The Reverend Kirk T. Berlenbach

Proper 9, Year A

July 6, 2008

“I suck.” These two words are the constant motto of a friend of mine. He says this about himself all the time which, when you consider everything that he has going for him is in fact rather puzzling… he is a tall and good looking young man who is recently married to his high-school sweetheart. He has a decent job and overall a rather good life yet he cannot seem to get past this lousy opinion he has of himself. I have known him for years and I just cannot figure out why he insists on this self-denigrating attitude and to be honest, it actually gets a little annoying.

Yet my friend is not alone in this… I think we all know someone like that… who just insists on denigrating themselves… perhaps it even describes how you feel about yourself. If that is the case then you are not alone. St. Paul often comes across the same way… as someone who is down on himself and everyone else too. Today’s passage from Romans certainly falls into that category. At first glance it appears that Paul does nothing but get down on himself and by extension, upon all humanity. And he takes it to extremes, “For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do…. Wretched man that I am!” This has lead to a whole negative vein of theology that takes an extraordinarily negative view of humanity and our capacity to do anything good and like my friend, manages to turn off a great many people. Like my friend’s view of himself this one aspect of Paul’s theology seems neither accurate nor complete.

Yet as pessimistic as Paul can seem, he may also have a point. All of us, at one time or another, can identify with what he claims… that we do not do the good things that we want to do, but instead engage in behavior that we know to be destructive or unhealthy.

I was intrigued to find that Paul had a similar struggle. At the beginning of today’s lesson he writes, “I find it to be a law that when I want to do good, evil lies close at hand.” But Paul’s words deal with much more than just temptation. In the paragraph that precedes today’s reading he states, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but do the very thing that I hate… I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” That really describes our struggle pretty well. We know what we need to do, we just can’t seem to do it. But Paul is doing more than just describing our predicament. What Paul is saying is that on our own, we humans are incapable of doing good at all.

Now that is a rather depressing thought. We are apparently trapped in an un-winnable situation. There is no denying the truth that we are not able to do what we know we should, at least not on any sort of consistent basis. It’s not that we don’t want to do what’s right, but we just can’t seem to make it happen.

Paul’s point is two-fold. The first is to illustrate the extreme frailty of our human condition. In and of ourselves, we are cannot do good. Consider that even our best intentions and noblest ideas can go awry and have bad results. A big part of our problem is that we often cannot even discern what good actually is. Our natural tendency is to define good as whatever is best for us and us alone without a thought as to how this might affect others. We define and understand good in terms of our own interests, not in terms of G-D or neighbor. And so even when we are at our best, doing what is right just doesn’t come naturally for us. While this is frustrating or even depressing to accept, it also leads to the second point.

By placing so much emphasis on our imperfections, Paul makes it clear just how needy we actually are. As a result, we must come to recognize that if we want to do good, we just can’t do it on our own… we need outside assistance. On our own, we are unable to live according to G-D’s priorities. G-D’s values are not our values; a fact that G-D reminds us of in Isaiah, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” And so we finally get to the real point… that if we really wish to do good then we must turn to G-D.

Now it is important to understand that accepting this realization is not the same thing as saying “I suck” or in theological terms to label humanity as irredeemably depraved… rather it is recognizing that in order to be our best, we need G-D. All of us struggle to take control in our lives. We long to accomplish more with our time and energy. We want to make a positive difference. And yet, time and time again our good intentions come to naught.

Nowhere is this dynamic more apparent than in addiction. Whatever the form, be it addiction to drugs or alcohol or the many other unhealthy patterns of behavior that can dominate us, addiction is the prime example of our powerlessness… our inability to control our own lives. And it is in that respect that I think the twelve step programs have captured some real theological truth. In fact the first step is to recognize that you are powerless over the problem. The second is to acknowledge that you need help from a power higher than yourself.

It is true that there are other methods beside the 12 steps by which one can deal with addiction. But I think any addict will identify with Paul’s words, “For I do not do what I want, but do the very thing that I hate… I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.” We do have a role to play in breaking the cycle of sin, but beyond making that initial choice to change, it is then a matter of allowing G-D into our lives. Of course not all of us are addicts. But even in our mundane and daily struggles there is truth here for all of us… without G-D, we cannot carry out our good intentions. Naturally, such a realization can cause us to feel rather badly about ourselves and even lead us to give up on trying to do better. But it does not have to be that way.

To be sure, learning to rely on G-D rather than on ourselves is hard. It takes time because it means changing the entire way in which we think about the world and our place in it. From the time we are toddlers learning to walk or eat or dress ourselves, we want to do it by ourselves. We long for independence. We long for freedom and the ability to control our own lives. But in the end we can never achieve these things without G-D. We only delude and frustrate ourselves when we try.

Unfortunately even a lifetime is not enough time to really apply this insight to how we live. Like so many other aspects of our faith, it is a process in which we take two steps forward and then one step back. And so it is important that we continually re-affirm our need for help. That is exactly what we will do in a few minutes when we renew our baptismal vows. We make so very heavy duty promises… we promise to resist sin… we promise to love our neighbors as ourselves… these are promises that we could not possibly keep on our own… and so wisely we include an addition to each vow- “with G-D’s help.” Each time we do this we strengthen our resolve to turn to G-D as we seek to our lives according to G-D’s values. Of course, even then we will not be perfect, but at least if we keep turning to G-D for help, we have a chance.

So if you ever start feeling like my friend… if all you can say about yourself is “I suck,” then you need to remember the truth… We are imperfect and until acknowledge our need for help and then also open ourselves up to receiving G-D’s grace, we will always be governed by selfish and self-destructive behavior and the frustration that comes from it. Force of will, no matter how determined, is not enough to break away. But once turn to G-D for help… once we choose to live our lives according to G-D’s priorities rather than our own, then we will have hope for real progress. Though the grace of G-D we can be freed from the bondage of addiction, compulsion and self-destruction and with G-D’s help we can exceed our limitations and accomplish things which we never dreamed possible. For as negative as Paul can seem about humanity he also held out hope for us as well. Nowhere did he express it more beautifully than in his letter to the Philippians, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (4:13) And to that we say AMEN and AMEN.