The Gospel and Conservative Sensibilities

Aristotle makes an interesting comment on the nature of voluntary and involuntary vice. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he says:

“For we never censure someone if nature causes his ugliness; but if his lack of training or attention causes it, we do censure him. The same is true for weakness or maiming; for everyone would pity someone, not reproach him, if he were blind by nature or because of a disease or a wound, but would censure him if his heavy drinking or some other form of intemperance made him blind” [Ethics 3.5.15, 2nd ed, Irwin 39]

I think here that Aristotle says something that gels with the sensibility of conservatives in America (and, I think, with the sensibilities of most liberals and moderates too). As individualistic Americans, we highly value the kind of person who can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That automatically makes it hard for the gospel to penetrate into our society. Because of this, most Americans and even many Christians might agree with this statement that Aristotle makes.

If you meet a homeless person, you are likely to feel pity for him if he’s just out of luck. There are probably a lot of people out there who, by a combination of bad luck and other factors, currently find themselves out of a home and job and sleeping on the streets. We can’t help but feel pity for them. But what about the homeless person who happens to be the direct cause of their problems? We don’t feel pity for that person, because they could have done things differently. It was their fault in the first place and they deserve what they get. This is essentially what Aristotle says, and I imagine that most conservatives (including myself) and even most Americans think like this, especially when it comes to things like this.

But thanks be to God that He doesn’t think like this, for if He did, then all of us would be out of luck. You see, as much as we may not like to admit, we are like the person who is ugly because of our lack of training and attention. We are the people who are blind because of heavy drinking and intemperance. We are the homeless person who is homeless because of our own doing. We are willing sinners who willingly rebel against God, not because of our environment, or because of bad luck, or because of something someone did to us. We are our own worst problems. You see, the problem with this world is not social institutions, or the distribution of wealth, or our surroundings and upbringings…we are the problem! Our sin and rebellion against God bring God’s wrath upon us, and this is totally of our own doing. We got ourselves into a big mess, and we certainly don’t deserve a way out.

But God, in His loving-kindness, bore our sin when Jesus the God-Man was crucified and took the penalty of sinning against God. He saw that we dug our own hole and that we perfectly deserved to stay stuck there. But then God got down in the hole with us, and lifted us up, even though we dug it in the first place. Such is the nature of the grace of God. We would do well to remember that.