Romans 2 Remix

With apologies to Saint Paul:

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.... God “will give to each person according to what he has done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: Not only for non-Christians, but also for Christians; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: Not only for Christians, but also for non-Christians. For God does not show favoritism....

Now you, if you call yourself a Christian; if you rely on the Bible and brag about your relationship to God; if you claim to know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the Bible; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, a “religious right,” or a “moral majority,” because you have in the Bible the embodiment of knowledge and truth--you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the Bible, do you dishonor God by breaking its commands? As it is written: “God's name is blasphemed among the non-Christian world because of you.” (Modified from Romans 2:1, 6-11, 17-24, based on the NIV. Partially inspired by James McGrath)

Selfishness and Sacrifice in LOST: There’s No Place Like Home

I only started watching LOST a couple months ago, but thanks to ABC.com generously offering all four seasons in HD – for free! – I’ve been able to catch up in time to watch the last few episodes live, and man am I hooked. Last night’s season finale reminded me why this has become my new favorite show (sorry Battlestar). “There’s No Place Like Home” had everything I could want in a TV show: mystery and revelation, action and suspense, character and charm, and one shocker of an ending. As Carmen Andres has noted, however, perhaps the best thing about it was its exploration of the opposites of selfishness and sacrifice (spoiler warning).

“There's No Place Like Home” included a number of powerful moments of selfishness – especially when Ben callously murdered Keamy, knowing full well it could mean the deaths of everyone on the boat – and ultimate sacrifice, as when Michael and Jin stay behind to give the others a chance to escape before the boat is destroyed. As for Ben moving, and leaving, the island, we don’t yet know if that was truly a sacrifice, or yet more selfishness. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this theme lay in the contrast between Jack and Sawyer.

Since the beginning, LOST has presented Jack and Sawyer as opposites: Jack has always been the selfless one, his only goal to ensure that his fellow castaways get home. Sawyer, on the other hand, has always been self-focused, concerned only for his own survival. Even their appearances reflected the contrast – Jack was always clean-cut and respectable, while Sawyer was gruff and uncivilized. But ever since Season Three ended with a drunk and bearded Jack, back in Los Angeles, actually hoping another plane will crash so that he might return to the island, their roles have been reversed. Throughout Season Four we’ve seen him descend from everything he stood for, most notably when he held a gun to Locke’s head and pulled the trigger in “The Beginning of the End.” Now in the two-part Season Finale we find that three years after escaping the island, he has not only become a drunk, but has abandoned Kate and Aaron, and is willing to do just about anything – even trust Ben – to get back.

Meanwhile, Sawyer has moved the opposite direction, and broken free from his old selfishness. Again, we saw a hint of this (though not the first) at the end of Season Three, when Sawyer turned back to save Sayid, Jin and Bernard in “Through the Looking Glass.” His newfound nobility has also been seen, for instance, in “The Shape of Things to Come,” when he risked his life to save Claire from the attack on the Barracks. Now in the two-part finale, his transformation seems to be complete. In the first half, he turned Jack’s signature line (“live together or die alone”) against him, by insisting that “You don’t get to die alone.” Then in the second half, he does what even Jack was unwilling to do: sacrifice himself to save the rest in the helicopter. While Jack remains silent, it is Sawyer who tells Kate he loves her then gives up his chance to escape. I love the symbolism too: his plunge into the water seems a kind of baptism, which leads to new life for himself (back on the island) and for the rest (who escape on the helicopter). Jack, meanwhile, is nothing more than a spectator to this scene, and as we have seen – he comes to dearly regret that he too did not stay behind.

In so reversing Jack and Sawyer’s roles, LOST has not only presented a powerful image of the nature and results of these two essential options – life-giving sacrifice or soul-destroying selfishness – but also emphasized the inescapably present choice between them. The decision between selfishness and sacrifice is not once for all, but a constant demand. It doesn’t matter how noble Jack was, unless he continues to be so. It doesn’t matter how selfish Sawyer was; for today he can make a new start. Virtue is never satisfied with the past, but awaits each new decision. No one can rest on their past deeds as proof of their character or hope, and no one is so far lost that they can’t find their way home. Sawyer seems to have learned that, as did Michael and Charlie and many others before them; I just hope that Jack, too, will remember it before the end.

He That Believeth in Me - Battlestar Season Four Premier

Battlestar Galactica’s season premier last night was titled “He That Believeth in Me,” a quote from John 11:25. In fine style, the episode plays on the whole verse from which this quote is drawn, which reads (in the old King James): “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” This episode is all about death and resurrection, and sets an excellent beginning to the final season of this great show (eh hem, Spoiler warning!)

Season three was by no means my favorite (I still think the first season was the best), but towards the end they built up to a number of very interesting developments, most notably the apparent death of Kara Thrace (Starbuck), the trial and acquittal of arch-traitor and Cylon-sympathizer Gaius Baltar, and the climactic revelation of four of the final five Cylons paired with the sudden reappearance of Starbuck, all set to a rousing rendition of “All Along the Watchtower.” It was brilliant, and left us plenty to contemplate over the last thirteen months.

After the long wait, I was certainly hoping for something spectacular for the premier, but unfortunately I think there was a bit too much anticipation. It was a good episode, but not their best. Barbara Nicolosi complains that they tried to do too much too fast, and I think she is right. There was a lot there, but we had to fly past all of it. I’ve been dying for a good old-fashioned space battle, but the one that began this episode was over too quickly. It may have been climactic, but it didn’t feel at all heroic, and they certainly could have done more to play up Ander’s choice to throw himself into his first battle as a Cylon, before he was spared having to fight it. The moment when the raider scanned and recognized him was great though, raising all kinds of questions about the nature of Cylons’ ultimate “plan.” Cathode Tan suggests this proves the Cylons may not be pursuing humanity’s destruction at all, but rather see themselves as the (divine) instrument of humanity's purification:

There has been a lot of indication that the race sees themselves as essentially the hand of God. Here - it is practically the only explanation. It's not that they're out to exterminate the entire human race, they're playing their part in man's morality play. They're the flood to God's Noah.

I think this is a very interesting possibility, though (like everything on BSG) it raises difficult questions. After all, if we think their near annihilation of the twelve colonies is horrific even if it were the will of God, can we say anything different about the original Noah? After all, in both cases humanity is just as flawed after the flood as before. Still, I have to appreciate how they continue to build a genuinely interesting theistic worldview into the story, and that leads to the two most interesting features of the premier:

First is the return of Kara. Barbara is right that they raced through this much too quickly. Starbuck went from telling Admiral Adama that they were going the wrong way, to confronting President Roslin with a gun, in no time at all. It felt very rushed, but it does set up an excellent question for this season to explore. We still don’t know who the final Cylon is, but it seems to me that Kara and Roslin are the two best candidates for the job (Gaius is too obvious, it would be anticlimactic and would make nonsense of his relationship with Caprica Six), so it will be interesting to see how they draw out the question of which one of them is right about the path they should take. In short, this is the question highlighted by the episode’s title: is Kara’s return a true resurrection, or merely another Cylon reincarnation?

But the resurrection theme didn’t end with Kara. The most interesting aspect of the episode was its treatment of Gaius. I was glad to see them return to season one form by including a genuine miracle in the healing of the boy (even if it was clichéd and obvious), but what I really appreciated was how they insisted on combining their exploration of resurrection with its essential pair: self-sacrifice.

Gaius is a sleaze ball, and the cult that springs up around him is nearly incomprehensible, but he seemed to reach a definite turning point in praying that God would take his life in place of the boy’s. He seemed to finally recognize his own wickedness in admitting that he truly does deserve to die, and that made his subsequent near death experience all the more intriguing. It will be very interesting to see whether he lives up to this new-found selflessness, or if he quickly reverts to his old narcissism. As always, Gaius and Six are hardly the people I want representing Christianity, but this connection between sacrifice and resurrection is exactly right, and I can’t wait to see how they play it out in the rest of the season.

Inclusivism and Universalism - To Hell With Sin?

In Michael’s latest contribution to the present conversation, he accused James of being “on the fringe of universalism.” James has denied the charge, though continued to maintain a strong form of inclusivism, which makes this a good time to fulfill my promise to explain how I both affirm inclusivism (though not as strongly as James), and yet deny universalism. The problem is this: If we accept that it is possible for a person who did not know Jesus in this life, to nonetheless be saved by Jesus, how can we expect that anyone will fail to be saved?

Surely, it will be argued, if it is in any sense possible to come to Jesus after death, everyone can be expected to do so. If God really is all good and loving, surely everyone, upon reaching his throne, will see that and believe. Doesn’t Paul say that “every knee will bow… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10-11)? Does he not say that “just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many [oi polloi] were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Jesus] the many [oi polloi] will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19)? If we interpret the first “many” to mean all people, should we not interpret the second in the same way? If so, then Christ’s death is sufficient to save everyone, so how can it fail to do so?

This is an attractive argument, but taking it all the way to universalism means ignoring Jesus’ own comments about hell, his parables about the final judgment (e.g. Matthew 25:31-46), his claim that “wide is the gate and broad the road that leads to destruction, and many [polloi] enter through it” (Matthew 7:13), and the Bible’s ever-present distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous. Thus, while Paul’s universalistic sounding comments can perhaps be used to support inclusivism, they cannot easily prove full universalism - unless we conclude that Paul disagreed with Jesus (and/or the Gospel writers) on this point.

Some might suggest, however, that Jesus’ comments are only meant to scare us into being good – like a parent that tells their toddler that if they don’t stay in bed the boogie monster will get them. Maybe God only threatens hell so we’ll follow him more readily, not because he actually intends to send us there.

Leaving aside the fact that this is actually a very disturbing picture of God, it simply cannot be maintained. The problem lies in free will: If God has any need at all to convince us to follow him, that must mean that we have a choice in the matter. But if human beings truly have a choice whether to accept God or reject him, then the possibility that some will in fact reject him can never be denied.

If it is true, as it seems to be, that our sins can become so entrenched that it becomes impossible for us to root them out ourselves, then ultimately we are all faced with an inescapable choice to either seek God’s aid, or remain in our sin. But that’s a problem, because it also seems to be the case that many people (and indeed, all of us are in danger of this) have embraced particular sins so thoroughly that not only are they unwilling to seek help in overcoming them, but they take offense at any suggestion that they need help. Unless we propose that God completely override their will, then such people might well condemn themselves to hell (which really means: choose to separate themselves from God). In such a tragic case, even God cannot help them.

For if God cannot justly override a person’s will to damn them (as any inclusivist must affirm), can he justly override a person’s will to save them? No matter how many chances God gives a human to repent, the possibility can never be denied that some, through pride, will still reject his offers. As usual, C.S. Lewis sums this up it best, in The Problem of Pain (the whole of this book, by the way, is directly applicable to our topic):

There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, especially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse. I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved.’ But my reason retorts ‘Without their will, or with it?’ If I say, ‘Without their will’ I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say ‘With their will,’ my reason replies, ‘How if they will not give in?’ (pgs. 119-20)

This post is part of a continuing conversation.

Quote - Salvation and Selflessness

O my Lord, if I worship you from fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I worship you from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates. But if I worship you for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face.

Who said it?