Sin as Fundamental
The gospel
transforms our understanding of the world's problems. It
enables us to see underlying causes.
[T]his communion of the Christian with
Jesus Christ has some serious implications: first of all, the
Christian, by this very fact, finds that he is not confronted by
the material forces of the world but by its spiritual
reality. Because he is in communion with Jesus Christ he has to
fight not against flesh and blood but against "the
principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of
this darkness."
"The natural man" sees only "the surface of
social, political, and economic problems, and he tries to work on
this surface with technical methods, and in accordance with moral
standards."
The
"doctrine" of sin is hardly a doctrine. It is, rather,
a presupposition for any doctrine that has any chance of being
true, valid, or meaningful. It is the biblical doctrine that
should, before all others, be a matter nearly complete and settled
prior to and apart from revelation. Any sensible person believes in
sin.
Ellul, Presence, 13,
quoting
Romans 3:10 and Galatians 3:22. |
This ancient truth of the Bible is now
visible to all. Our society is a manifestation, which cannot be
challenged, of the revelation of God on the subject of our sin:
"There is none righteous, no, not one." And this is not
because, regarded as individuals, all men are bad, but because all
are "shut up under sin," because there is a solidarity
of all men in sin.... The world of the present day teaches us that
this doctrine is neither an idea nor an explanation It is a
statement of a reality, which is just as concrete as the solidarity
of all men in modern war.
We are "involved in the sin of humanity
through the various "orders of life" created by God, so that when a man of my
family, or of my nation, commits a sin, I am responsible before God for this
transgression." Our sense of independence runs very wide of this. We make sin a
very individual matter. I'm not so sure about the "orders," but the
interconnection remains. In dealing with sin, Ellul always presses toward
the bigger picture. Our drive to individualize sin is part of the normal human
effort to justify oneself. Boycotts have also been used in the effort to be
pure. As Ellul would say, well, you ain't. Reducing the number of sins one
commits or trying to reduce one's involvement in systems of sin can be much like
the Pharisee's claims in the temple and are the tiniest drop in the bucket to
solving the world's (not problems, but) problem, which is sin considered whole.
If the Interstate Highway system is thought of as both a picture and a
representative of systems of sin, and it certainly is one, then how can a person
reduce their involvement in this system?
Any effort in that direction goes but a tiny
distance because we live within the system. There is no escape.
"We must give up believing that
we can 'improve' the world, that at least we can make
man better...."