“I looked then, and saw a man named Evangelist coming to him, who asked, “Wherefore dost thou cry?” He [Christian] answered, Sir, I perceive, by the book in my hand, that I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment, and I find that I am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second” (The Pilgrim’s Progress, 4-5).[1]
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (The Prophet Isiah, Isiah 6:5).
The Heavenly Verdict
It does not matter who you are, a terrorist, a prophet like Isiah, an average Joe like Christian in
The Pilgrim’s Progress, or a righteous man in the sight of men like Job. When they faced the holiness of God, their sense of righteousness and holiness dissipated. They became conscious of the real weight of their sins’ burden. Yes, even the prophet Isiah, who had already written 5 chapters declaring judgment on the sins of his people, was not exempt and needed a redeemer.
The Earthly Crime
In the last post, I listed current events of one week only as a launching platform to this idea. We are morally corrupt beyond repair. Laws that used to restrict our evil are changing to allow more autonomy and redefining good and evil to suit our desires. We keep anesthetizing our moral conscience until we will get to the point of an irreversible coma in return for- temporarily- less guilt and shame. But this is not real redemption. This is self-deception.
The Second Step of Redemption: A Question
If the first step towards real redemption starts with facing the reality of our problem, the second step is asking, “Can the dead be redeemed?” Like Christian, in
The Pilgrims Progress, once he acknowledges the reality of his sin and destiny, he asks, “what shall I do?”
The Third Step of Redemption: Avoid Superficially Soothing Remedies
Imagine Christian, in The Pilgrim’s Progress, meeting Nietzsche, Bernard Russell, or Sartre before Evangelist.[2] Atheism responds that this sense of guilt and loss is a learned social or linguistic construction. Evil is mind-dependent.[3] Our perception of evil is an artifact of genes and the environment. The evil that burdens you is not objectively real so what is the big deal about? Yet, I can see Christian looking and his burden is right there. He is confused as to how Sam Harris is condemning the evils committed in the Old Testament if others saw it good for them. He intuitively sees the reality of evil and is not sold dismissing the problem.
Imagine Christian meeting a Hindu or a certain kind of Buddhist. Pantheists see “sin” and evil as part of the Maya and the big illusion. For “if God is good, then anything evil must not really exist” because we are one.[4] In other words, your sense of sin and moral deficiency is simply an illusion, an artifact of the limited human reason that classifies things in terms of distinctions. But the pantheist God is beyond our logical contradictions. Christian would have wondered whether he really existed after the encounter. But he would not have simply dismissed the reality of evil on his back. Like Christian, some of us have a hard time denying the evil they see in the Holocaust, exploding innocent worshippers into pieces, or the massacres committed in Nanking.
Finally, imagine Christian meeting a Muslim Sheikh. The first good news Christian would hear is that “Man is not born a sinner and the doctrine of the sinfulness of man has no basis in Islam.”[5]
The second good news is “an act is not intrinsically right or wrong.”[6] Islam redefines all that is evil such that it becomes lawful. For example, killing is not intrinsically wrong. Allah allowed the killing of the infidels in Jihad. Moreover, killing the infidels deals with hate not by transforming you to love your enemy but by venting your hate and anger in a way that God approves.
Defeated by sexual lusts and desires? Islam allows a man to marry four women in addition to a limitless number of concubines. Troubles with telling the truth? No problem, Islam addressed that by allowing lies to advance the case of Islam, which may also mean lying to get career advances, especially in political positions to advance the power of Islam in an undetectable manner. Christian would have left wondering if rebranding evil addresses his problem. He would have still felt the pain and the weight of his sins. He would not have found any peace.
Conclusion
Many thinkers note that human evil is among the most “empirically verified” things.[7] Some atheists such as Micheal Ruse, acknowledge that “Christianity is spot on about original sin—how could one think otherwise, when the world’s most civilized and advanced people (the people of Beethoven, Goethe, Kant) embraced that slime-ball Hitler and participated in the Holocaust? I think Saint Paul and the great Christian philosophers had real insights into sin and freedom and responsibility…”[8] Then, why waste the time contemplating a redemption of anyworldview that failed to appreciate the magnitude of the human brokenness?
God, in the Bible, uses strong words describing the gurus of the world attempting to provide alternative remedies for human redemption. He states, “They [The wise] have treated superficially the brokenness of My dear people, claiming, ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (HCSB Jer. 8:11). All the gurus of these worldviews fail to address the brokenness of humanity.
In short, unless you are convinced of the reality of evil, including your own sinfulness, you will have a hard time distinguishing the true way of redemption of the human brokenness. But, when you do, it is much easier to see their superficiality towards human evil.
[1] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2014), 4-5, https://document.desiringgod.org/the-pilgrim-sprogress-en.pdf?ts=1446648353.
[2] William Lane Craig, “William Lane Craig On Sam Harris and the Moral Landscape” (Online video), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZXw4_G47W8.
[3] Sam Harris, an atheist, tries to evade the problem by suggesting that right and wrong are objective and real. However, he founds his claim by equating morally good with what makes us happy. However, that is not enough to justify that all that is good for me is morally right. For details see, [3] William Lane Craig, “William Lane Craig On Sam Harris and the Moral Landscape” (Online video), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZXw4_G47W8
[4] Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook Om Christian Evidence (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013), 39.
[5] Norman L. Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross (Grand Rapids: MI: Baker Books, 2002), 44.
[6] Ibid., 46.
[7] Clay Jones, “Original Sin: Its Importance,” CRI (February 7, 2013), https://www.equip.org/articles/original-sin-its-importance-and-fairness/.
[8] Ibid.