3/6/66
How Crooked Are We?
Scripture: Romans 3: 1-20 (Phillips)
Text: Romans 3: 20 (Phillips)
It is a fascinating, and informing, experience to read different translations of the Bible. For by looking through the eyes and understanding of another interpreter of its meanings, the truth of the Bible comes alive to us in new ways. If I had read this morning’s Scripture lesson to you from the Revised Standard Version pulpit bible, you would have heard this as the closing verse (verse 20) of the reading: “For no human being will be justified in his sight (that is, God’s) by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
Now we turn again to the translation by J. B. Phillips, and read: “No man can justify himself before God by a perfect performance of the Law’s demands -- indeed it is the straightedge of the Law that shows us how crooked we are.”
“Through the law comes knowledge of sin,” say the RSV translators. Phillips puts a more pointed punch into it with this translation: “It is the straightedge of the Law that shows us how crooked we are.”
More than a year ago, Glenn Ogden, who was minister of a church out west, read that verse from Phillips; and his mind immediately went back to a nursery rhyme which a lot us heard, and some of us learned, quite a while ago. It went like this:
There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile;
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse;
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.
There is something relaxing about those silly jingles in the Mother Goose book of rhymes. There is rich fantasy and limitless imaginings. A cow jumps over the moon (long before man can manage to get to the moon). There are the three blind mice; Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie; Jack and Jill; and this crooked man.
What made him crooked? Was he born a hunch-back? Was he a thief or other kind of “crook”? Maybe he was a nonconformist. Perhaps somebody noticed that he was strange because of his way of living, or his foreign accent or his skin color, or the way he walked -- and so taunted him with the name “crooked.” Whatever the English Mother Goose writer had in mind, this fellow she wrote about was not an ordinary “straight” man. He was a “crooked” man. And everything in his environment was crooked too -- his pets, his money, his house -- even the road he walked on was crooked.
Well, St. Paul was not quite so fanciful; and he was forceful in saying the same thing about ourselves. I suppose that in his view of life, a view sharpened to see the most minute detail because of the revelation he had from Christ, we are all crooked men and women. Not one of us measures up to all of God’s straight standards. And our “crookedness” can not be passed off as some insignificant deviation from the normal, the straight, the right. Neither can we take care of conscience by attributing our erring to being just a little queer in terms that the old Quaker used when he observed to his wife: “You know, my dear, everyone is a little queer except me and thee; and sometimes I think even thee is a bit queer.” We are “crooked,” in the sense that Paul writes about, because we have violated the laws of man and of God, and that pretty well makes us the kind of “crooks” Paul probably means.
But perhaps we had better examine a little further what Paul does mean by such an audacious and infuriating indictment. Most of us get rebellious when anyone calls us “crooks” in that tone of voice. Certainly I do; and I suspect you do also. But Paul is a persistent sort of fellow. In simple terms, he is puncturing the balloon of illusory pride and even conceit which we nurture in our own “righteousness” and “moral integrity,” and our own “basic goodness.” These are ideals to which we aspire and which, in our sober and good moments we wish to attain. You know how it is! We all like to think of ourselves as being good, respectable people. And maybe we come near deserving that estimate part of the time. But sometimes maybe not.
A church deacon decided the time had come for a frank talk with a man who had been on the membership roll of their church for a long time, but who had not participated in its worshipping fellowship or life for many years. When they met, the deacon was chiding the non-attending member, in as gentle fashion as he thought possible, for his failure to keep his promise to be faithful in the worship and service and support of his church. There was a sense in which his failure in this respect reflected on his integrity. But, quite overlooking this point, the fellow insisted that he was just as good a man as were those who went to church. “But you are missing this point,” urged the deacon. “there aren’t any ‘good’ people in the church. There never have been. Ever since its founding nineteen and a half centuries ago, the Christian Church has been a society of sinners who, through God’s grace, are trying to become saints.” The man’s face reddened; his hackles were up! And he exploded: “But I’m not a sinner. I resent your inference. I’m a decent, respectable citizen. I live by the Ten Commandments (keep ‘em most of the time!); I observe the Golden Rule (as well as anybody does); I pay my taxes, and generally behave myself. Just because I seldom read the Bible or go to church, that has nothing to do with it.”
Of course there was not too much point in the deacon’s pressing his logic. The fellow saw himself to be a good man. To him, his goodness was his security. In his opinion, his natural decency should be his defense before the bar of public opinion and God’s judgment.
A lot of us are like that. And a good reputation, honorably built, with sincere care and a considerable concern for the right, is not to be lightly affronted or destroyed. But most of us are not wholly innocent of errors, mistakes, and sometimes outright wrong. We lose temper and “blow our stack” to the discomfort or even harm of another. We err in judgment. We make mistakes that hurt or harm others. We remain blind to some righteous need. We get over concerned with “Me and my wife; my son John and his wife; us four and no more.” And we don’t want to see any errancy in ourselves nor have anybody else notice any.
One of my predecessors in the parish ministry used to call on a gentleman now long since “gone to his reward.” The preacher and the parishioner were pretty good friends, and so could josh each other a bit sharply. Neither the man’s wife, nor the minister, nor anybody else, had ever been able to persuade Clem to join the church. But the minister kept trying. One day when he had asked Clem again for a decision to join the church, Clem told the preacher: “Nope; I’m not going to join your church There’s too many hypocrites in it.” “O sure,” said the minister, “but that’s all right. There’s always room for one more!”
It was said in jest. There is just enough truth in it to make many of us squirm and to sober most of us. At a time of death, we usually turn our thought to the good that has been seen in the life of the deceased. Personally, I believe this is right. Let the errors, the foolishness, the evil that is believed to have been part of some mortal lives fade into the forgotten. It is the good that should live in the hearts and minds and purposes of us survivors. But we are taught some lessons by our observation of wrong. And there is only harm in trying to whitewash what is evil. There is the disturbing story of a man who was lauded, nearly venerated, in public for his good works. He was a leader in excellent civic affairs; he gave generously to almost every worthy philanthropy; he was an outstanding public servant. His fellow townsmen knew it -- and said so --- and he knew it too! And then the community was shocked by his sudden death. What the community, in general, did not know was that he had been a frightening tyrant at home. For years, he had terrorized the children and had subjected his wife to intense and terrible emotional abuse.
Upon his death, his widow took command of the situation and directed the mortician to complete arrangements for committal the following day. There was to be no lying-in-state for the man she had had to endure rather than love. Word of this undue haste excited and dismayed her late husband’s cronies, and one of them remonstrated with her that dear Zeke’s body would hardly be cold e’er it was laid in the grave. But the plucky little widow held her ground with the insistent remark: “Be that as it may. But hot or cold, he is going out of here in the morning.”
That unhappy story only illustrates what all of us need to recognize --- that, in our own minds at least, we feel that we must see ourselves as righteous -- as good. And we are really quite sensitive about it. Even if, along the way, there has been a lapse in virtue, we want to rationalize the fault; and we justify it until it squares with our standards of righteousness. And so -- having gotten it squared in our minds --- we feel virtuous once again.
To be sure, each of us will admit to minor flaws; “Of course I’m not perfect,” we occasionally say, “but then, who is?” As long as we are reasonably close to the popular norm; so long as we are reasonably good along with everybody else, as measured by our neighbor’s expectations; whatever else we may be, we are not sinners. We are fine, upstanding people with no noticeable malfunctions or “crookedness.”
A while back there was reported a national survey of American temperament and it was reported that 70% of the people counted themselves very religious. Of these, 90% staunchly affirmed that they had never broken any of the Ten Commandments --- or if they did, they had made full restitution! This is quite a strain on the credulity of those who have observed a lot about human nature. It might lead one to the conclusion that church fellowships are not needed. If none, or very few, have sins from which they need to be saved, and for which they need forgiveness, it might be just as well to dispense with all the effort and energy, the sacrifice and service, the hope and the love, and all the rest that goes into keeping Christian fellowship alive. Why not simply make out as best we can on our own?
Unfortunately, there are far too many who assume that this is precisely what should be done. They reason that the world can get along very well on what they assume is natural human goodness. They overlook, what I feel sure is true, that our standards of goodness are rooted in religious conviction -- in our case, Christian conviction. If not rooted there, they spring from some other conviction. The standards and acts of an atheistic culture are sharply different from Christian standards and acts. To turn our back on our Christianity assuming, with Karl Marx, that religion is merely the “opiate of the people” is to coast on the past and head for deterioration.
Paul is quite blunt about this problem. He makes it quite clear that unaided human goodness fails. He pricks the bubble of our pride by saying that our supposed righteousness is an illusion. Referring to the sacred writings, he says: “There is none righteous, no, not one .... They have all turned aside; they are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good; no, not so much as one ...... ‘No man can justify himself before God’ by a perfect performance of the Law’s demands.” Why? Because all of us have lived in violation of that law of righteousness.
Perhaps those who claim some measure of perfection because they live by the Ten Commandments should examine those commandments again; familiarize themselves with what is really said there. [Exodus 20: 1-17]. They should sense how comprehensive of all life’s situations those commandments really are. They should recall Jesus’ comments that the commandments are not to be changed and that they govern not only our overt acts but also our attitudes. [Matthew 5: 17-20]. According to Christ’s teaching, to purpose evil is quite as wrong as to perform it.
According to Paul: “It is the straightedge of the Law that shows us how crooked we are.” We fall short of the beauty of God’s plan. We do not achieve our goal of being upstanding creatures of moral or righteous beauty. We get bent out of plumb. Like the poor fellow in Mother Goose, we, too, walk a crooked mile; live in a crooked house. What we possess and what possesses us, is crooked too.
But to make this admission is not, or should not be, to resign ourselves to our crooked estate. The only real and final failure is to resign our living to the wrongs that we perform and condone. What Paul reports here, in his letter to the Romans, is only the first part of the story of God with mankind. The other part is the insistence that people -- men and women -- are made in the spiritual image of God. The creature is intended by the Creator to have a beauty and moral perfection that brings glory to God. We are endowed with a capacity to know the rich blessings of God’s love and to respond to Him with answering love of our own.
If we get lost in our “crookedness,” we still have the ideal of right imbedded in our consciousness. And with this ideal, unattained but vivid, in our hearts, we turn in penitence to the Father of our being. And He will forgive; He will restore; He can make whole our broken selves; He sets us again to our tasks; at the end of another incomplete day He accepts the broken sacrifices we lay on his altar in prayer and loves us out of our shame.
The late Dean Charles Reynolds Brown wrote, and said, that he could “best think of God as a Being of Holy Love. Holiness apart from love is cold, negative, futile. Love apart from holiness becomes soft and sentimental, a mere mush of good nature. The two qualities taken together give us character at its best, prophetic of that whole disciplinary order which makes for high character in the lives of those who are brought under its tuition.”
Now if Paul were making up the story of man’s life himself, he would have to let man remain what he chooses to be --- man without God, crooked and unlovely, trapped in his own self-destruction. But, out of his own experience, Paul reports that something else happens. He says: “We are seeing the righteousness of God declared quite apart from the Law -- it is a righteousness imparted to, and operating in, all who have faith in Jesus Christ.”
What does this mean to you and me? Doesn’t it mean that God is not willing to settle for our incomplete, wayward and crooked condition? Even if we want to stay where we are; even if, in despair, we do not see what else we can become; God, in his love and compassion, moves on his own initiative, to save us from it. He wants us to be whole and fine, and really good again.
Actually we have earned no right to wholeness. And God does not owe it to us. But if we settle for our crooked estate, God does not settle for it! He answers our discouragements and defiance with a superior act of defiance in His love. Our restlessness and unhappiness is healed when we accept His love and forgiveness.
Perhaps you have known experiences like one which I remember from my childhood. In my “little-boy” willfulness, I had involved myself in a bare-faced lie to my mother. Though a bit stubborn about it, I was really unhappy until I got the crookedness straightened out by an honest confession to Mother, acceptance of her discipline and her love, and assurance that God forgives in much the same way.
Stanley Jones tells of a young man who was burdened with a particularly distressing kind of crookedness. He had, in a moment of unguarded foolishness, been unfaithful to his wife. And he was thoroughly unhappy about it. He decided to be quite honest about it, to tell his wife about it and to implore her forgiveness -- which he did, hoping she might understand. In her shock and sudden sorrow, she recoiled as though struck, and fell back against a wall with her arms outstretched in anguish. After a long time, she whispered: “I do understand; and I forgive you. I love you.” For a moment, her husband had thought he could almost see behind her a cross, and on it a figure with outstretched arms; face anguished; and lips that also said, “I understand; I forgive you; I love you.” Suffering love helped to bring wholeness to him again. Recovering at sacrificial cost his own self-respect, he could again respect others.
In a Gospel story, there is an incident in which Jesus encounters a man with a crooked, withered arm. “Your sins are forgiven,” he said, and then commanded, “Stretch out your arm.” The man did so and the arm was whole. [Mark 3: 1-5].
As, in another Lenten season, we near a Good Friday, we celebrate an impressive reality. In the Cross, God confronts the terrible disfigurement of our crookednesses with the anguish of His son. It is His act of defiance; His refusal to let us go. It is His judgment, His love, His, “I understand; I forgive you; I love you ---- be whole again.”
Amen.
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, March 6, 1966.