Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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One of the morning television shows recently featured a segment on the Great Apes. The guest expert, a distinguished zoologist, opened by saying, quite casually (as if no intelligent person could disagree), “There are five species of Great Apes: Gorillas, Orangutans, Bononos, Chimpanzees, and Man.” I have no problem with the theory of evolution as such, because I can imagine the hand of God in it. But when human beings are so easily lumped together with other animals, as just one more step on the evolutionary staircase, with no essential difference in purpose or in responsibility, I cringe. It seems to me that all civilization hangs on this.

I know that that zoologist’s opinion is the accepted wisdom of our time. No one says it out loud, but the smart money these days is betting on “man as animal, and nothing more.” Many of our leaders in education, in criminal justice, in psychology and sociology, in government have removed God from their understanding of men and woman and (as a naively unintended consequence) have destroyed personal morality in the process. Public policy today expects people to act like monkeys – excuses it and makes provisions for it.
That’s why the Ten Commandments are banned from public places. (It’s not a question of church-state separation. That’s just the least offensive way to talk about it. It’s a question of obedience.). You see, the Commandments are puzzling and troublesome to those who think of themselves, and others, as apes. Apes and other animals are part of nature, so they do what comes naturally. No restraints. No guilt. It’s an amoral world. (Neitchie said, “God is dead; all is permitted.”) The Commandments, on the other hand, call for unnatural behavior. Animals steal, they kill, they commit adultery, they covet, they don’t honor the parents, and, if they could, they would probably bear false witness! The Ten Commandments, all moral codes for that matter, assume an enormous difference between men and animals: and that difference is moral choice.

Oddly enough, those who promote a Godless view of man (and therefor a Godless view of society) must also make the case that men and woman are basically good. Why? Well, we need good (honesty, and civility, and respect), and if there is no God, where will good come from? It has to come from the good hearts and minds of human beings. So the secular faith (and it is a faith) says that men and woman, very highly advanced animals (who have developed language but cannot swing by their tails) – that men and woman, through education and reason, will bring about a better day. That’s where we start laughing. Who could possibly believe, looking at history and at the dismal state of humanity today, that people are basically good? What possible evidence could there be? We have not found a way, after a million years of occupying this earth, to end warfare. Instead, we keep developing better and better ways to shed each other’s blood. Killing fields, crematoriums, mass graves, torture chambers: are not things of the distant past, as one might think reasonable and educated people would have made them by now. They’re still around! Every well-intentioned government or private program to equalize people’s opportunities, or to make them behave better toward each other, has only made matters worse -- and has usually been exploited. Billions and billions spent to end poverty – in the United States alone – and we have more poverty today than before. And that’s not even to mention the oceans of poverty and hunger around the world. Adam’s race is a fallen one.
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Paul says. And that’s where we start – where all mankind starts. The front porch to faith, therefore, is confession. Before we even get in the door! (An understanding and admission of our desperate straits. “Other refuge have I none,” Charles Wesley wrote. “Hangs my helpless soul on thee.”) But, when we do confess, the door is right there. And our burden is lifted.

Sin is not really a matter of international warfare, and the failure of government programs, and corporate greed. Neither is sin a matter of drinking, smoking and mixed bathing. These are reflections of the sin in our hearts. And that’s where we’re trapped. When I understand “goodness” as the goodness of God, or the goodness of Jesus, then I know, with Paul, that I have fallen a million miles short! And that makes me spiritually antsy. I have no assurance of salvation. I’m on a high wire with no net. On the other hand, when I compare myself to other people, which I like to do, I can always find someone worse than I. And I can then indulge my self-righteousness, one of the master sins. It’s when I see my so-called goodness in the light of God’s goodness, that I know I’m utterly lost. When Peter first met Jesus, among the boats and fishing nets, and saw the beauty and power of this man, he said, “You better get out of here, Lord. I’m a foul-mouth man and so are all my friends.” “This is no place for someone like you.” The irony, of course, is that Peter (as usual) was exactly wrong. Jesus had come for the foul-mouth men. He was right where he belonged.

A professor in seminary told us about the Sunday School teacher who wanted to teach her children about Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. You remember, Jesus told of a Pharisee who would stand in a most prominent spot in the Temple and pray, “Thank you God that I am not like other men, especially like that tax collector over there.” But the tax collector hid in the darkest corner of the Temple when he prayed, and said, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” God heard the prayer of the humble sinner, Jesus said, but not that of the self-righteous Pharisee. The lesson being over, the Sunday School teacher then asked the children to bow their heads, and she led them in prayer, “Lord, we thank you that we are not like that Pharisee.” All of us in the seminary class that day laughed, and the professor turned to us and said, “You laugh. But what you are saying is, ‘Thank you God that we are not like that Sunday School teacher.” And that’s when I saw it, in that simple, almost silly story. That there was no righteousness in me, except by the grace of God. By my pride and selfishness and sanctimony, I turn even my good deeds and thoughts into bad. That’s why I don’t take myself too seriously. I am absolutely convinced that I am no good, unless (by some amazing grace) God should choose to love me and to use me. If I am able to do any good thing, it’s not me but God working in me.

Addicts don’t get better until they see their helpless situation and admit it to themselves and to others. Human beings don’t get better, don’t find salvation, until they see clearly the Gordian knot of sin and death, and know that there is no way to extricate themselves from it except by the grace of God. As long as we keep telling ourselves that we are good, that we don’t need God, that we can “beat” sin and death on our own, applying education and reason, we will be addicts ‘till we die. (I’m not opposed to education and reason, although I was never much good at either, but I do warn people against counting on these things for salvation. The Nazis in Germany and the communists in Russia were among the best educated peoples of our time. And the Nazis were among the most religious!)
Our message to this secular world, a world which is fast rejecting religion as an important element in life and considering people to be no more than apes – our fearless message to this world must be that life without God isn’t worth living. We cannot hesitate for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. Believe me, the emperor has no clothes! This secular world, promising so much and delivering so little, is a house of cards. It doesn’t lead to life; it leads to death. We are betraying our children when we don’t warn them about it. But, we have good news, too. A light has shown in this dark, crazy maze of a world to show us the way. And the darkness has not overcome it.
Up to this point we are like Paul, bemoaning his own life: “The good that I would, I do not. And the evil that I would not, that I do. Miserable creature that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” -- Just as we might speak if we were apes and nothing more. Next week we’ll talk about Paul’s answer to his own question: “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”