create a tight and inescapable argument or exhortation. Try these:

Matt 6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

 

Matt 9:13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

 

Matt 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

 

Luke 18:16 But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 

Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. 

John 3:16-18 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 

Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. 

Sometimes in the letters exhortations seem to almost alternate in their positive and negative

impact:

Romans 12:9-12, 16-19 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ...

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 

Many more examples could be given. The point is that the negative not only accentuates the positive; very often the positive could not be clearly expressed without the negative. Unless the negative is said, the truth is not actually being communicated at all. 

And that is where our desire to be positive is getting us into deep problems. The vicar's wife who denied John 14:6b but wanted to keep saying 14:6a actually didn't get 14:6a at all. Light pierces the darkness, but darkness in a sense underlines the light. The negative accentuates the positive. It is Jesus' gentle "No" to Martha that helps us to see the beauty of Mary's priorities; to understand what Mary got right we should be so glad of the rebuke to Martha who got it not-quite-right.

 

And more: in a fallen world, we need God's gracious No, and not merely to highlight the good, but to assault the bad. When we read the papers, we want to say "No." When we watch the TV news, we should want to scream "No!" at the screen. And when we look at our own lives, there is something wrong with us if we don't want to say, "No!" to much of what we see.

The perpetual diet of sweet "inspirational" images and text-bites on social media reveals a less than healthy church. A church which wants to say "Yes" all the time isn't actually saying "Yes" to Jesus, because he requires us to say "No" rather frequently. Grace-talk, love-talk, joy-talk, Spirit-talk, forgiveness-talk - "Christian" talk that is never negative is not really fully Christian at all. We are slipping away from the gospel, and all our fluffy kittens and sunlit scenes seem only to show how determined we are not to go back to it. We badly need to re-embrace the negative, to re-learn to say No, and so to enjoy God's real, realistic, refreshing grace in all its genuine fullness.

Anyone for Total Depravity?

The Doctrines of the Salvation Army were the Founders' attempt at expressing their core beliefs in such a way as to summarise the Army's message, invite Christians who shared their vision of the gospel to identify with the movement, and to ward off those whose vision was significantly different at what they saw as key points. They are still, unaltered, the doctrinal standard of TSA, to which all soldiers and officers must subscribe. It is because of one or two such differences with the doctrines that I have stopped at being an Adherent rather than becoming a Soldier, but I would not be an Adherent if I didn't recognise in the Doctrines a fair summary of authentic Christianity, a preachable faith which has led many to love Christ as he really is. 

Some of my wife's students (cadets at William Booth College) were looking at the doctrine of Total Depravity last term, and I got into some significant conversations and personal study on the topic. Some I wrote up on another blog; I have plundered and edited some of that material in what follows. This doctrine is absolutely foundational for Christians - accepted as catholic (universal and orthodox) doctrine ever since Pelagius' controversy. And it has far-reaching consequences - as my daughter said to me recently regarding a theology course she is taking, she has come to realise that, after the doctrine of God, the doctrine of sin is all-important. 

The Salvation Army's statement on sin, which includes direct reference to Total Depravity, runs like this:

We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by their disobedience they lost their purity and happiness, and that in consequence of their fall all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.

The Doctrine itself 

The doctrine of Total Depravity does not say that we are all as bad we could possibly be, but that there is an all-pervasive quality to our sin which mars every aspect of our nature, making us totally bankrupt and incompetent when it comes to dealing with God. 

It is not only our worst moments, our open, blatant, high-handed sins, that are expressions of our sinfulness. Even our best, our highest efforts, our attempts at reform or even at religion, are spoiled and rendered valueless by our sin. As Isaiah put it, our righteousness is like filthy rags. 

The doctrine of total depravity says that sin has affected everything, and that includes our consciousness of sin. It says that we can't see how bad we are. It says that, as we face the oncoming disaster referred to in the phrase "justly exposed to the wrath of God" we are, by our fallen nature, unaware of our peril. We are asleep in a burning house, and it is a drugged sleep. Or to use a more biblical image, we are "dead in our sins"; a dead person doesn't even know they're dead.  

The repercussions of the doctrine

1) This Christian doctrine anchors our idea of grace within the Christian faith. 

It is against the backdrop of this deep view of sin that the Christian gospel says three things, or one thing with three elements:

• Where we are unable and bankrupt, God is able and active. His grace is extended to us - what we cannot do, he will do - he treats us in a way we have not deserved and cannot deserve. Our only hope lies not in what we do but in his grace and kindness - we can only throw ourselves on his mercy. This insight in itself marks out Christianity amongst the world's religions.

• God's grace comes to us specifically through the person of Jesus Christ. His obedient life, his submissive death, his resurrection - these are the events in which God's grace is worked out for us. Grace reaches us in life, in time and space because grace has reached down into time and space - ours is a historical faith.

• God's grace in the once-and-for-all work of Christ can only be grasped because of the gracious work of the Spirit, whose awakening power is needed if we are even to perceive our need of Jesus. Like the dry bones in the valley, we need God's breath upon us so that we come alive to our spiritual need, and his spiritual provision.  

We have to grasp the depth of the badness in order to see the greatness of God's goodness. Imagine that two people are rescued from a house fire.  One insists, "Oh, it was no big deal - I could have got out of there on my own" but the other says, "Man - I was totally stuck! I was utterly lost; no way could I have saved myself!" Which one will appreciate and praise the rescuing fire crew the most? 

The fact is that we are asleep in the fire. A drugged sleep, no less. The doctrine of total depravity says that sin has affected everything, and that includes our consciousness of sin - it is only the fireman breaking graciously into the room that alerts us to the seriousness of the danger! 

Our understanding of grace is anchored at its top end, as it were, by the unspeakable marvel of God's love in Jesus Christ. But it is anchored at the bottom end by our view of the sinfulness of human nature. A serious view of sin leads to a big view of Christ and a breathtaking insight into the love of God.

 

2) This Christian doctrine is unique among world religions

The doctrine of Total Depravity sets Christianity apart from all other religions. In fact, it is starting from this point that it becomes clear that Christianity is not, in the normal sense, a "religion" at all! While religion urges us to do this and do that in order to reach up to God, on the presupposition that what we can do will be enough, or at least make some significant difference, the Christian message is that our sin so weighs us down, so blocks us out from God, that there is nothing we can do by way of ritual action, social good or internal spiritual exercise that can possibly deal with the gravity of our problem and even start to bring us into the presence of our Creator. And for good measure it tells us that we are blinded to the degree of our sinfulness and have no natural awareness of the depth of our problem! This is the most pessimistic world-view of any faith.

If grace is a religious rarity, historical grace to the totally unable is unique. While religion always ends up saying "DO", God in Christ says "DONE". And it says this to those who don't even yet know their need. To the dead it says, "Live!"

3) This Christian doctrine stands over against our contemporary, human-centred culture.

We live in a self absorbed, self-pampering, self-congratulating age. Christian pessimism about human nature is utterly at odds with our generation's crazy optimism. (It is crazy because the evidence that ought to explode it flows in with every day's news!) 

Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of versions of spirituality currently available on the supermarket shelves of faith which adopt contemporary thinking rather than Christian doctrine as their template. Just to take one sentence from a popular "spiritual" website:

At the core of each life is true, eternal goodness—and the key to a successful life is opening up that true self so that we can compassionately connect with God’s world.

Although this is totally incompatible with the SA doctrine and that of other Christian churches, such thinking is really pretty common in Christian circles today. It stems partly from a confusion about the nature of God's love; for a generation for whom romantic and sexual categories have become all-pervasive and exclusive when speaking of love, it becomes natural to say that "God was so in love with us that he came to earth so as to be with us". But it is horribly unbiblical and destructive of the gospel. Our doctrinal statement ought to be all the exclusion required. After all, the idea that we are all fundamentally good is in itself a demonstration of the blindness that sin has brought about; to bring this idea into the church is, to say the least, not a very good idea.

Nowhere is this clash with contemporary culture more acute over the last twenty years or so than in the great debate regarding sexual ethics.

The idea of a "fallen world" is hardly dominant in contemporary thought about human medical, psychological or sexual issues. The general assumption is that what is, is what is meant to be - or at least, given that nothing is "meant to be", as if it had a mind behind it, nothing can be said to have ceased to be what it was meant to be. As a result, we are not permitted to critique any aspect of innate human desire or behaviour on the basis of a concept of fallenness. And this dominant attitude in the world is now frequently found in the church.

The result of this is that the phrase "God made me this way" is used as a catch-all defence regarding all manner of moral issues. The doctrine of Total Depravity just won't let us do that, and yet, through ignorance or rejection of the doctrine, people are driving a coach and horses through classical Christian morality with the phrase. 

The doctrine of Total Depravity says that our world has entered into rebellion and madness; it has slipped away from the ideal. In the place of order and harmony and regularity is disorder and twistedness and loss of equilibrium. In such a world, my desires cannot be trusted. I cannot simply say, "God made me this way" when it would also be true to say, "Sin made me this way."

I have read a very sensitive blog which makes this very point. The writer is qualified to speak to one of the chief presenting issues today in a way which I am not. His comments remind us that, on some contemporary moral questions, it is the very heart of the Christian faith that is at stake. Not for nothing is the doctrine of sin under attack within the church. See here. 

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If I look for moral or spiritual compass bearings inside myself, I do not merely run the risk of being misled - I am sure to be misled! I need a word from outside, a word from God the Father that speaks to me where I am, tells me who I am, tells me what is right and tells me what is wrong. Above all, I need a word from outside that tells me of the Saviour who came from outside, and yet came as one of us, to bear our sin, attacking our depravity at root, and then, victorious, poured out the Holy Spirit. It is this Spirit who opens our eyes to who we are in sin and to the glory and sufficiency of Christ, and who transforms us from day to day into his likeness. 

I hope you are all up for Total Depravity. There is no hope without it.