Pond-scum.
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? ~ Jeremiah (17:9)
A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart. ~ Jesus (Lk 6:45)
We all get a turn at seeing the dark side of ourselves rear its head, and I’ve seen more of that in myself this week than I’d like to admit. The recipe is common enough: Start with a bit of jetlag, layer in a few circumstantial frustrations, add in a dash of relational tension, several overcast days, and a nice dose of shame and… viola! It’s Mister Nasty. Oh yeah, I had forgotten about him for a while.
So is the human heart a good place or an evil place? Theologians have wrestled with this question for centuries, perhaps from the beginning of time. And the answer—as both Jeremiah and Jesus affirm above—is nuanced indeed. The perplexed observation, “Who can understand it?” rings true for me. The heart is an enigma, and we only get glimpses into our own… less into others.
Thomas Merton put his struggle onto paper in what is now called the “Merton Prayer”: My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going…. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
Do you want to please God? Why? Where does that desire come from, and what does it feel like? Do you struggle to follow through on that desire? Paul did: “What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” And yet, he also recognizes that “in my inner being I delight in God’s law.” It’s a heart-rending struggle and a bizarrely beautiful one.
Augustine and Pelagius sparred famously in the fourth century over their perspective on the human condition with Augustine getting the nod from Rome and establishing his doctrine of “original sin” that went on to frame most of modern evangelicalism. Pelagius, on the other hand, emphasized the innate human capacity to choose—with God’s help—to respond to our conscience and move toward God.
Like Augustine, Pelagius believed in the need for divine grace, but he interpreted this differently. Where Augustine believed that God’s grace is needed to deliver us from a spiritual condition that we can do nothing about, Pelagius thought of it as the power given to us so that we can choose what is good. ~ Gerald Bray
The recent Neo-Calvinism movement finds inspiration in the eighteenth century revivalist Jonathan Edwards who took a particularly dim view of human nature:
The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his Wrath towards you burns like Fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the Fire; he is of purer Eyes than to bear to have you in his Sight; you are ten thousand Times so abominable in his Eyes as the most hateful venomous Serpent is in ours.
Yikes! While we are all a product of our era—Edwards and us—I don’t believe that’s at all the way God looks of us, do you?
Rachel Held Evans chronicles her spiritual journey out of fundamentalism and affectionately dubs this “pond-scum theology.” Although I sometimes do feel scummy, sure enough, I think that says more about my perspective than God’s. I return again and again to the way Jesus described the Father of the prodigal who had every reason to resent his hard-headed son but instead showered him with scandalous favor, forgiveness, and delight. No scurvy spiders in that story!
growing the soul
How do you think God sees you when you’re at your worst? Pond-scum or beloved child?
serving the world
Who needs to be reminded of their belovedness today?
takeaway
The deepest you is God.