The Picture of Morally Gray

“Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. [Also,] they do not in fact behave in that way.”

~ C.S. Lewis

Even Hitler refrained from killing his mother.

Sure, maybe we’ve told a few lies, maybe we’ve cursed at our parents, maybe we’ve flipped off the jerk who cut us off in traffic this morning. But hey, we’re only human, right? It’s not like we’d ever kill someone. Okay, so Jesus says that hating somebody is the same as murder in his eyes. But you wouldn’t ever really kill someone, like, with a gun…Okay, hold that thought, we’ll come back to it. It’s important.

Shifting gears, if you look at cultures throughout history (Romans, Greeks, English, Spanish) the moral codes they lived by had a lot of similarities. Differ as they may, these similarities are a clue to the point there must be some center of morality. Or beginning. As C.S. Lewis says, “with the possible exception of the equator, everything has a beginning.” And reason says anything with a beginning had to have been created. And anything created has a creator. Thus, we can properly infer morality, the curious idea of how we ought to behave, was created. And, considering my demographic, we will assume, safely, that God is that Creator. (All this is Mere Christianity chapter 1 in a nutshell.)

So, what is right and what is wrong? We are all born with an idea of what we should and shouldn’t do. We don’t need to be told by our parents, though we are again and again. The purpose our parents serve is not so much to teach us right and wrong, but to help us learn what happens when we do wrong. Our parents teach us about consequences. No, we already know, don’t we?. In fact, that “knowledge” is the essence of sin.

In Reformed Theology we learn the term “Total Depravity.” This refers to the state of sin we are all born into. It is “total” because every part of us…heart, soul, mind, arms, legs, brain…is fallen. Personally, I don’t like this phrase. It can be misleading. It makes one think of “utter” depravity. As in, we are all so far gone in our sins everybody is running around raping and killing everybody else. But that’s ridiculous. As Sproul points out, “Even Hitler refrained from killing his mother.” So Sproul and I prefer the term “Radical Corruption.” Our whole person is radically corrupted.

Even Hitler refrained from killing his mother. And he wasn’t President of the Restraint Club. But when you think about it…at least when most people think about it…despite all the horrible things you do or are doing, you wouldn’t kill someone. That’s just way beyond us. If we joined the army or something and got shipped off to Terroristland, then maybe, MAYBE! And then only in self defense.

But what about those people that don’t think about it? This world is full of evil and full of people to carry it out without a second thought. One sure thing in life is this world will never run out of Mansons and Bundys. I can’t think about these people for more than a minute or so before I get distracted by the urge to sick-up. What a better place this world would be if we could just be rid of all the sicko killers and child pornographer rapists (side note: same thought Hitler had of the Jews, and the elderly, and the gays, and the disabled) (other side note: same thought Osama Laden has about you and me).

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So what if somebody went all “Boondock” on their sorry hind quarters? Of course we could never go the vigilante route ourselves but….we would root for whoever did, right? We might even get a rise out of it. A sense of pleasure or righteous judgment when someone bypasses all the red tape and legal bull-oh-knee and does what we’re all thinking. Because we all know, that the justice served by the state apparatus just takes too darn long. Somebody’s gotta do something.

Movies like “The Boondock Saints,” “Gone Baby Gone,” “The Brave One,” where the lines of morality are so blurred you can feel dirty rooting for the protagonist, are what stir my mind to think like this. Of course we want the baddies in Sheol ASAP. But, really, we’re all just as bad as them. Not one inch of our person is less corrupted and fallen than those whom we believe deserve this swift justice we’re talking about. If God created this moral code that we’re all born with, then certainly he also created some sort of divine legal system through which they will be processed. But if we’re just as fallen as the baddies then why doesn’t he just put everybody through the same system? Why don’t we all get the same punishment. As Piper once said, “Wonder not that the Towers fell, wonder that the Towers did not fall on you.” And Sproul points out that “[in relation to God and our eternal souls] some receive mercy, the rest receive justice.”

We all deserve the swiftest harshest justice. And some of us get it. Good. We deserve it. Some of us don’t. Praise God! We get mercy. We don’t deserve it, but we get it anyways! Why? God knows! Only God knows. I’m sure not complaining though.

Posted on March 10, 2008 12:00 AM