Hand it Over

I have just finished reading a book called The Reason for God- Belief in the Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller. My guess is the author wrote it to serve as a counter point work to some of the stuff recently made popular by writers such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. This book was written to address the issues of faith raised by skeptics to help them get past their stumbling blocks, but it is certainly helpful to Christians in helping them to understand their own stumbling blocks and those of others in their lives.

My favorite chapter is the one called The Problem of Sin. Sin has fallen out of favor as a topic of discussion these days. Our society doesn't really seem to believe in this concept anymore. It's all good, right? You do what you want, I'll do what I want, as long as we don't hurt anybody anything goes, right? Morality is all culturally relevant anyway, right? This is why we shouldn't judge the ways in which the Taliban suppress the rights of women. That's acceptable in their culture. We shouldn't judge. Who do we think we are anyway? Yeah, right.......

Keller refers to the work of another author, Jonathan Edwards who wrote a book called "The Nature of True Virtue", one of the most profound works ever written on social ethics. In it Edwards lays out the case for how sin destroys the social fabric of societies when anything but God is our highest love. If our highest love is our own family, Edwards argues, then we will tend to care less for the families of others. If our highest love is that of country we will tend to be racist or nationalistic. If our highest love is for our own individual happiness, then we will tend to put our own economic and power interests ahead of those of others. It is only when the love of God is our highest aspiration that we are able draw from our own hearts love of fairness, justice, equality.

Keller further expounds on the problem of sin by quoting from C.S.Lewis from his essay "Is Christianity Hard or Easy". In this essay Lewis discusses the problem of sin by saying that humans deal with the problem of morals and ethical behavior much as we do paying our taxes. We know that there is a claim on us that we must meet, but in the end we hope there is enough left over to get on with the business of living life. According to Lewis, Christ says "Give me ALL. I don't want just this much of your time, and this much of your money, and this much of your work so that your natural self can have the rest. I want you. Not your things. I have not come to torture your natural self. I will give you a new self instead. Hand over the whole natural self- All the desires, not just the ones you think wicked, but the ones you think innocent- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead.". Lewis further argues that while this may be difficult, the way in which we attempt to hold back something from God for ourselves is much more difficult in the end. We try to serve Him, yet remain focused on our own personal happiness and life goals which is exactly what Christ tried to warn us against. Lewis sums it up this way "If I am a grass field all the cutting will keep the grass less but it won't produce wheat. If I want wheat....I must be plowed up and re-sown". So therein lies the problem of sin. We can labor and work to keep it cut back and under control by our own efforts, but until we focus our entire lives on loving God first, the grass will continue to grow, the weeds will keep popping up, and no wheat will surely ever grow.

This might be a hard lesson to grasp, and yet as I read this chapter of The Reason for God, I found that it spoke very powerfully to me. I do recommend this book, by the way. It was well worth reading. It seems that the beginning of a new year is a good time to contemplate what it truly means to hand it all over to Him. As hard as it seems, I am beginning to see that my way has, in fact, been harder......food for thought. Shalom!