Column notes on Choice

Every month or so, a group of Riverbend clergy get together to talk through an article from Theology Today or Interpretation to help keep us up with development in  religious studies. I realize that many would consider this Hell on earth, so let’s just call it a Lenten spiritual discipline that goes throughout the year. This week, we talked about the hoary doctrine of original sin. Some call it a pessimistic, but I would call it a realistic assessment of human nature.

It hit me with special force that the Reformed and Lutheran traditions are far removed from American culture on this matter. Americans believe fervently in choice as the very essence of freedom in human life. In matters of faith newer churches speak of choosing Christ, making a decision for Christ, but older churches speak of being chosen by God, not choosing God. One of the reasons that older established churches are declining is that we live in a culture that so cherishes the democratic ideal of choice and free will that we are not heard clearly. After all, Luther spoke not of free will but of the bondage of the will.

David Marshall, a member of our group, spoke of us being born in a milieu of evil. All of us are not only born with conflicting impulses, we are placed in a world that does not operate the way God intends. Instead of seeing sin as only individual wrongs or bad choices, the tradition asserts that it is as if we are addicted to sin because we live enmeshed in a world of wrong. !2 step programs betray a religious sensibility when they realize that willpower usually fails in terms of converting from addiction. Instead, only when one realizes that they are indeed captured by a power greater than will  power do they start on the road to healing.

We have the privilege of the sacrament of Baptism to two infants soon here at first, Presbyterian, Alton. It is a great antidote to egoist Christianity. A baby does not choose to be enrolled into the household of God. The child is made a citizen of the commonwealth of heaven just as we are born citizens of our country, without choice on our part. who chooses to be born, after all? It is about becoming part of a community on its way than a ticket to heaven in the world to come.

At this time of year, we get a fuller sense of its salvific purpose as Paul sees it in Romans 6. Baptism is a ritual dying and rising with Christ. We have our backs to the direction of the setting sun, the old self. The old self, its shame and guilt, needs to be buried. We face the rising sun of Easter life, to be able to embody that we are people of a new dawn, a new way. We don't have to wait for heaven to appropriate the gift, the sheer grace, of that new life.

Certainly our culture has evolved more quickly than we can expect our physical being to change. It does not seem that we have understood, let alone, been able to alter the mélange of impulses that stir beneath us and move us to action or inaction. To change from within, ti appears we still need a hand from above to help us out of the mire, even as we ascend newer and greater technical heights. We will not save ourselves. Every advance will hold within it the potential for harm. Tragedy will continue to haunt us. As Easter approaches, God continues to offer us not only embrace but  a way toward a new d