My wife is watching a Canadian show set in the 1890s about a police detective who uses advanced (for the time) scientific methods to solve crimes. The character is a nice guy and a devout Roman Catholic. In one episode two "sodomites" (the term they used in the show) end up dying -- one murdered and the other by suicide. The mystery is solved (and it's not quite about their sexual proclivities), but the detective is having a crisis of faith. He confesses to his priest, "How is it that two good men by all standards will be eternally damned for one sin?" Obviously the actor is following the script. Obviously the script writers were oblivious.
Scripture doesn't present us as basically "good men by all standards." Scripture claims, "No one does good, not even one" (Rom 3:12; Psa 14:3; Psa 53:3). Now, those two positions -- "basically good by all standards" and "no one does good; not even one" -- are as far apart as it gets. And it's not merely a difference of opinion over whether or not homosexual behavior is a sin. It's much more. If the biblical position is that natural man does no actual good, then the problem is not "mostly good" people, but people who have no natural conception of what "bad" really is.
Our kindly and confused police detective felt no concern about imposing his own sense of "good" on God, where God becomes the problem because He's confused. Writers aside, we generally have the same issue. We don't question our standards and values; we question God's. Which clearly points to a failure to grasp the obvious. We are naturally in rebellion against the Master of the Universe and are mostly proud of it. Which naturally demands repentance rather than rebellion.
4 comments:
It seems like there is a common thread between this and yesterday's post. That being that how we judge behavior is incomplete compared to how YHWH judges behavior. That our conclusions about what's good or not are lacking in context. Not that we shouldn't evaluate behavior based on what we know of YHWH's standards, but that we should do so knowing that we just don't have as much information as YHWH.
Yes, we seem to have an ongoing problem of accurately determining what "sin" is all while we're quite sure we know best and God could learn a thing or two from us.
Stan,
Yes, I hear many people who sound like they plan to stand before the judgement of YHWH and tell Him how wrong His is in no uncertain terms. There is a certain part of me that would like to see how that goes. Much like the guy who insisted that Jesus Himself could appear bodily in front of him and state unequivocally that homosexuality was a sin, and the he would tell Jesus that he wants no part of Him.
I've heard more than a few who take that sort of position where "If that's what God said, then He's wrong." The arrogance is palpable.
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