The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
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It was a very long time ago but I clearly remember reading some personal remarks of a preaching man who admitted he made plenty of mistakes. He went on to say that some of his blunders were of the “serious” kind [are there any that aren’t that kind? hmmm, I’m not sure] and they grieved him and he earnestly repented of them and purposed to do better in the future. Someone, as I now recall it, asked him what he did in the meantime [as he waited for complete holy freedom and joyous obedience to arrive, I suppose] and he said he “just showed up for work the next day”.
As I remember it and I confess that at this late date the details of what he said are a bit vague but I’m certain of this, what he had to say didn’t give me the impression he was being glib or too light-hearted about it. There was none of this strolling into the presence of God with his hands in his pockets and then a jaunty wave of the hand, “Good morning!” That I’m certain of but I know he didn’t permit himself to suffer paralysis from analysis; there was no indication that he ground his teeth day after day and avoided the presence of God and left things undone that he had committed to do. Each next day he began with prayer but he didn’t go to his quiet place until he had showered, shaved and tidied himself up and then he went to a little room. There, alone with God, he offered himself for service; he “just showed up for work”.
I’m convinced there’s too much psychology, too much “counselling” in the Western world. I don’t have to be persuaded that some good is done by counsellors—I fully accept that. A lot of good comes from drinking a warm glass of milk and watching a genuinely funny movie, for pity’s sake, so how could no good come from some modest, competent and sympathetic counsellors? I won’t stop here to develop the reasons for my quarrel with the culture of analysis [and it is a culture].
There is something in the human experience that needs cured and it precedes the sinful act or word. Sin is an inner crookedness as well as deeds and thoughts and words and attitudes. These wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t that crookedness within and while it is right [sometimes even imperative] that we deal with specific behaviours—while it is right to do that it is a blunder to think that we’re dealing with the real problem.
Sin is an “infection” that always shows itself in ulcers and lesions here and there; the real problem is root and not fruit.
Jesus is Lord of psychology and he can use that discipline to work good in the world and while the good it does may be small it is not nothing! But it’s easy to expect too much good from such endeavours and it isn’t hard to imagine that too much raking around in an individual’s psyche can put that person at the centre of his/her life where she or he doesn’t belong. It’s arguable that in the attempt to cure a specific sinful behaviour or trait that we can make too much of it and ignore more productive approaches; approaches that deal with the crookedness that generates the specific wrong; approaches that offer wiser help with a crippling specific.
Sin is more than specific wrongs, it’s more than the breaking of laws in a moral standard. If we’re to believe the biblical witness that comes to fullness in Jesus Christ, sin is our unlikeness to God; it is relational infidelity. For the Christian, more specifically, it is our unlikeness to him; our failure to function as a part of the Body of Christ as we bear witness to him, his Lordship, his nature and purpose before the entire human family.
I think it’s an existential reality [not a necessity] that we’ll carry our inner crookedness to the grave and because that’s true [so I judge] we will be repenting of and denouncing our specific wrongs and failures until then. And if we’re wise [I judge] we’ll come to conclude that in our wrestle with sin the best way to move toward holy freedom and happy obedience is to wash our face, dress up neat and tidy and go to a quiet place where we and God can be alone—“show up for work”. We're not all salaried preacher men but we can all “show up for work” in all the ways that God has given us to express our commitment to him and to his loving purpose for humanity.
And if the one true God is the God who has come to us in and as Jesus to fulfil his eternal purpose to bring about a human family glorious in a glad-hearted righteousness, immortal, disease free, living adventure-filled lives as we exercise dominion over creation under our Lord Jesus Christ and growing ever more and more into his likeness—if that’s the one true God we meet each day as we humbly, penitently but eagerly “show up for work” we can be sure he’ll give us his blessing and send us out renewed to face another day.
