Sunday, December 30, 2012

And He Is Us

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

-Walt Kelly

In the hum-drum of getting up, going to work, coming home, reading, attending church, and doing some teaching, my mind, which has an existence apart from my will, wanders down strange paths, peeking into old doors, and trying to understand what's happening in me, and around me in the culture.

One thing I think about far too much is the duality of American thought. Our culture grew out of two great movements: The Renaissance and the Reformation. For a while they were fairly comfortable bed-fellows, connected by a theory of education that produced both More's Utopia and Erasmus's edition of the Greek New Testament. Calvin was comfortable quoting Seneca and Cicero, and deist Thomas Paine was not adverse to quoting Scripture to provoke revolution. (For a modern rendition of this amalgam, consider the Christian school movement that relies on the Greek trivium and builds its curriculum around Latin and Logic.)

But the movements morphed (or perhaps reached their own logical conclusions), and the fellowship was broken. The Renaissance morphed into the Enlightenment, Deism, Romanticism, and with Darwin's boost, into modern secular humanism. The Reformation and its child Puritanism, morphed through later revivalism into modern evangelicalism, which has lost much of its power because it is embarrassed by its roots in Wittenberg and Geneva.

This parting of Renaissance and Reformation was inevitable, given the roots of both movements. The Renaissance was the rediscovery of Graeco-Roman culture and a philosophy that was based on two premises: 1) Man by reason can solve his problems and attain greatness (he is the measure of all things). 2) Whatever is natural is right. Hence Bowra's (The Greek Experience) defense of the exposure of deformed infants as consistent with natural evolution; and anyone who has struggled through Plato's Dialogues knows Socrates' "natural" fascination with young boys. Both premises assume that human goodness is an innate given, and evil is an anomaly. And both premises are heartily embraced by American humanism.

The Reformation, on the other hand, espoused a much darker reality, drawing not from Graeco-Roman writers, but from the Hebrew Scriptures, with their strong emphasis on the fall and depravity of man. While the Reformers believed that man was capable of goodness and some degree of virtue, they also believed that man innately hated God, and (to use the symbols of the fall), preferred the trees of the garden to the presence of the Gardener. Man's desire to be God so warped his nature that his animosity to God could not be overcome from within, but required an act of God from without. Repentance became a gift.

Enter Grace. In the beginning of his believing, grace begins to work in the Christian, slowly changing him, calling him, lifting him up in failure, working contrary to the human expectation of spiritual strength by being "made perfect in weakness." In Reformation thought, evil is "normal," and grace, while not an anomaly, is certainly alien. In the end, all of creation will thrive and worship God by his grace alone.

And as far as human cultures are concerned, that which keeps evil in a culture from being as evil as it can be is only grace (sometimes spoken of as "common grace"). God will restrain evil by common grace, or loosen its bonds as he sees fit. A culture is as much in the hands of God and his grace as the individual heart. When common grace is lessened, man has an opportunity (which he will ignore) to see himself.

So, is there anything practical in forgotten histories and movements, any application? Well, Americans will automatically run to one world-view or the other when asking something as contemporary as "Why Sandy Hook?" Renaissance man (whether or not he holds to the name) will assume the goodness of man, puzzle over the anomaly, and blame anything but the heart of man. It is our structures and our institutions that contain the seeds of evil. Gun control will fix us. Better mental health care will fix us. Armed school guards will fix us. Government will fix us. More legally responsible school administrators will fix us. The trees of the garden will fix us. A nice apron of sewn leaves will fix us.

No one much believes the old Reformation view anymore. Most of us don't live long enough or pay attention long enough to comprehend the mystery of lawlessness. The answer to the "Why?" is Us. You and I are the problem. The very fact that we resist the implication that we are Lanza proves the rule. We contain the capacity for total absorption in self. We are Self. There is no remedy but alien grace.

I for one hope to see one more great renewal--not froth, not the gospel of the poor Jesus who knocks, hoping I'll let him in out of the cold. I opt for a renewal of brokenness, humility, repentance, real fear of an omnipotent God, gratitude for mercy, an awareness that Christ has a right to reign, a longing for grace, and an end to human presumption; I opt for another Reformation.