What's in a Name?

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.  For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  Romans 8:1-4

When I get hold of a concept that opens up a whole new world for me, I can’t seem to shut up about it!  Coming  to believe that there is one universal way of viewing and relating to life which has been common to man since the fall, and is the only way we can view and relate to life unless God helps us, has been one of those things. Although we may each express this world view uniquely, the chief characteristics remain the same: Self-gratification, self-glorification and self-salvation. 

Self-gratification looks for pleasure and escape in things like food, sex, drugs and alcohol; or, money, possessions and power.  Consciously or unconsciously, we even view people as a means to an end; when they stop meeting our needs, they are disposable. If you no longer make me happy, if I think of you as too much trouble, I won’t want you around. The focus is always on ourselves.  Even when we think we have shifted the focus toward making someone else happy, if that person doesn’t cooperate we become upset because, underneath, our real motivation was self-gratification.

We evaluate everyone and everything on the basis of our own happiness; Happiness is King.  We view the pursuit of it as our inalienable right and have even put that in the U.S. Constitution!

By self-glorification I am referring to our need for recognition, adulation, validation, etc.  This desire is a driving force behind everything we do.  We often applaud it in ourselves and others and give it names like ambition, responsibility, commitment, drive, focus, determination.  We admire and encourage the aspiration to ‘be the best’.  We view it as character building.  In the process of striving to be the best we reason that we can learn to be gracious losers as well as gracious winners.  However, because the driving force is self-glorification, the goal is inevitably to be’ better than’, which necessitates others being ‘lesser than’, and involves competing, comparing, judging and ultimately condemning someone to the ‘lesser than’ status. This need for self-glorification thrives on someone being ‘lesser than.’  We love having someone to look down on.

I come from a line of drinkers, so I will use that as my illustration.  The person who doesn’t drink looks down on the person who does drink; the person who does drink looks down on the person who drinks too much; the person who drinks too much looks down on the person who drinks too much and can’t function; the person who drinks too much and can’t function looks down on the person who drinks too much, can’t function and lives on the streets. I’m sure it goes on from there.  We all do this in our own situations. Self-glorification is always at someone else’s expense.

Self-salvation is closely related to self-glorification.  It is not specific to salvation as in ‘being saved’, or ‘going to heaven’, although that is definitely a part of what I am talking about.  However, self-salvation in general is about justifying our existence, proving that we are worthy, demonstrating that we are good enough, showing that we are deserving.   Where self-glorification is more about arrogance and pride, self-salvation is more about the fear of not measuring up.  Its ‘do more, try harder’ mentality comes from the need to earn recognition.  The ways we attempt to do this are endless.  We try to be beautiful, smart, funny, interesting, thin, super-employees and students, super-moms or dads, super-religious or even super-bad.  There is a part of each of us that believes if someone else does not recognize us, we do not exist.

Even In the context of Christianity we struggle with this intrinsic need for self-salvation because it is the way everything else with which we are familiar operates.  We earn, we prove, we demonstrate, we justify.  That is what we do.  Anything else is foreign.  And, that is my point.

 In my recent blogs I have frequently talked about what I have called Action/Consequence and Death/Resurrection as the two ways of viewing the world.  I settled on those names because, to me, they best described the characteristics of the two world views; but the idea represented by the names is not new or mine.  What I have called Action/Consequence, some have called human nature; in Romans 7, Paul uses the term ‘sin’ in that context.  In Romans 8:5-17, he contrasts the ‘way of the flesh’ with the ‘way of the Spirit’. I choose to use different names because those are so fraught with other meanings.  But why do I think this idea of two world views is so important?  Why do I feel the need for names at all?

It seems to me, if we do not acknowledge this innate universal way of viewing and relating to life, we will not understand it is something over which we have no control.  We will want, instead, to blame our culture, our society, our government, our parents, our churches and ourselves, for what is simply our natural state.

Once we understand that it is our natural state, we can stop being constantly surprised that we, and everyone else, are the way we are.  The world thinks in only one way, characterized by self-gratification, self-glorification and self-salvation.  If we see anything we believe is not motivated by those things, we are wrong.  Even in ourselves.  Even at our best.  We are all in the same boat.

The problem is, on our own we cannot reason our way to the conclusion that we are all in the same boat. We are blind to our true condition.  It has to be revealed to us. We have to be given something with which to compare ourselves that would show us our need for something different; so God gave us the Law.

Romans chapter 2 says that even those who weren’t given the benefit of the Law have its requirements written on their hearts.  “Look,” God said, “this is the standard.  This is what I am like.  Compare yourselves to it.  There is no room for even a hint of self-gratification or self-glorification.  This is what I demand and require from you and it is impossible for you to do.  I will require the impossible from you until you recognize that you are not capable of giving it to me.  Your efforts at self-salvation will never be enough to satisfy my demands. You are helpless. And when you recognize that, you will finally be ready to hear that you need to be rescued and that I already have a plan.”

Only God can draw us and enable us to see that there is something other than who we naturally are; and that this “other” is something we can never be.  Only Jesus could be the “other”; so, God sent him to earth to be what we could not be, to do what was impossible for us and to give us the credit.

Once God reveals this amazing truth to us, it is helpful to have names to differentiate between our natural state and our rescued state.  I have chosen to call them Action/Consequence--because our natural way of viewing and relating to life is based on the foolish idea that we deserve something for what we do—that the consequence of our actions should be a reward; and Death/Resurrection--because we are rescued as a result of Christ’s death and resurrection and because we were completely dead, and God resurrected us.  We brought nothing to the table but our messed up way of thinking and relating; we did nothing because we could do nothing, so God did everything for us through his Son, Jesus Christ, who had to pay the price for the consequences of our actions.

The names are only a tool for purposes of communication and discussion, what is important is the concept behind them.  Even in our rescued state, we still retain our natural way of viewing and relating to life. It is still our default way of thinking.  When we were rescued, it was not removed.  Every day we must be reminded that there is another option, a foreign way to view and relate to the people and circumstances in our lives; a way that is based solely on our continued acknowledgment that we are all in the same boat and are helplessly and utterly dependent on the grace of God alone.