If you change the word “Gentiles” in the first verse of today’s passage to “Americans” the whole lesson moves right into our own situation. They are practically a mirror of contemporary society. Listen to this: “[Americans] are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” [v. 18-19] The last verses do need a little more attention, though,
because they sound impossible, too good to be true. “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and ... clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. [v. 23-24]
Can anyone - any force - any event - really do what these verses seem to promise?
In my opinion, only the naive or the self-deluded can seriously doubt the classic Presbyterian doctrine of human depravity. We may claim to think we are basically good, especially in comparison to others, but there’s no question that something is out of kilter in the human psyche. Even so, most of us don’t feel as negative as Paul’s description puts it. Those of us sitting like us in pews around the country don’t agree that life is futile, that we are in the dark or cut off from God, ignorant, hard-hearted, or given over to uncontrolled sensuality and passions. We may think society at large is, but we don’t feel that we are.
At the same time, though, most of us wonder if we can really put off the old being and put on a new one. We don’t want to admit that we share the depth of this all-too-human plight, and aren’t sure we really believe in the alternative life-style that is held out to us. Hovering in the middle between the extremes, we are inspired neither by fear nor by hope.
The first question we have to address is whether or not Paul is exaggerating. Can it really be as bad as all that? How can Paul say the human mind is futile - worthless - when humans have accomplished so much? Many people of his time - philosophers and their students - wrestled seriously with ethical questions and earnestly sought to live moral lives.
What Paul is trying to say in this passage is that even those few who want to live moral and purposeful lives cannot do so without reference to God, without help from God, without direction from God. So, if we are honest, we know this text is not too negative, but actually describes each one of us.
Our society stubbornly ignores the question of the meaning of life. We busy ourselves and entertain ourselves so we do not have to think. Even more than drugs and alcohol, entertainment and work keep us from reflecting on life. But as wonderful as it is, life is short, painful, and - viewed from a human perspective - without a whole lot of significance. If we are merely the accidental result of a “big bang,” human existence is a cruel, cosmic joke, and no reason exists for ethical behavior. As one person put it, “You get sick and you die, so you have to keep busy.” What would it matter if we didn’t exist? ‘A voice says, "Cry out!" ... All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades... “ [ls 40:6-8] The writer of Ecclesiastes is right; life is meaningless. Without God in the picture, nothing on this earth can comfort us if we analyze it seriously. Martin Luther’s definition of sin was “humans curved in upon self”. Separated from God, human beings curl in on themselves, becoming ingrown and, finally, infected. Or, to put it another way, without God, the mind is cross-wired. Its energies go in the wrong direction, and cause short circuits and nasty, often fatal fires.
The great French mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal said that all our potential dignity and effectiveness is lost when we omit God from our thinking. Paying attention to trifles and blinding ourselves to great things, we create a strange inversion, in which we are always opposed to ourselves. All of the sins are “an insubordination of the flesh.” - that is, a refusal to take orders from lawful authority. [Kyle Snodgrass, Ephesians, NIV Application Commentary] Even when we know actions are harmful to our bodies and relationships, we still choose them. We love our vices - and hate them at the same time. We hate our sins, but we can’t let go of them. By implication, of course, this text is about idolatry. And as author Tom Wright points out, “idols demand sacrifices.” [Tom Wright, Bringing the Church to the World (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1992),48. The cost of trying to manage a peaceful coexistence with our dark side is unacceptably high. The judgment of sin - at least in part - is, finally, to remain in bondage to whichever sin is your own particular enemy. Because sin is its own punishment. To be whole, to be healthy, we human beings need a higher calling than following our own desires.
Ancient Greeks like the Cynics and Stoics, as well as Buddhists, knew that uncontrolled desire corrupts and destroys; and so they tried to get rid of it altogether. That’s cutting out healthy flesh along with the infection, though, because the problem isn’t desire as such, it’s wanting the wrong things, or wanting secondary things too much. A life that is completely free of desire is a pretty impoverished one. And so the solution isn’t rejecting desires, but subjecting our desires to God. If we can get those insubordinate desires to take orders from their superior officers, they become marvelously effective soldiers for the Lord. In fact, what needs to be done is send those pesky desires to what one
of my commentaries calls the school of Christ.
Paul’s words assume that life is different for Christians, that an encounter with Jesus has changed things. But all too many people who wrap themselves in the name of Christian do not appear any different than they did before the name change. Why the discrepancy between Paul’s very strong words and so many people’s lived experience?
Paul says, “That is not the way you learned Christ! “ [v. 20] doesn’t mean just knowing about Jesus, but more of being involved with him, being changed by him. Yes, Christians had “heard of him” but beyond that they were “taught in him”, [v. 21] that is, immersed themselves in his worldview and motivation and power source. Jesus is the Lord who leads, not just the Lord who speaks. The language of learning is the learning of apprentice-ship, of acquiring new skills and habits and sensitivities. The truth that is learned is the truth of the death and resurrection of Christ. And we learn by following Christ into his death by dying to self, and only after that can we participate in his resurrection.
Let’s go back to where we began: “You must no longer live as [most Americans] live, in the futility of their minds.” [v. 17] Real discipleship does not give us the option of conforming to our society and its system of thought. In general, the more we conform to our society, the less we experience - or even understand - the process of conversion.
The loudest ethical influences in our society are celebrities: singers, actors, athletes, and talk-show hosts. If we let them do our thinking for us we will lose our identity in Christ. We must learn to listen to wiser voices and then to think for ourselves. Christians have something better to listen to - and thus to say - if we think about our lives in the light of the gospel. We have to take conscious, deliberate care of our interior life. Of course it’s not possible to shut our the world and our egos altogether, and that’s not really the goal. We live in the one, and we are the other. We simply have to keep them in their place. We have to turn up the volume on God, and turn down the volume on society and our selves. We must take time to reflect and meditate and evaluate in order to make sure that we are dancing to God’s rhythms.
Why is conformity to our society so dangerous that Paul actually prohibits it? Just a casual glance will tell us. The evidence is there of futility and skewed minds, of hardness of heart, and of sensuality and corrupting desires. We have to see those things clearly, and name them for what they are, in order to identify and deliberately pursue those things which are either neutral or do not actively fight against God’s purpose for humanity. The agenda that society sets is not ultimate reality, and it does not set the agenda for Christians. The world’s agenda identifies pleasure, recognition, and possessions as the goals of life. Concern for God and denial of self - although occasionally admired - do not fit the system, and will be choked out if not carefully tended.
Probably the most obvious evidence of futility and sensuality is the entertainment media, which offers its self as the mirror of our selves. Most of what is offered in movies and on TV is merely inane and time-consuming, designed to buy our time. But the media do not provide merely a mirror of ourselves; they seek to shape us. Most movie-goers are between the ages of 12-24, when they are being shaped morally and spiritually. What they are given as models for life is - as one writer put it - rationalized sexual misbehavior. And humor, which was once healthy and cathartic, is now presented as a defense against depth.
Our society does everything it can to avoid dealing with the “God” question, in much the same way and for the same reasons that it avoids the reality of death. Any other subject is fair game, but the “God” question, being an existential threat to contemporary culture, raises outcries against mixing church and state, or charges of judgmentalism.
Well, it’s easy to condemn society, isn’t it. But that’s not enough. Every person - the Christian first - must be ruthlessly honest about his or her own participation in the corruption of our culture. We can’t escape from it by ignoring it. We’re not immune to the forces that swirl around us, even our most religious acts are more often than not touched with pride and self-interest. Paul is not asking us to beat ourselves up about these inescapable facts about being human, but he is asking us to be honest about it. Un-Photo-shopped close-ups may not be pretty, but telling the truth both to God and to ourselves is the only way we can begin to take charge of our spiritual well-being. Incidentally, this process is called confession. Only when we name our self-centeredness and own it can we lay it aside. Until then it owns us.
Throughout history two of the most deadly addictions have been money and sex. In 21st century America, we have deified those desires, instead of warning against them. We must get a better handle on our insatiable hunger for material possessions. The phrase "retail therapy" tells us a great deal about who we are, and where our treasure is. We ignore the fact that while much of the world does not even have enough to eat, we spend fortunes on junk we do not need. And our culture shouts on every corner that sexual satisfaction is an untouchable right. And we also must get over the idea that lust isn’t a Christian problem. It is.
• A 2003 survey from Internet Filter Review reported that 47 percent of Christians admit pornography is a major problem in their homes.
• An internet survey conducted by Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in 2002 found 30 percent of 6,000 pastors had viewed internet porn in the last 30 days.
• A Christianity Today Leadership Survey in 2001 reported 37 percent of pastors have viewed internet porn.
The more control we give to desires, the more corrupting they become. Money and possessions are useful in themselves, but heavy baggage for life and terrible masters. Sex is a gift from God, but if we let it rule it is a totalitarian dictator. Desires are not bad in themselves. They are God-given assistants for living, but they need a Lord. Give them one.
Desires are deceitful and powerful, however.
Is life really different for Christians? Is conversion really possible? Can humans beings really turn aside from old habits of thought and action as easily as this passage might seem to imply? This is a fundamental question about the truth of Christianity, for if we can’t do so, Christian faith is meaningless, and no matter how enticing the promises, it is a con-job akin to the one the tailors in the old fairy-tale put over on the vain emperor when they promised him his new clothes.
But it is not a con. The answer is yes. Conversion is possible. Real help is available to effect real change. But we have to do our part. And it happens when we start choosing to listen to a different drummer. Now of course “Putting off” and “putting on” is not as easy as changing CD’s. The key is to get close enough to Jesus to share headphones. That’s sort of a modern adaptation of the famous verse, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me." [Ma 11:29] The point is closeness, and synchronized movement, and it involves both God’s initiative and human response. We put on what he has created.
If this “putting off’ and “putting on” is a one at baptism, why does Paul seem to imply his readers should do it again? Because the earphones aren’t nailed to our heads, we move around, they slip a little loose and the world’s noise tries to drown out the more subtle sounds of Jesus’ call. Or, to mix our metaphors yet again, the old being is drowned in baptism, but the old rascal can swim!
Scholar J. Armitage Robinson defines conversion as “the restructuring of a person’s thinking by the Holy Spirit as the result of a direct encounter with the love of God in the person of Christ.” And Paul puts it most succinctly, I think, in his letter to the Galatians: “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” [Gal 2:20]
We really can “put off [our] old self ... and to clothe [ourselves] with the new.” [v. 24] But if we only clothe ourselves in the name, the world will see right through it - and through us. It’s one thing for us to be ridiculed by the world, as the townsfolk did to the emperor when he strutted in his imaginary finery. And we will be ridiculed - because God’s garments will never make the cover of Vogue or GQ. But it’s quite another thing to let Jesus Christ be ridiculed because of us. Let’s make sure that when we put on the name of Christ, we put on the whole ensemble.
