Rector's Thoughts and Reflections

October 1, 2009

Are We Inherently Good or Evil?

Not a very friendly question to ask, yet one, if answered with considerable restraint and nerve on our part, may prove helpful as we find ourselves bewildered, accepting, or critical of recent General Convention resolutions about gay and lesbian members of our church and their life and place in this body of Christ from baptism on. But with recent events locally, a diocese mostly offended by the actions of the General Convention in Anaheim, it is important for me to go back to the beginning. For anyone interested in why the Episcopal Church has been on this road for so long, why there is such sharp disagreements among Episcopalians about the lives and ministries of homosexuals m the Episcopal Church, and how we came to our most recent decisions-decisions of inclusiveness, we must begin at the beginning and look at our own Anglican heritage of doing Christian thought and practice, and ask the first question: Are we inherently good or evil? Even though that may be an impossible question, Anglicanism offers a way to make some educated conclusions. How we understand sin, and human nature and God will most certainly color our beliefs and in particular our position on critical matters facing the Episcopal Church and The Anglican Communion.

The Anglican way
Anglicans would respond to the question, "Are we inherently good or bad?" by pointing to the biblical declaration that God has made us in God's own image. We have been endowed by God with the capacity for freedom, and for making our own choices. We can choose our own loyalties. We can choose whom and what we shall serve. But because we are free, we are also capable of misusing our freedom and can, and do, choose evil as well as good. When Christians refer to the doctrine of original sin, they mean to say that, when offered a choice, we will most likely choose the bad over the good, because we have a habit of seeing the world through our own small window of reality, our own self preservation and self importance. We would like to do good, we hope to do good, we look for perfection, yet we seem to come up short. Some have taken this a bit further; the range and power of human sinfulness compels them never to be optimistic about human possibilities for goodness. That is why the center of Christianity is not the moral law for Anglicans, but the Gospel: the proclamation that in Christ, God has provided the Savior who has done for us what we cannot humanly do for ourselves. Freedom divinely inspired. What defines us does NOT begin with morality, but love, not sinfulness, but .the overwhelming love of God through Christ. It is not about what ought to be, or what we should do; but in love, who are we and who do we see as neighbors, brothers and sisters, through Christ.

Though Anglicans were early infected with Calvinistic pessimism, as the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion testify, they never carried the idea of human depravity to such extremes. Anglican thinkers insisted on maintaining the essential goodness of God's creation. They denied that the fall had obliterated the image of God within us, asserting instead that we retain the capacity to respond to the grace of God. Some would have the Church speak out, and they have a very clear idea of what the Church ought to say. Some want the Church to affirm and support their own moral position over and against others who believe and behave differently. A responsible Church will explore its own moral resources, who are we when all is said and done, how has God acted in creation, what is the overarching theme in the biblical story, and bring those to bear upon contemporary issues. If and when the church does this faithfully, the results may be quite different from what the world expects and certainly not to everyone' liking. The Anglican spirit of our life together and our outlook to the world is tempered by what we believe about ourselves, and the nature of God.

The Anglican view of humanity is two sided. It recognizes our willingness and ability to sin, but denies that this is the last word. The spirit of God within us makes our freedom operative, even though it is limited and distorted by sin.

Anglicans understanding of the essential, fundamental realities of what it means to be human is the appropriate launching point, the framework to explore the issues. We are ALL created in the image of God, we ALL have found redemption through Christ, we ALL are called to extend the love and reconciling power of Christ. Can humanity limit that in any way, can we deny that to some, are we arrogant enough to believe God only acts through us, and not others, that we can legislate the power of God to move through us all.

I see the Anglican framework, our sources of authority and ethical reflection, as always allowing us to move from a position of hope and positiveness as we live together, as we strive to affirm the dignity of all humanity; as we struggle to understand that God continues to impress upon us that life comes out of the mystery of creation, that continues to unfold and inform, and continues unfolding; that who we are is a reflection of the person we witness across from us; as we strain to understand the complexities of life, we are aided by God's grace and Holy Spirit, not the emptiness of sin that some would claim enslaves us completely. Anglican's theological framework is our fundamental resource, and it is perhaps our weakest point. In some sense we will never know the full mind of God, and yet we walk, as yet, by faith; even Anglicans, and the Episcopal Church variety, must take the continuous risk of living with the gift of the Holy Spirit and have the faith we act in concert with The Holy Spirit. If it is of God, our actions will reflect God's glory, if not, those actions will fail. That is the risk we take, regardless of our position, to be the people of God. It is that important.
 

 

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