-Joseph Baretti
What stands out to me in John 2 is Jesus's awareness of the fickleness and fallibility of man. Here is the particular passage:
23Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name.[c] 24But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
This show Jesus was all too aware of man's sinfulness. In fact, Jesus seems wary in verse 24: he "would not trust himself to them, for he knew all men." Notice it isn't "He knew these were some particularly sketchy guys." He knew all men. We are all sinful, and we each have in us the capacity for some bad things. At Cana also, he is hesitant to reveal himself. He says to his mother: 4"Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied, "My time has not yet come." He knows how parts of humanity will react to him: they will despise his purity. He even distrusted those who believed in his name for "he knew what was in a man". Turns out, he was right to be wary.We all have to battle ourselves, our sinfulness. We all have our dark and petty affectations, our wounded pride. Men use faith and reason to battle their sexuality, women use faith and reason to contain their emotions. No political utopia can happen on this Earth that will remove our ability to be evil to each other. No economic social justice will take away man's ability to harm other men. All of us struggle to trust Him and let him purify, refine and guide us.
Prayer: God help me to be the man you created me to be. Help me to become the perfect man you created, before humanity's fall. I know it won't happen in this life, but challenge me, guide me, strengthen me, teach me, purify me. You know what is in a man. Clear out this temple. Destroy it, and raise it again in you.
2 comments:
Again, you astonish me with your ability to relate religion with politics. Secular humanists are trying to arrive at a utopia through sheer will-power. The hope is that we will evolve into a better species of people and transcend our human weaknesses. But it is clear that this is not going to happen without God.
In philosophy, I often associate the depravity of man with our wide-spread ignorance. We cannot be good because we do not know enough about the good. For example, suppose that goodness means maximizing happiness or glorifying God, etc. In order to maximize happiness, we would need to know all the alternative actions and their consequences. Likewise, glorifying God requires that we know what God wants. But we do not have complete knowledge. We are ignorant. Therefore, we cannot be good without someone telling us (someone who HAS all knowledge) what the good is. That is why we are dependent upon God!
As you point out, Jesus knew all men. He had the right kind of knowledge to live the good life. It is only when we conform our will to His that we are capable of becoming Christlike. But we can't do that by ourselves; we still need God to show us the way. Our part is simply to set our will on Him, but He does all the work of transformation. Thus, God makes us righteous, not we ourselves.
Also, I like your continuing metaphor of life as a battle. We struggle with God and with ourselves. To quote M.Scott Peck, "Life is difficult... once we truly see this truth, we transcend it." Keep fighting!
I don't want to turn this into a liberals-evil-thing but I do my religious views do inform my political views and vice versa. I certainly know there are plenty of people whose Christian views lead them to very different political solutions (liberation theology, for example). I do think that for the secular world (and for many Christians) desire for health and happiness in this life often becomes the ultimate virtue. Global warming and secondhand smoke campaigns are driven with religious zeal. What's the Chesterton quote, "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." Faith in God is replaced with faith in Communism, or Fascism, or environmentalism, or any number of other "-isms" which seek to deprive people of their liberty.
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