Hell became a source of tremendous controversy last year around the publication of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. For better or worse, Bell forced Christians to reconsider the ways we conceptualize hell and the Bible passages we use to support them. But Bell by no means broke new ground in offering alternatives to the classic or traditional way of thinking about hell. C.S. Lewis provides very cogent arguments for hell not as a place but as a state of being. These arguments, in turn, take shape around Lewis’ assertion that the Christian life is primarily about a relationship with the living being we call God. Hell, within Lewis’ theology, is the inevitable end result of living with a particular posture toward God. In God in the Dock, Lewis famously states, “The gates of hell are locked from the inside.” In other words, hell is populated by those who, in life, wanted nothing to do with God. In death God has simply given them what they wanted.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis says this:
“…Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live forever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live forever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse —so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.”
Here it sounds as though Lewis agrees with Bell on one hand (“Hell is of our own making”). Yet he contradicts those who go on to conclude that hell is temporary, imaginary or metaphorical. As Lewis puts it, every human being was created to live forever. The real question is whether we will live forever in the company of the God whose company we’ve embraced here and now. Or whether we’ll get in eternity the thing we’ve demanded on earth: to be left alone. If you want God to leave you alone now, why would the prospect of God leaving you alone forever offend you? If on the other hand you want God’s company forever, God invites you to start enjoying it now.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Repent
If I could summarize the season of Lent in one word, it would be repentance. We typically associate repentance with fire-and-brimstone preaching and guilt trips. Being reprimanded for doing things we want to do but know we shouldn’t. We associate repentance with that feeling that Brian Regan so aptly expresses: “You’ll never be right no matter what you say!” Never being right.
There’s nothing appealing about repentance when you think about it like that. But what if repentance wasn’t so much beating yourself against an impossible standard as it was responding to the love of someone you really wanted to be with? What if that person already loved you, and you just wanted to be the person they saw when they looked at you? In the movie As Good as it Gets, Jack Nicholson plays Melvin, an author who’s a lifelong bachelor and lifelong sufferer of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. His life follows an idiosyncratic routine over which he has utter control. He’s also completely alone. Then he meets and falls in love with a single mom, Carol, played by Helen Hunt. And in order to get close to her, he has to upset the careful balance of his life. Melvin’s routines and rituals are so powerful that it’s almost impossible for him to change. But the possibility of love – giving and receiving true love – is an opposing force strong enough to turn him around. At the end of the film, when Carol has had about enough of Melvin’s particular brand of crazy, he asks her to give him another chance. And he says, “You make me want to be a better person.”
The thing that motivates us to repent is the love of God. A God who loves us because he called us into existence. A God who knew us before we were born. Knows the number of hairs on our heads. Knows just how selfish and broken and afraid we are. And loves us anyway. Repentance is change. Changing your mind. Changing your course. Turning and returning. Repentance isn’t an escape clause from the fires of hell. Repentance is coming back to the relationship you were born for.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis puts it this way:
“Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen.”
Lewis goes on to say,
“…the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or—if they think there is not—at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christlife inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us…”
Don’t waste your time and energy trying to be good. Just stop running. Turn around. And let God’s love do the work. Repent.
There’s nothing appealing about repentance when you think about it like that. But what if repentance wasn’t so much beating yourself against an impossible standard as it was responding to the love of someone you really wanted to be with? What if that person already loved you, and you just wanted to be the person they saw when they looked at you? In the movie As Good as it Gets, Jack Nicholson plays Melvin, an author who’s a lifelong bachelor and lifelong sufferer of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. His life follows an idiosyncratic routine over which he has utter control. He’s also completely alone. Then he meets and falls in love with a single mom, Carol, played by Helen Hunt. And in order to get close to her, he has to upset the careful balance of his life. Melvin’s routines and rituals are so powerful that it’s almost impossible for him to change. But the possibility of love – giving and receiving true love – is an opposing force strong enough to turn him around. At the end of the film, when Carol has had about enough of Melvin’s particular brand of crazy, he asks her to give him another chance. And he says, “You make me want to be a better person.”
The thing that motivates us to repent is the love of God. A God who loves us because he called us into existence. A God who knew us before we were born. Knows the number of hairs on our heads. Knows just how selfish and broken and afraid we are. And loves us anyway. Repentance is change. Changing your mind. Changing your course. Turning and returning. Repentance isn’t an escape clause from the fires of hell. Repentance is coming back to the relationship you were born for.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis puts it this way:
“Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen.”
Lewis goes on to say,
“…the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or—if they think there is not—at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christlife inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us…”
Don’t waste your time and energy trying to be good. Just stop running. Turn around. And let God’s love do the work. Repent.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tabernacles
Passage: Leviticus 23:33-44
For eight of the first nine years of my married life I was a student. My wife and I lived on part-time salaries and paid tuition bills. Our reality was one of austerity.
Lean times and hard times teach us lessons. Lessons about how to survive; lessons about how to trust; lessons about how to find abundant joy in the absence of abundance. When times of abundance return, it pays to hold on to reminders. Reminders of the lean times and the lessons learned therein.
The defining era in the life of God’s people is their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. A lean time to end all lean times. During this journey the Israelites travel without extra provisions in a dry and inhospitable wilderness. The stuff of sustenance is scarce. They are fed bread that literally falls from heaven; water that is squeezed from stones by the hand of God. The relief of emerging into a land of lush greenery, of lakes and streams, is unfathomable.
And yet who can fathom the wonder of seeing one’s daily bread appear on the ground every morning; water burst forth from the rock at just the moment when it seems all is lost? The very presence of God rendered in fire and cloud? What would you give up to experience these miracles?
God gives his people the gift of the wilderness. And then, lest they forget, God gives them an annual reminder. A festival. For one week every year God’s people return to the tents that sheltered them all those cold nights in the desert. For that week they sleep on the hard ground. They offer up to God the bounty of their land: grain and livestock, fruit and foliage. For that week they remember their precious journey out of slavery into freedom. Out of hunger and into satiety. In the Festival of Tabernacles – tents – they once again celebrate the sustaining generosity and abundance not of their new land, but of the God who brought them there. The God who protects and provides for his people in every time and every place, throughout every moment of their journeys.
For eight of the first nine years of my married life I was a student. My wife and I lived on part-time salaries and paid tuition bills. Our reality was one of austerity.
Lean times and hard times teach us lessons. Lessons about how to survive; lessons about how to trust; lessons about how to find abundant joy in the absence of abundance. When times of abundance return, it pays to hold on to reminders. Reminders of the lean times and the lessons learned therein.
The defining era in the life of God’s people is their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. A lean time to end all lean times. During this journey the Israelites travel without extra provisions in a dry and inhospitable wilderness. The stuff of sustenance is scarce. They are fed bread that literally falls from heaven; water that is squeezed from stones by the hand of God. The relief of emerging into a land of lush greenery, of lakes and streams, is unfathomable.
And yet who can fathom the wonder of seeing one’s daily bread appear on the ground every morning; water burst forth from the rock at just the moment when it seems all is lost? The very presence of God rendered in fire and cloud? What would you give up to experience these miracles?
God gives his people the gift of the wilderness. And then, lest they forget, God gives them an annual reminder. A festival. For one week every year God’s people return to the tents that sheltered them all those cold nights in the desert. For that week they sleep on the hard ground. They offer up to God the bounty of their land: grain and livestock, fruit and foliage. For that week they remember their precious journey out of slavery into freedom. Out of hunger and into satiety. In the Festival of Tabernacles – tents – they once again celebrate the sustaining generosity and abundance not of their new land, but of the God who brought them there. The God who protects and provides for his people in every time and every place, throughout every moment of their journeys.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Heaven on Earth
Passage: Exodus 39:32-43
The Israelites are in the middle of a long trek from Egypt to the Promised Land. Their surroundings are spare and bleak – it’s the wilderness. In this setting God gives his people explicit directions for the construction of a “meeting place”; a space that serves the exclusive purpose of communion with God. God accounts for every last detail – down to the fringes of the garments worn by his attendants. God goes to great lengths to describe each furnishing; gives strict instructions about who may and who may not serve in this meeting place. The bulk of four full chapters of Exodus are devoted to God’s plans for the Tabernacle.
Most contemporary readers either skip these chapters, skim them quickly, or read them only to scratch their heads when they’ve finished reading. Why the detail? What does it matter how they built the Tabernacle? Doesn’t it suffice to say “it was pretty fancy”, and move on?
We easily miss the point of these passages. God’s intended purpose for the Tabernacle is to provide an approximation of heaven on earth. Worshipers who enter the Tabernacle have the experience of stepping into a different world. Think about the attention to detail that goes into the creation of a place like Disney World. Everything from the brick in the walkways to the costumes of the attendants to the music on the PA system to the food in the restaurants is designed to transport the visitor. Everything from paint selection to personnel selection serves this purpose. When you step through the front gates, you’re stepping into a different world.
God goes on to tell his people to mirror the contrast between outside world and Tabernacle/Temple in their behavior in the world. In the same way that the interior of the Tabernacle symbolizes the perfection of heaven, the life of God’s people reflects something of the goodness of heaven. This goodness is expressed in generosity; compassion for the weak and marginalized; care for the poor; affirmation of every member of society. The society of the Israelites stands in stark contrast to that of their neighbors. It is God’s intent that when the nations of the world look at the Israelites, they catch a glimpse of heaven on earth.
This is God’s intention for the church, too. The authors of the New Testament remind the church repeatedly that they have taken over the role of the temple. By their conduct, their service, and their worship, Christians everywhere give the world a picture of heaven. In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul says,
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?
In 1 Peter 2, Peter tells the church,
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
The Israelites are in the middle of a long trek from Egypt to the Promised Land. Their surroundings are spare and bleak – it’s the wilderness. In this setting God gives his people explicit directions for the construction of a “meeting place”; a space that serves the exclusive purpose of communion with God. God accounts for every last detail – down to the fringes of the garments worn by his attendants. God goes to great lengths to describe each furnishing; gives strict instructions about who may and who may not serve in this meeting place. The bulk of four full chapters of Exodus are devoted to God’s plans for the Tabernacle.
Most contemporary readers either skip these chapters, skim them quickly, or read them only to scratch their heads when they’ve finished reading. Why the detail? What does it matter how they built the Tabernacle? Doesn’t it suffice to say “it was pretty fancy”, and move on?
We easily miss the point of these passages. God’s intended purpose for the Tabernacle is to provide an approximation of heaven on earth. Worshipers who enter the Tabernacle have the experience of stepping into a different world. Think about the attention to detail that goes into the creation of a place like Disney World. Everything from the brick in the walkways to the costumes of the attendants to the music on the PA system to the food in the restaurants is designed to transport the visitor. Everything from paint selection to personnel selection serves this purpose. When you step through the front gates, you’re stepping into a different world.
The one thing God communicates to his people repeatedly is that they belong to a different world. The inconceivable contrast between the wilderness and the interior of the tabernacle points to the inconceivable contrast between heaven and earth. God says, “This is where you belong; this is the way it was meant to be. Hold out for better.”
God goes on to tell his people to mirror the contrast between outside world and Tabernacle/Temple in their behavior in the world. In the same way that the interior of the Tabernacle symbolizes the perfection of heaven, the life of God’s people reflects something of the goodness of heaven. This goodness is expressed in generosity; compassion for the weak and marginalized; care for the poor; affirmation of every member of society. The society of the Israelites stands in stark contrast to that of their neighbors. It is God’s intent that when the nations of the world look at the Israelites, they catch a glimpse of heaven on earth.
This is God’s intention for the church, too. The authors of the New Testament remind the church repeatedly that they have taken over the role of the temple. By their conduct, their service, and their worship, Christians everywhere give the world a picture of heaven. In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul says,
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?
In 1 Peter 2, Peter tells the church,
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Jesus Christ calls his followers to model the new way of the Kingdom of God. This new way stands in stark contrast to the way of a world preoccupied with self-protection, financial success, physical beauty, and military strength. The new way is characterized by self-sacrifice, compassion, mercy, and generosity. The job of the church is not to stamp out and condemn sin; our job is to model, here and now, life in the Kingdom of God. Heaven on earth. This is what people experience when they meet us and spend time with us. This is what we offer when we welcome people into the fellowship of our homes and our places of worship. As a "city on a hill", we are a beacon of light that attracts any who are tired of the darkness of a world bound in sin. We belong to a different Kingdom. We represent God's offer of transport from the bleakness of the wilderness to the beauty of heaven.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Speaking of (dis)Comfort
In Love Wins, Rob Bell describes the near-death experience a congregant once recounted to him. The man was working to repair a roof inside a massive industrial building. The cherry picker the man was standing on tipped, pinning him to the wall, simultaneously preventing him from a deadly fall while also crushing him. As he lost consciousness, the man had the experience of being bathed in a warm light. The stuff of your typical near-death experience. The exception is this: instead of being comforted by the light, his instinctive response was to say repeatedly, “I’m so sorry; I’m so sorry; I’m so sorry…”
In chapter five of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis reiterates that one of our greatest clues that the universe is created and governed by a personal being is our awareness first that there is an objective right way to live, and second that we don’t follow it. Lewis then argues that as we grow in our awareness of this personal being we become increasingly uneasy. The divide between how we ought to live and how we actually live becomes increasingly significant. Our initial response to this being isn’t comfort; it’s discomfort. There are wrongs for which we are accountable and for which we can’t compensate. As such, says Lewis,
In chapter five of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis reiterates that one of our greatest clues that the universe is created and governed by a personal being is our awareness first that there is an objective right way to live, and second that we don’t follow it. Lewis then argues that as we grow in our awareness of this personal being we become increasingly uneasy. The divide between how we ought to live and how we actually live becomes increasingly significant. Our initial response to this being isn’t comfort; it’s discomfort. There are wrongs for which we are accountable and for which we can’t compensate. As such, says Lewis,
"Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth— only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair."
The Christian faith offers something that is, in the end, the only possible comfort. But to get there, one has to be made uncomfortable enough to go looking for the person at the heart of the Christian faith. This is, in turn, the very argument that introduces the Heidelberg Catechism. Many within our church tradition know the answer to the Catechism’s first question:
What is your only comfort in life and in death?
That I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
That I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
The authors Catechism follow this up immediately with: “The first thing I need to know in order to live and die in the joy of this comfort is…how great my sin and misery are!”
To Lewis’ point, if you go to Christianity looking for comfort, you’re going to be disappointed. That is unless the comfort you’re looking for is relief from the discomfort of recognizing the fundamental incongruity of your being. There is a way you should be – in your relationships; in your business dealings; in your attitudes; in your treatment of self and others. And you have not been that way. Lewis says, “Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness.” Jesus puts it this way: “The healthy do not need a doctor; the sick do. I haven’t come for the ‘righteous’; I’m here for sinners.” Not for the comfortable, but for the uncomfortable. The proper first response to the Person who governs the universe? I'm sorry...
Highly Regarded
Passage: Exodus 11:1-9
Right before the final plague, we’re told this:
Now the LORD had said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely. Tell the people that men and women alike are to ask their neighbors for articles of silver and gold.”
The author then adds this footnote:
(The LORD made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh’s officials and by the people.)
Wait. What? Moses and the Israelites, whose presents has meant nothing but tribulation and misery – this Moses and the Israelites are highly regarded by the Egyptians? What’s that about?
By this point in the story, it’s obvious that the only reason God hasn’t eased up on Egypt is Pharaoh’s “hard-heartedness.” All Pharaoh has to do is dismiss the Israelites. God has told him nine times. Nine times Pharaoh has refused, and nine times God has rained calamity upon his nation. This is obvious to us, the readers; it’s obvious to Moses and the Israelites; apparently it’s obvious to Pharaoh’s own people. What’s also obvious to the Egyptians is that the LORD is the one true God, and Moses is the LORD’s representative. This is why they are favorably disposed to the Israelites; why, when the Israelites ask their neighbors for silver and gold, they’re showered with it. Because the Egyptians see it clearly, and hope that their favorable disposition might cause God to respond favorably toward them.
Throughout the Old Testament, we see God evoking two responses in people. Either they revolt against God’s power and authority, digging in their heels and resisting God with all their might. Or they rightly recognize God as the ultimate power, and bow the knee. All who resist break themselves to pieces against the inexorable onslaught of God’s Kingdom. Those who bow the knee experience God's grace. The Egyptians regard Moses and the Israelites favorably because they have recognized the hand of the one true God.
But then we have to assume that there is also something about the way Moses and the Israelites carry themselves that wins the hearts of their neighbors. Had they sneered in the face of the Egyptians’ suffering, or lorded it over them, it’s hard to imagine the Egyptians being "favorably disposed". Had God’s people instead conducted themselves with humility and even understanding or compassion, the positive response of their neighbors would make more sense.
When displays of God’s power become evident in our world, how do God’s people respond? Do we turn to the victims of economic crisis, natural disaster, war, and terrorist attacks and say, “That’s what God does to sinners?” Or do we conduct ourselves with humility and compassion? Are we “highly regarded” by our neighbors? What could we do to change that?
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Basic Instinct
C.S. Lewis follows up the first chapter of Mere Christianity by addressing potential objections. In particular, those who might say that the innate moral sensibility Lewis talks about in chapter one is in fact simply the “herd instinct.” In other words, what people identify as the moral impulse is just another instinct honed over generations to increase the chances of human survival. By way of a defense, Lewis cites instances in which a person has to choose between two conflicting instincts:
Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires—one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
Lewis goes on to argue that at any given time a person may be under the influence of multiple conflicting instincts. That no one of these instincts is “good” or “bad” in itself. But that each is appropriate under certain circumstances. The mechanism, in turn, by which people choose one instinct over another cannot, itself, be another instinct.
It’s this mechanism that sets humans apart from other creatures as unique. Lewis observes that this mechanism often leads people to respond, when two instincts are in conflict, to the weaker instinct. As such this mechanism points to a set of governing principles for human behavior that is beyond simple survival.
In addition to maintaining the trajectory of his initial argument, Lewis establishes two other important points in this chapter. First, he affirms each human appetite and impulse. Whereas each has the potential to express itself at an inconvenient time or in an inappropriate way; none is, in itself, corrupt or “sinful” (to use religious terminology). Second, Lewis identifies the folly in allowing any one instinct to take absolute precedence. He puts it this way:
There are also occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people's children or countries. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the "right" notes and the "wrong" ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.
By the way, this point is of great practical consequence. The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity," and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.
Referring again to Romans 1, Paul identifies this tendency in those who overindulge their physical appetites. He asserts that the way God punishes people is by “giving them over” to become slaves to these appetites. When one single ambition, desire, or pleasure becomes a person’s driving force, it proves to be an unforgiving and unrelenting master. We are not creatures of instinct. We’ve been given the unique capacity to judge between, and even keep in check, our needs and appetites. An almost godlike capacity to choose. Where could that have come from?
Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires—one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
Lewis goes on to argue that at any given time a person may be under the influence of multiple conflicting instincts. That no one of these instincts is “good” or “bad” in itself. But that each is appropriate under certain circumstances. The mechanism, in turn, by which people choose one instinct over another cannot, itself, be another instinct.
It’s this mechanism that sets humans apart from other creatures as unique. Lewis observes that this mechanism often leads people to respond, when two instincts are in conflict, to the weaker instinct. As such this mechanism points to a set of governing principles for human behavior that is beyond simple survival.
In addition to maintaining the trajectory of his initial argument, Lewis establishes two other important points in this chapter. First, he affirms each human appetite and impulse. Whereas each has the potential to express itself at an inconvenient time or in an inappropriate way; none is, in itself, corrupt or “sinful” (to use religious terminology). Second, Lewis identifies the folly in allowing any one instinct to take absolute precedence. He puts it this way:
There are also occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people's children or countries. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the "right" notes and the "wrong" ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.
By the way, this point is of great practical consequence. The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity," and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.
Referring again to Romans 1, Paul identifies this tendency in those who overindulge their physical appetites. He asserts that the way God punishes people is by “giving them over” to become slaves to these appetites. When one single ambition, desire, or pleasure becomes a person’s driving force, it proves to be an unforgiving and unrelenting master. We are not creatures of instinct. We’ve been given the unique capacity to judge between, and even keep in check, our needs and appetites. An almost godlike capacity to choose. Where could that have come from?
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