Freedom in the Truth About Ourselves

A sermon on John 8:31-36 and Romans 3:19-28.

[For an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Basil James on Unsplash.]

I recently ran across a thought-provoking quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s non-fiction series The Gulag Archipelago. The Russian writer draws on his own personal experience as a Gulag prisoner, as well as interviews and research from various sources for an examination of the awful ways that human beings can treat one another, and from that exploration he offers a surprisingly nuanced commentary on the conflict at the center of human responses to evil.

He writes: “If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”[1]

Now, on Reformation Sunday I feel compelled to observe that Martin Luther might be noted as a counter-example to Solzhenitsyn’s claim, because during his years as a monk, torturing himself and confessing every perceived misdeed or errant though, Luther did exhibit the willingness to destroy the evil in his own heart, no matter what it cost him.

The problem is that nothing he could come up with actually worked to cut all evil out of his heart. That is what drove him to the scriptures and his epiphany about grace. (We will get there eventually, but not yet.)

Because I think Luther’s attempt and failure to cut off the evil inside himself makes Solzhenitsyn’s assessment of the human challenge vis-à-vis evil even stronger.

Luther’s example shows that even if we are willing to sacrifice a part of ourselves to eradicate evil, it doesn’t work. We all just DO have both good and evil in us.

However much we try to discipline our behavior, or construct defenses for our morality, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Rom. 3:23)

And that is what makes the first part of the quote most intriguing to me: the “if only…”

If only evil were simple to identity and segregate…

If only we could destroy it without any negative consequences for ourselves…

If only we could locate sin completely outside of ourselves, on someone else whom we feel free to reject…

then we would have a way to control it. Then we would feel safe and happy and good.

That’s what we want. If evil exists (and the evidence of the world around us makes it clear that evil is real), then we want to be able to control it and we want to know that we are not guilty of it.

The fact that this is not possible does not erase the longing of that “if only…”

And, ironically, I think that longing is responsible for much of the evil that does infect our world, and our communities, and maybe even our own hearts.

Because that longing can convince us that, actually, there must be evil people… and that they must be responsible for everything that is wrong.

It convinces us that in-groups and out-groups are necessary for self-protection and that we are morally justified in acts of exclusion and failure to care for our neighbors.

It makes us treat other human beings not as fellow-strugglers in the task of figuring out how to do our best as morally-complicated, imperfect people in an equally imperfect world, but as enemies who are polluting our lives and need to be eradicated.

Sadly, even the core Reformation concept of salvation by grace through faith (again, we will get there, just not yet)… even the epiphany of God’s free gift of GRACE did not immunize Reformation leaders from these same patterns of insider-outside conflict.

It started with the Reformers versus the Roman Church, but it soon splintered into many more factions.

And political leaders, and whole countries got involved in decades-long wars over religious practices and dogmas.

And five hundred years later the Body of Christ is so divided that, if I’m honest, I sometimes struggle to pray for the unity of the church because… what would that even look like? How can we find a unity accepted by all that does not violate the personhood of one group or another?

This divisiveness is less blatant in today’s gospel reading, but the reading still hints at the same under-lying issue.

Jesus offers a word of hope to those who have been following him, promising them freedom through the truth that he teaches,

But this promise triggers a defensive reaction, and that reaction is based on an in-group identity.

“What do you mean you will make us free? We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.”

Now, on the face of it, that is a ridiculous claim.

Arguably the core story of the entire Jewish faith is the Exodus from Israel where the descendants of Abraham, were literal slaves.

So, their response rings false. It’s not about confusion at Jesus’s promise wondering why he would offer them freedom; it’s about defensiveness of the security that they think they already have.

They are offended at Jesus’s promise of freedom, because this suggests freedom is something they need.

That their in-group identity, as descendants of Abraham, does not actually draw the longed-for “if only” line between them and the “evil people” of the world… the people that NEED a Savior to free them from sin.

But, ironically, that defense of their identity is what shows them to be slaves….

Slaves to the idea that they are free from evil without any help.

Slaves to the good-people / bad-people lie.

Slaves to the false promise believed by so many people down through the ages, across all cultures and faith-groups (including ours), that the problem of evil can be as simple as assigning evil to an identifiable group and punishing THEM.

But at its center, before it got polluted by power-struggles, and competing theologies, the Reformation was about giving up the lie of a simple dividing line between good and bad.

As Martin Luther discovered in the third chapter of Romans: “for there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by God’s grace as a gift.” (Rom. 3:22b-24a)

(I told you we would get there.)

Martin Luther had learned the hard way that there was no true hope in trying to draw a dividing line where we end up always on the side of good.

He had a dramatic conversion experience that drove to forego the study of law and instead study theology, he devoted himself to celibacy and service of the church, he mortified his body in cold nights on the stone floor of his monk’s cell, spent endless hours in confession, and penance… everything he had been taught that God required of him… and still he was consumed by the awareness of his own faults.

He was hopeless to ever justify himself before a holy God.

And then he read Romans 3, and the weight fell from his shoulders.

He recognized how the desire to earn his own goodness was exactly the slavery that Jesus describes in John chapter 8.

And he experienced the truth that set him free: the truth that our hope is not in our own goodness, but in God’s.

I think Solzhenitsyn was right in his description of the human heart:

We do want the simplicity of clear dividing lines that let us categorize some “other” group as the problem of evil – a problem that we can ostracize, or other, or mock, or even destroy.

And he was right that it is never that simple because we all hold within our own hearts both good and evil.

And he was probably right as well, that very few of us are willing to destroy a piece of our own hearts to achieve the destruction of evil (as if that were the solution to the problem).

But none of those insights are the truth that sets us free.

Our hope and our freedom do not come from understanding the nature of evil, and they certainly do not come from inside of us.

We don’t have to earn them, or produce them, or defeat evil to win them.

They are God’s gift to us. A gift of grace that sees our hearts just as they are, a mix of good and evil… and give us the faith to trust God’s love and mercy… for ourselves, and also for all those whom we want to draw on the other side of the line.

In that truth, we are free indeed.

Thanks be to God

[1] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, part 1 (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 168.