Se7en

Romans 5:19
For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Most people have no problem morally distinguishing between the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and the Nazi perpetrated Holocaust of the European Jews. Although both resulted in horrific death and massive suffering, history sees a moral difference between the events. The bombing of Hiroshima arguably brought an end to a war which would have continued for at least another year, with massive loss of both military and civilian life and infrastructure. Japan would have been obliterated. The American response to Japanese aggression in the Pacific was a defensive one, and the peace which ultimately ensued brought about a birth of Asian economic prosperity which the world has never known. In contrast, the Holocaust and the Nazi butchery had no redemptive value. The utter horror and complete depravity of methodical genocide on this scale had never been seen in human history. It could not be interpreted as a defensive action, nor could any aspect of the Holocaust be morally justified.

As obvious as these historical facts may seem, we have entered an age in which many people cannot tell the difference between a defensive war and a hateful aggression. This new philosophy equates all killing with murder. No act of defensive war is justified because all acts of war are murderous. Death itself is evil unless it comes about through forces of nature, and even then we try to blame American imperialism for failing to prepare for or respond to natural disasters, and we blame American environmental imperialism for causing natural disasters as well.

I just recently watched the film "Se7en". This film, along with "Silence of the Lambs" and "The Cell", portrays the truly diabolical nature in the heart of man. I wonder if a person making an argument of moral equivalency could distinguish between a Marine tossing a grenade into a terrorist rathole and the sinister murder and torture portrayed by John Doe, the perpetrator in Se7en. Do the motivations of the killer change the moral value of the killing? Not so long ago, the answer to this question was easy and obvious to the vast majority of people in our society. Perhaps the answer is still obvious to most people, but here are some mantras which should be familiar:

Meat is murder. (Killing animals for food)
War is murder. (Regardless of the reason for the war)
Bush lied, people died. (People should not die, ever)
Capital punishment is murder. (No matter the crime)

Oh, and lest I forget, abortion is CHOICE, a fetus is a parasite.

This type of anti-intellectual idealism allows people to cut through the complexity of ethical issues with a single blade. It provides the believer with an illusion that he sees through the social ephemera and the lies of the established order. In this utopian view of humanity, we as individual human beings are basically good, but we are controlled by the rich and powerful to participate in imperialistic enterprises, to suppress the dissident and misfit, and to neglect and distract the unfortunate. Basic human nature is good, but has been distorted by those in power for self aggrandisement.

If the United States threatens the world with nuclear annihilation, then how is this different from Nazi Germany or Stalinist USSR threatening the world with totalitarian conquest? Or how is it different from Al Quaeda threatening the world with an Islamic theocracy? People who cannot see the distinction can neither see the difference between a law enforcement officer and someone robbing a convenience store at gunpoint. This kind of muddy thinking permeates the very places where we teach leaders how to think critically -- the universities. It is the fall of civilization, not by conquest, but by self mutilation.

One cannot enjoy a movie like Se7en. It is not meant to enjoy or to entertain. It is meant to shock and to stimulate thought. John Doe has brought a taste of Hell into the world. He condemns sinners, but offers no redemption or hope. He enjoys torturing and delights in the misery of his victims. He delights in the twistedness and complete perversity of the human heart devoid of love. He exalts evil as holiness. John Doe takes moral equivalency to its nihilistic extreme. In a world where all killing is equal, where no justice is possible, and where all people revel in sin, the Devil makes the rules. As scripture says, there are no righteous, no not one.

So why should it matter that a sinner tortures another sinner? What difference does it make whether a bomber drops a nuclear weapon on a city or a Wahabist saws off the head of a Westerner? If there are no innocent, then there are no victims. Or is it the opposite, where all are innocent, all are victims? Either way, the end result is chaos and social disintegration. When we lose the ability to make moral distinction, we lose everything.

If we only take half of the Biblical message, that all have sinned and all deserve death, then John Doe is no different than John the Baptist. Or if we take the behavioral science model and say that we are products of our environment and must re-engineer ourselves, then John Doe is no different than the victim he tortures. God solved this dilemma, as we read in Romans 5:19. We are made righteous, neither by redefining righteousness, nor by social engineering, but by the righteousness of Christ. But knowing this, if we fail to differentiate between fighting or committing evil, then how can we even choose to accept God's grace in our lives? If we lose our ability to make a clear moral distinction, then how can we even recognize God's holiness?

Detective Somerset encounters John Doe within days of his retirement from a long and discouraging career of fighting evil. At the end of the movie, he decides to continue the fight, to remain a detective. What has changed? Evil men like John Doe continue to find their victims, although Doe himself is dead at the hand of his partner. Apathy and decadence still rule the day in the bleak and decrepit city. Why continue to fight a losing battle? What is the difference, as John Doe points out, between murder for pleasure and murder for revenge?

The battle against evil is not only against the crimes committed by the evil doer. It is also a battle against the lies of the Enemy, the lie that we cannot fight evil because we are not perfectly good, the lie that because the human heart is corrupt, we might as well indulge corruption. It is a lie we can trace back to Eden, and it remains a lie until Christ comes again.

The body and the blood

The temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to think that because God has been dealing with us -- because He has been taking steps to bring us into something more of Himself and has been teaching us deeper lessons of the Cross -- He has thereby set before us new standards, and that only by attaining to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His Blood.

I may be mistaken, but I feel very strongly that some of us are thinking in terms such as these: `Today I have been a little more careful; today I have been doing a little better; this morning I have been reading the Word of God in a warmer way, so today I can pray better!' Or again, `Today I have had a little difficulty with the family; I began the day feeling very gloomy and moody; I am not feeling too bright now; it seems that there must be something wrong; therefore I cannot approach God.'

What, after all, is your basis of approach to God? Do you come to Him on the uncertain ground of your feeling, the feeling that you may have achieved something for God today? Or is your approach based on something far more secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed, and that God looks on that Blood and is satisfied?

Watchman Nee, A Normal Christian Life


The two most common words in America are "busy" and "tired". We blandish them about in pride. We wear these badges with an obligatory cast of resignation and a sigh. Our membership in the club depends on our immersion in the headlong pace of events beyond our control and the consequent fatigue which results from stepping on the treadmill -- a treadmill set on "sprint". Ian Anderson said it well in "Locomotive Breath":


In the shuffling madness
of the locomotive breath,
runs the all time loser,
headlong to his death.
He feels the piston scraping
steam breaking on his brow
old Charlie stole the handle and the
train won't stop going
no way to slow down.

He sees his children jumping off
at stations one by one.
His woman and his best friend
in bed and having fun.
Crawling down the corridor
on his hands and knees
old Charlie stole the handle and
the train won't stop going
no way to slow down.

He hears the silence howling
catches angels as they fall.
And the all time winner
has got him by the balls.
He picks up Gideons Bible
open at page one
old Charlie stole the handle and
the train won't stop going
no way to slow down.



An indifferent God runs the locomotive of our useless and meaningless life, and Gideon's Bible does not hold any answers, because there are none. Our only hope lies in understanding that hope means nothing. Just keep moving. Just stay busy. Just stay alive as long as you can. The winners live a life with more pleasures than pains, and die in a sweet dream in a beautiful log home in the mountains. If you want to fantasize about eternity, that's fine, just don't bother me with your inability to accept things as they are.

The losers, which means most of us, live lives punctuated with misery and filled with contention, and die from cancer in a nursing home, avoided by our friends and family who are too busy and too tired to endure our pain.

The object of the game is to take control of the locomotive, to select the track with the most scenic view, and to ignore the final destination. This is the secular view of life, and evidence to the contrary, most secular people believe that they control the locomotive, or reject the comparison altogether.

A believer in Christ should look at the world differently. So why do we behave in the same way as any other passenger in the shuffling madness of the locomotive breath? Why do Christians fill their lives with so much activity as they run headlong to their deaths? It is because we make the same mistake that the Pharisees made 2000 years ago. They believed that their salvation could be earned, and that their relationship with God was based on their own merit, rather than on God's perfect grace. So it makes no difference whether you worship the secular meritocracy or the meritocracy of the Christian church. Whether you compare yourself to your neighbor, or whether you calculate your merit based on obedience to the Law and Christian service, it is still the same principle at work in your life.

Jesus said to seek first the kingdom of God. Does this mean that we get our ticket punched and then live our lives no differently than those who have no hope in eternity? Jesus does not offer His blood to drink and His body to eat so that we may conform to social pressure.

When a believer dies young, why do we mourn? Is it because we will miss him? Or is it because we have bought the secular belief that his life was cut short before he could achieve, or accomplish, or succeed, or fulfill temporal things? Or do we mourn for ourselves because we are reminded of the destination of the locomotive, and for a brief time, we must look at the broken tressle and the chasm beyond.

For the unbeliever and the believer, the cause of the shuffling madness is the same. We want to cram as much life into our span of years as we possibly can. We want to fill our pots of experience to overflowing. There is no time or inclination for reflection, because reflection leads to a consideration of ultimate reality ... not a good thing in this busy life. We can understand an unbeliever attempting to walk on water by running as fast as he can, but what about the believer? In the context of eternity, it doesn't really make sense to live life as if there is no tomorrow, because we believe in eternal life with endless tomorrows.

God's peace begins with acceptance but consummates with conviction. We must not only profess and believe intellectually that the blood of Christ truly accomplishes our redemption but we must also allow the body of Christ to replace our own. Redemption must lead to transformation. As long as we believe in the merit of our own actions, we will be unable to know the peace of God. How can we be at peace with God when we try to outperform His infinite sacrifice with our own efforts?

I say these things knowing that I don't have peace most of the time. I know where to find peace, but the thorn in my life is the very doubt which I hate. I am caught in Paul's dilemma, the war between the flesh and the spirit, but the mortal flesh holds sway. The doubt I live with every day is not a black despair, but rather an instinctive reaction to the demands of the world. My dilemma is being in the world but not fully embracing that I am not of the world. Just as the Elves of Middle Earth were enchanted by it, so we all are enchanted by the strange mixture of God's Creation and the corruption wrought by Satan. We want more of it because we experience it directly.

But consider whether the secular dream of utopia is any less fantastic than the Christian faith in eternal paradise. Knowing what we know about human nature and the evil of which we are quite capable, how can we be hopeful of a humanistic paradise on earth? If there is no divine transformation of creation, then there is no hope at all, only a magnification of both good and ill. Likewise, if there is no divine transformation of the self, then the corruption of the self remains. How can we find any hope in self perfection knowing what we know about our imperfect nature?

A secularist laughs at the faithful, but his laughter is hollow with irony, for he has put his true faith in himself, transient and corrupt. If faith in Christ is a fool's hope, then at worst it is an honest faith rather than a contradiction.

Those pesky religious fanatics

The greatest philosopher of the 20th century (Rodney King) once said, "Why can't we all just get along?" Setting aside the whole concept of sin for a moment, the simple answer could be "Because we don't want to." Another possible and equally unsatisfying answer is "Because we don't believe the same thing." If I believe in loving my neighbor as myself, but my neighbor believes in sawing off the heads of unbelievers, then we have a small problem.

So the liberal world (not the leftist radical world, but the liberal modern world we actually live in) promotes tolerance, but assumes that we have a common ground, a common humanity, which will allow us to all-just-get-along. According to the secular liberal view, this common ground can be found in any culture because it springs from our intrinsic human nature. What destroys our ability to all-just-get-along (ajga, pronounce azha) are those who desire power over others. Their behavior manifests itself in greed and violence, thought control and suppression of basic human liberty and rights. They are the wolves among the sheep. Most of us would ajga if we were not misled or attacked by the wolves. This is, of course, a simplified version of Rousseau's concept of what it means to be human. Human good, society evil.

While Rousseau's modern disciples and utopians continue to sip their margaritas on the deck of a slowly sinking Western Christendom, they completely ignore the origin of this common humanity which they mistakenly perceive to be innate. Again, let's not go there just yet because sin only makes sense if you believe in Holiness and an objective moral reality.

So why can't we ajga?

Look at the current rage over the Danish cartoons defaming Islam and specifically Mohammed. The secular liberal intelligentsia in our modern world seem surprised at the intensity of the response. Mommy told little Timmy not to poke a stick in the ant bed, but little Timmy loves to do the same things over and over again, and then wails when he gets the same painful response. How do you spell idgit? But I know why Timmy does it. It is because he cannot resist the urge to evangelize his faith, and I don't mean Christianity. The secular liberals who dominate our modern intellectual world, our universities, our media, our bookstores, our law schools and our governments have a faith as well. It is a faith in rationalism, science, law, and culture. It is a faith called secular humanism, although the term has fallen into disrepute because the secular humanists deny that theirs is a faith. It is common ground and common sense and it is the way in which we could ajga if we would only come to our senses and stop this religious nonsense.

A common belief in the modern world is that many if not most conflicts originate in religious fanaticism. We could ajga if we would hold our religious beliefs as personal and private. The intersection of the Venn circles becomes the common ground by which we ajga, then that portion of the circle which lies outside of the commons holds our personal and private beliefs. Unfortunately, this simplistic model of how human beings should interact and ought to behave is in itself a belief, an article of faith, albeit implicit and rarely stated. Who says that the intersection of the circles represents the truth? How do we know that consensus defines how we should behave? What was the consensus in Nazi Germany or Maoist China? Didn't the majority ajga in their own evil way?

The most important question the humanist might ask about faith is, "Why does it matter?" Why do we have these conflicts over faith? Why can't it be personal? Why can't we ajga? The answer to these questions is also the true common ground. The unstated reason why we fight over our beliefs is also the main thing we ALL have in common. The reason the religious and the irreligious faithful evangelize is so simple we almost don't see it, but it is profoundly important. Our faith, whether secular or religious, is all about our view of eternity. My view of eternity is a threat to someone else's view of eternity, and vice versa. It is a threat because we all share a common desire to exist, to be, to not just go away. The humanist is threatened by the Christian or Muslim claim that he will burn in Hell forever for his disbelief. The humanist is driven by an irrational belief that if we could only stamp out these irrational beliefs, then that possibility would be eliminated. A fanatic is fanatical because his passion for his faith is more important than even life and death. Christ tells the story of the man who sells all he owns to purchase a single pearl. If we truly live forever, then who wouldn't sell everything he owns for the price of eternity. It is as simple as trading the finite in exchange for the infinite, assuming that we could somehow afford it.

This psychological calculus trumps all other considerations. The world religions have many moral similarities, but their differing views on eternity cannot be reconciled, unless we adopt the postmodern view that truth is not unique. So now, at the beginning of the third millenium after the supposed birth of a possible deity, Rodney King's question has an answer: we can all just get along, if we all assume that our faith is personal, private and purely subjective. My God is not your God. There is one tiny problem with this impossible social configuration. We all must find that elusive common ground. We must depend on some common currency, some common and universally understood shaded area in the Venn diagram. Oops! Sounds like objective moral truth to me.

We should not be surprised that ideology makes history. Neither should we be surprised if Mr. Ahmadinejad attempts to start a nuclear holocaust. Mr. Bin Laden desires the same thing. They want the missiles to fly. They believe that we have reached the Omega. They see things quite clearly. They are not crazy, they are simply convinced beyond any doubt. There can be no common ground.