When Being Good Good Enough
Jeremiah, the so-called weeping prophet, here delivered one of the downbeat lessons for which he was so famous.
While some prophets repeatedly told people about the many good tidings God had in store for them, Jeremiah’s messages to the residents of Jerusalem were more depressing.
His usual point was this: “People, you have really messed things up this time, and you better get right with God. Now!”
One of the themes of Jeremiah’s book is sin, a subject that wasn’t any more popular in his day than it is in ours.
Jeremiah preached to people who believed themselves to be God’s chosen people. Their spiritual pride blinded them to their sin.
Centuries later, people remain blind to sin. Today a “therapeutic” gospel says people are really good at heart if they can bring their many psychoses and addictions under control.
That, combined with a billion advertising messages that preach some variation of the message “You deserve a break today,” has led many to believe that they’re really not so bad after all.
Some people even reject the very idea that there is no such thing as absolute good or evil.
The concept of sin is seen as even more problematic. Others accept notions of good and evil but try to explain away their guilt and shame by pinning it on others.
Instead of accepting blame for their misdeeds, they attribute their acts to abusive parents (“I wouldn’t be so selfish if my daddy had loved me”), insensitive spiritual leaders (“I’m just trying to recover the sense of self-esteem that was beaten out of me by Sister Margaret in the fifth grade”)
or complaints about economic injustice that would make Robin Hood blush (“Yes, I downloaded dozens of copyrighted songs from the Internet without paying for them, but the music industry is a huge international conglomerate that charges too much for CDs and will never miss a few dollars here and there”).
Jeremiah would disagree. Called by God to convey God’s message to a wayward world, Jeremiah preached a hard-edged message of repentance.
People are sin-sick, he said, and the only thing that can help them is God’s loving grace.
Although he lived long ago, Jeremiah had a very contemporary approach to getting his message across.
British author Steve Turner, who writes about art, says Jeremiah was one of the first conceptual artists because he regularly staged dramatic presentations to drive home his points.
“Jeremiah hid his underwear in a crevice until it rotted and then displayed it as an illustration of how God saw Israel’s pride,” wrote Turner in his 2001 book, Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts.
Centuries after Jeremiah, Jesus preached a message of love and grace, but his sermons didn’t neglect the important subjects of human sin and pride. More recently, writer Frederick Buechner described sin as a destructive centrifugal force:
When at work in human life, it tends to push everything out toward the periphery.
Bits and pieces go flying off until only the core is left. Eventually, bits and pieces of the core go flying off until nothing is left. “The wages of sin is death” is St. Paul’s way of saying the same thing.1
Buechner concluded his miniessay on sin by saying: “More even than hunger, poverty, or disease, [sin] is what Jesus said he came to save the world from.”2
“The heart is deceitful,” said Jeremiah. And the more we try to argue with him, the more we reveal the truth of what he said.
Father, help me to see my sinful condition as clearly as you do. And please cleanse and purify my twisted little heart.