What's Wrong With the World?" thundered the headline of a carefully argued article in The Times of London years ago. Among the many responses published in the Letters column, one made it to history: "I am. Yours truly, G. K. Chesterton."
That was Chesterton's witty answer to issues that plague us either individually or corporately. Whenever the question of evil or injustice or unfairness or sin by any other name raises its ugly head, the natural human tendency is to find a scapegoat to bear responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in. This is true in evil that appears on a global scale and in evil that pinches me in the hiddenness of my soul.
Consider, for example, the Holocaust. Its sheer evilness and moral depravity has left an indelible mark of sadism on history and of revulsion on the human soul. Yet how easy it is to blame one man or one ideology for what occurred. Imagine what would have happened if every Christian, let alone every human being, had stood up against this monstrous evil and said, "I am responsible for the world I live in. Where I am I will not allow it." An attitude such as that from where one stands to where another stands creates a situation where both can stand in peace, and to that extent social evil stands checked.
But as Reinhold Niebuhr points out: "Man has always been his own most vexing problem."1 At the core of the problem is a self-induced delusion: I am better than the other; I could accomplish more, and do it more efficiently, than the other; given the opportunity I could be the answer to the problems around me; I seek that opportunity of power and position only to be of service to others.
Instead of recognizing that self's perpetual problem is this delusion and its accompanying pride, self pretends to be what it cannot be: its own savior. In accomplishing its mission, such a self may trample upon innocent people, may bankrupt available resources of an organization, may draw to itself an entire team of vulnerable followers and yet be fully content that whatever is done is done for the common good. The end result of such an attitude is a Hitler or a Stalin, an abusive spouse or a child molester, an ecclesiastic pretender or an economic rogue.
Catharsis or crucifixion?
To admit with Chesterton that I am at the root of most problems around me is a good beginning. It helps me to look at myself in proper perspective. It creates a better understanding in me of the person next to me and the community in which I live, work, or worship. It teaches me humility to admit that I could be wrong, and generosity to concede that another person could be right. It urges me to a purging of self. It provides a head start for better interpersonal, spousal, and/or familial, or communal relationships.
But the Christian gospel demands more than a catharsis of self. It expects a crucifixion. The apostle Paul under stood this clearly. He recognized the dichotomy of the human heart: one part knows what needs to be done but has no power to do it, and another part knows what ought not to be done but does it anyway. The incongruence be tween the ideal and the real, the ought and the is, had posed an insoluble phenomenon to Paul. He tried law. He tried philosophy. He tried humanism. But nothing could repair the despair of his soul, for a divided person is a defeated person. Defeated and shattered, the Pharisee remained in despair until he discovered that the problem of self, in spite of all its strivings, cannot be dealt with by self. Condemned to face judgment, self cries out in helplessness, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Rom. 7:24).*
Who indeed can? Deliverance must come from outside of self: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (verse 25). The apostle graphically portrays the process to the Galatians: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but 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).
The wretched self with its unbridgeable dichotomy, with its spiritual impotency, has found its redeeming center: the cross. The self by identifying itself with the Man of the cross stands crucified. The ego, with all its pretensions to be its own master and savior, must die, and the only way it can die is to be "crucified with Christ." With the crucifixion of self, a new creation emerges. For Paul, "the meaning is that for his life he is no longer cast on his own ego. . . . For this T has been crucified with Christ. In its place Christ lives in him." 2
The new I
The apostle is not speaking the language of a mystic. He is addressing a reality that the cross brings about. When one accepts Jesus, the old self, controlled by ego, dies; a new self, governed by the Jesus factor, comes into being. Ellen White describes this transition in most practical terms: "If we are Christ's, our thoughts are with Him, and our sweetest thoughts are of Him. All we have and are is consecrated to Him. We long to bear His image, breathe His spirit, do His will, and please Him in all things. Those who become new creatures in Christ Jesus will bring forth the fruits of the Spirit.... They will no longer fashion themselves according to the former lusts, but by the faith of the Son of God they will follow in His steps, reflect His character, and purify themselves even as He is pure. The things they once hated they now love, and the things they once loved they hate. The proud and self-assertive become meek and lowly in heart. The vain and supercilious become serious and unobtrusive. The drunken become sober, and the profligate pure." 3
The crucifixion of the old self and the emergence of a new self in Christ does not mean that we become super human and that we cannot sin. But what we can affirm is this: the Christ who "gave himself for me" is the "Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God." As a result, "the whole tenor of our life has changed.Everything is different now, because we ourselves are different. ... No Christian who has grasped these truths could ever seriously contemplate reverting to the old life." 4
Nor could such a Christian consciously live without assuming responsibility for what happens in interpersonal relationships or community life or global ethos. With such a person, the next time the question is raised "What's wrong?" at home, at work, at church or anywhere the search for a meaningful answer would begin with "I am."
* Scripture passages in this article are from
the Revised Standard Version.
1 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny
of Man (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1941), vol. 1, p. 1.
2 Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of
His Theology (GrandRapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Pub. Co., 1975), p. 232.
3 Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ (Mountain
View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1958),
p. 58.
4 John R. W. Stott, The Message of Galatians
(Downers Grove, 111.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1986),
p. 66.
